Atlantic Crossing - Morning of the squalls
Stargazer of Southampton
Susie and Adam (both think they are skipper)
Tue 11 Jan 2011 18:07
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11:01.11, 14:04.17N 58:19.20W
A nice night sailing last night with us both
sleeping so well when we were off our watches that we had to be woken up and
then woken up again in order to be told to get up. The previous night had
been not so good as it was a noisy and bumpy ride no matter which angle you went
at the waves. Both of us have started dreaming that we are on watch
and steering the boat - keep on waking up wondering where the displays have gone
and where the steering wheel is, it takes a few minutes to realise that you are
lying in bed and not steering the boat.
It's going to be strange when we actually get there
and we can have a normal nights sleep again - even when we were in Mindelo I
kept waking up and seeing Adam in the night and panicking that no one was
actually steering the boat. . . til I realised that we were
anchored.
With dawn this morning we saw that the night
had been hiding 3 separate squalls which all appeared at sunrise - at least two
of them were downwind of us so not a problem, the third one got us though but at
least that was relatively short lived. A bit later on saw some clouds
which looked possibly a bit squally so took in some of the Genoa. . . but
didn't expect much to happen - then it hit us, there was no rain with this one,
just 32 knot winds for 40 minutes or so. The waves were getting pretty
steep so the autopilot wasn't really coping and we were ending up side on to the
waves so, horror, I had to actually steer the boat myself - but I do have the
advantage over the autopilot of having Adam look behind me and shout 'Wave'
so that I can turn and surf down it rather than get pushed around
sideways by it.
Once that was over the sky is now blue and we're
back to being pushed along again by nice winds with the slosh, slosh, slosh of
the waves going under us.
Not seen too many birds when we were mid atlantic
but they are appearing again now and coming to have a look at us, and another
mystery - where do the fish scales come from? - having a look about the deck
yesterday found a number of fish scales stuck to ropes and things, not small
scales the flying fish - these are all thumb nail sized, but no other evidence
of fish so no idea where they have come from - can't see that the waves would be
fully of fish scales but assume they must have been splashed on
board.
No more news - we're just concentrating on keeping
going. There are some strong winds forecast for Weds afternoon and Thurs
so we're hoping we can avoid these. Not far to go now
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