Wet Wednesday

Yacht Ariel
Henry Adams
Wed 30 Jul 2008 10:30
position: 47:20.3N, 12:30.1W
actually, i currently have sunshine, but feel
entitled to moan as a) i'm english, and b) it's rained for 36 hours until last
night and c) i have two days of rain and maybe gales forecast.
woohoo!
so after this morning's email session, i'll switch
the mainsails back over so i can use the triple reef in the one i repaired the
other day (it's about the size of the sail on a laser pico, but Ariel is over 2
tons). then i'll swear lots whilst trying to stuff the sail through the cabin
into the forepeak (it will inevitably have fallen in the water).
not really moaning - some strong winds will be good
fun and will push me in quickly, maybe cutting the last four days to three. The
area to watch out for, though, will be the continental shelf, where the ocean
depths of 2000m quickly rise to a mere 150m deep. This, apparently, does
absolutely horrific things to big waves, somehow tripping them up and making
them crash all over the place. A quick glance at the chart shows that I should
be just about over the shelf for tonight's near-gale. perfect.
slept very well - a little too well - last night
after a heavy meal of meatballs and rice (i don't seem to be able to cut back my
cooking for just one person), which is just as well as i won't get much sleep
from here on what with the wind and then the shipping lanes. I've decided my
keeping-awake tactic will be watching films on the laptop at night. It's still
charging up well, and i can set the kitchen timer for every 30mins to scan the
horizon. A ship passed last night, brightly lit up a mile or three away, but the
first one not to set off the radar alarm. Did they have no radar running? why on
earth not? slightly worrying, but not too much.
Onto Sherlock Holmes for my literary entertainment
now - is it just me or is he really not that clever but just makes a whole lot
of wild guesses based on little details that the author can subsequently
reveal to the astonished Watson?
...and that's about my news!
eta saturday or sunday
H
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