LOG DAY 16 :-- Holding on Tight.
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Sun 20 May 2012 16:21
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SUNDAY 20th MAY
2012
LEG 2 :- Bermuda to The
Azores, Total Distance 1,800 nm +
Distance travelled to date
:- 816 nm
Dist. to Destination
:- 1041nm
Position :- 38 degrees N
: 50 degrees W
Wind
:- SW
22knots
Weather
:- Fair, cloudy with sunny
spells,
Sea :-
Moderate to rough
Our last blog was Thursday
17th :-
( Skipper got his dates mixed up there
)
So Now ,Back to Last Friday
Early in the morning we could see one boat ahead of
us and two behind, but by the end of
the day , they had vanished,
The day was spent taking naps, checking our course
and position, and especially the upcomming
weather, lots of talk on the Radio Net about gales
ahead of us,
Cripes, Isint that just what the doctor ordered,
blooming gales, The Grib file ( our weather information system
)
shows very strong winds comming down the track, We
could avoid it all by remaining south of 36 degrees N
but then we would likely run out of wind, plus we
would have to sail 160 m south again,
We decided to hold our track, after all , we have
been out in much worse weather before, and we will
not reach the affected region untill Sunday, (
today )
It was a good day generally and a lot of time was
spent taking more naps and reading about Pirates,
Dinner was a " Thai Curry" and rice, followed with
skippers stories of our passage trough the " Panama Canal "
in January 2010 , God, It seems so long ago, but
next month we will have been at sea for 3 years and sailed
over 55,000 miles,Wehave millions of facinating
stories , Stories about the various Islands,continents, and Ports
we visited, The interesting people we met, ( some
we would prefer never to meet again and others became like family )
readers of our daily blog from all over the
world, many sent us emails, these are people we never met in our
lives.
All emails except one were complementary.
An Early night,
SATURDAY 19th MAY.....
What was really annoying was the bleedin adverse
current we are experiencing, That is a current of anything
up to 1.5 knots against us, ( A bit like the Gulf
Stream going in the wrong direction ) , apart from that , it was
a beautifull day and the dolls were piling on the
sun cream and exposing themselves to the sun,
We had a good breeze and to date we have covered
over 200 miles every day.
We poured over the weather again, just wondering
how bad things were going to get and pinpointing exactly
when we would get hammered.
When we had ourselves worried sick.....then
skipper made a salad dinner,
It consisted of Cold chopped up potatoes with
onions, apples, luttice, and mayo, salt and pepper, plus
Avacado, Hard boiled eggs, Celery, Fetta cheese,
Tomatoes, Prawns, and Tuna for Aileen,
add to this, " marie rose " sauce, and dips for the
celery,, yum, yum,
We were no longer sick with worry about the
weather, we were sick of too much food,
More sailing stories, mostly about boats in
trouble, One of the boats on the trip with our fleet hit a whale
and sent out a MayDay , Eventually they were picked
up by a passing ship and the badly damaged and leaking
boat was abandoned , left to the Sea Gods, ( that
happened today )
Then , we got another message later in the day
outling the position of another abandoned yacht
just some distance south of our position, It was
not part of our group, but could be a hazzard to some of
our fleet sailing on a more southerly route.
gosh, never a dull day....
The wind picked up as night fell so we put a couple
of reefs in the mainsail, still maintaining
a speed of 8.5knots over the ground , despite the
adverse current,
It was a bumpy night,
TODAY SUNDAY 20th May.
Aileen & Skipper did the 00.00hrs to 04.00 hrs,
As Denis and Vera came on deck at 04.00hrs dawn was just
appearing on the northern sky, Gosh, it was chilly,
the weather was getting much cooler,
Later , around 06.30, Denis & Skipper set the
sails for Goose winging, ie, mainsail , boom & Staysail out to
port and the genoa or big headsail was poled out to
starboard with the spinniker pole. that allowed us go more
downwind and still maintain a good speed,
We were rolling a lot at times, one of those times
was ( of course , Murphys Law ) when skipper was in the Loo
having a pee, It was too rough to have it over the
side of the boat, and besides , the US Customs say more bodies
are picked out of the sea with their flies open
than any others. ( male problem only )
A very strong message here,
Anyway, we got hit on the side by a monster wave
sending skipper into orbit and of course in the middle
of " you know what " thus sending sprayeverywhere,
including himself , ohhhhhhhh feck this for a lark ...
better clean this up before the ladies start
squalking again about the male shortcommings,
Denis is doing the lunch today, Hot dogs and rolls
with gerkins & mustard ...
The wind is building all the time, so we are well
reefed down , stabalising the boat for more male pee's
thats it for now,
Signed ;- Stephen Hyde
( Skipper )
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