Across the Pacific - Day 4
Jackamy
Paul & Derry Harper
Sun 28 Mar 2010 08:00
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04:36.332S 097:042.194W
Sunday 28th March Today started off lovely with bright blue skies. We did the roll call at 10.00 am and were amazed that many of the other yachts were experiencing a lot of rain. We were likening it to the Atlantic where most of the other boats had very squally crossings and we only had a couple of squalls but then at midday everything changed. We all took shelter from what we believed to be a squall and we expected it to pass quite quickly. The hours went by and we still had rain! We put some music on around 16.00 which soon rose Amy from her horizontal position - she couldn't resist dancing to Yakety Yak and 54-46 Was My Number. Paul and I had a jolly good sing song and dance to while away the time. I've been promising Amy her favourite a roast chicken sunday dinner for a long time now (since the Atlantic) and I couldn't go back on my promise again. So although the weather was horrific I whipped up a very impressive sunday roast, impressive under the circumstances. We had chicken, broccoli, peas, roasts, stuffing and gravy! At the end of all this it was still raining! These squalls are different to the Atlantic in that they don't necessarily bring wind. In the Atlantic squalls the wind would sometimes be up to 30 and 40 knots, whereas with the squalls you sometimes don't have any wind. We'd now come to the conclusion that this was no ordinary squall, it was more a rain storm, it was horrible. There was absolutely no wind, the wind speed was down to 2 and 3 knots and the wind gauge was just spinning around in circles so we had to put the engine on. As darkness set in Paul and Amy had two horrendous night watches. You just couldn't see a thing around you, if a boat had have been near to us we probably wouldn't have seen it until the last minute. At around midnight, almost 12 hours after it started a gap appeared on the horizon and slowly but surely the rain started to disappear. At the edge of the storm wind started to appear and within 15 minutes we were getting a constant 15-20 knots so the engine was turned off, the sails were out and within no time we were flying along. We were worried that we were actually going to run into the back of the storm but thankfully it started to move to the North West and we were travelling South West. I forgot to mention yesterday about our sail repairs. In the night the cutter had somehow managed to tear although it was only a small hole so it was repairable. Luckily Paul had got some sail repair tape which I believe he got from Fai Tira. So when the wind died down to 8 knots we were set to pull the sail down. Once we'd put the main in place to try and shield us from the wind the wind whipped up to 15 knots would you believe it. It had been 8-9 knots for around an hour! Anyway, we went ahead with it and Amy let the sail down while me and Paul pulled it down onto the deck. Me and Amy had to sit on it whilst Paul fetched his repair tape and then we all made a joint effort and patched up the hole. Paul hoisted the sail back up while me and Amy made sure it was feeding into the runners correctly. A very smooth repair! |