Position: 16:13:40N 36:24:10W

Transat Day 12

Well we caught two lovely dorade, and had them for supper, marinated in lime juice & coriander seeds.  They are lovely meaty fish.

After an easy afternoon, running with full sail, we settled into our night watches.  At just after midnight the fun began.  A large dark cloud formed very quickly just to windward.  We put the radar on and could see a small patch of rain, so I dropped the mizzen and was just furling the twin jibs (which I persuaded myself to keep up rather than dropping one at dusk – foolish boy) when we were hit by 30kts.  I got the jibs fully-furled and we ran before the squall with full main. 

It was interesting that there was no calm before the squall, and despite us monitoring the clouds closely every few minutes, we still only had 3-4 minutes warning of this one.  Anyway, it blew at 35kts for quite some time, and I fought the helm for a couple of hours with Sally on cloud-watch before handing over the helm to Sally.  The seas built quickly and were confused, so the motion was pretty horrific.  Pam & Rob stayed in bed, but I don’t think they got any sleep.  The radar was very helpful in indicating where the rainsqualls were.

Despite the theory saying that squalls pass and the wind drops, this one didn’t, so at 0300 at watch-change, I went up and put two reefs in the main.  Being up on deck in 30-35 kts in the dark putting reefs in makes you think (a) I should have done this at dusk; (b) I am quite reliant on myself for my own survival right now!  It does make you appreciate the responsibility as we are pretty-much bang-on halfway, so 1400 miles one way or t'other, so if anything goes wrong we're going to have to use our own resources and not much else.

I didn’t sleep while Rob & Pam were on watch – worrying about the bangs, creaks and crashes, and listening to Rob & Pam – Pam felt a bit sick.  This is the first bad weather they’ve seen.  At 0700 we swapped back and Sally & I took 30-minute turns to helm.  The seas were pretty horrendous – a very confused chop with “explosions” all around us as two waves peaked and broke at the same time.  The boat had a few waves right over her.  The seas are about 3m.  As I write this they have eased a little, and the wind is down to 20-25kts and veering; I think we will need to gybe at some point in the next couple of hours, and head South again.

I am very unimpressed by the weather forecasts we’ve been getting.  They haven’t matched reality – even closely – on a single day so far.  However, the sun is out today for the first time in a while and the contrasts and sharpness between sea, sky and cloud is exceptional.

Given up on Aries – despite replacing the worn sleeve the blimmin thing had popped up again so have tied it up and back to hand-steering.  Don’t think I’m going to be able to solve until I get there – very annoying.

Hope all’s well

Ollie x