Day 7

A night of little sleep – too much bumping and grinding and slam dunk!  Most of the day we had a relatively flat sea and winds from the south east of around 20 knots – a most pleasant day 2 sail reaching.  At around 4pm it was all change!  The sky went rather dark, the wind went ahead and we put 3 rolls in the genoa and 3 reefs in the main in preparation for the heavier southerly winds shown on the gribs.  Half an hour and a cup of tea later the wind had died but the sky was still looking dark and brooding – out came the reefs – the wind got up – in went a couple of reefs.  Another half an hour and in went more reefs – by 6pm we had 3 rolls in the genoa and 4 reefs in the main. Five minutes later we were down to staysail. We did have an evening meal but partly cold as we had to put in a reef in the middle of eating!  The sea then decided it was going to join in the fun – we spent a very uncomfortable night with extremely confused ‘wind against current’ seas throwing us around and dropping us into holes! In desperation of trying to cut out the noise and slamming, I wore down the battery in my MP3 player listening to podcasts – I even listened to an old ‘Farming Today’ programme discussing the price of a litre of milk! 

The genoa has been slowly shedding its UV strip on the leach, but the last squall took its toll. It’s now rolled up with bits hanging off blowing in the breeze looking like a wreck on a distant lee shore. It will be interesting to see if it holds together when we try to use it later today. But after listening to today’s SSB net we thank our lucky stars – one boat 400 miles behind us had a lightening strike which knocked out his autopilot (but all else is well and he does have another)  and another couple who were further behind abandoned their boat (not sure of the circumstances) and are now on the way to Singapore or Reunion on a cargo ship.  Our hearts go out to them. 

This morning the wind has gone further aft so we have a slightly better motion – not too much slamming.  The seas are still confused around 2m with a large underlying swell of about 3-4m.  The conditions hopefully should ameliorate as the day goes on.  We have around 200 miles to go to.  But I’ve just had breakfast!! As Matt said – a couple of years ago it would have been unthinkable for me to eat anything in these conditions! 

Date and time: 27th October 09.30 local (GMT + 4 hrs) 

Position:  S28:52:352 E034:27:049

24 hours distance:   181nm