4th June

02 38.543 S

99 39.600 W



Weather; cloudy to begin with, warm and sunny turning cold overnight, wind 5 Ð 15 knots, waves 2-3 metres


HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAURA, HOPE ITS SPECTACULAR
So today was a really slow, lazy sort of day as far as doing anything was concerned. We didn't bother putting the fishing stick out as we were content with having caught a fish yesterday. Although I have put that the waves were 2-3 metres what it doesn't tell you is that the swell interval was shot and sharp making it a very lumpy ride for most of the day, it was as much as we could manage to keep ourselves from being thrown all over the place, hitting any sharp corners or avoiding free flying objects. There aren't that many things that fly around when the boat rocks and rolls but you can almost guarantee that you will be in the way of its progress when it happens! So we tried to stay in our seats and read for most of the day only venturing down below when we had to use the toilet or were in need of something to eat. Our bruise collections are growing fabulously, there will be no denying that we have been thrown around and bumped into all sorts of things and the aches and pai
ns have increased to the point that it's hard to find a place on the body that doesn't ache or is stiff and sore. I was having a particularly hard time today with my neck and shoulders from constantly bracing and hanging on to the overhead hand rails (and occasionally swinging, monkey like, from them) when moving anywhere.

We rolled and bounced along all day doing an average of 5 knots, which doesn't sound nearly enough given the rough ride we were having. The sun did finally show up and we had a glorious warm afternoon however as soon as 5pm came around the clouds began to gather in great clumps and soon the sky was just completely covered in a grey blanket, yet again. The sun must have set, we didn't see it as it was hidden by the clouds and I went down to try and sleep soon after we had finished dinner, then the fun really began. If we thought the day was rough the night had us stitched up for something worse. The swell, which had been horrid all day, continued throughout the night but the wind decided to join in and make our lives miserable as it began to change direction, heading further towards the stern which caused the sails to flap, crash and bang around. Our speed was correspondingly up and down like a lift and we had to alter our course several times to keep the wind from clocking a
round to the back side of the sails, we weren't ready to gybe or tack in the pitch black with the chance of having to do it again in a short space of time as the wind hadn't made up its mind where it wanted to blow in from. Having said that we had a decent mileage for the day of 134NM and we didn't run the engine at all for the second day in a row. Gerry had run the water maker for 3 hours during the day to top up our tanks which had an unfortunate effect on our batteries which weren't getting enough input from the solar (what little we were getting was being consumed by the water maker and the auto pilot) and the wind generator was all over the place with the variable winds we were getting. By midnight we had to run the gen set to top up the batteries, Gerry only ran it for about 20 mins, it wasn't enough and he had to repeat the process twice overnight to make sure that we had power through until the sun finally put in an appearance this morning, just half an hour ago!
It seems to be the thing that we have cold, clear skies full of stars during the night but as soon as it gets to dawn the sky becomes full of cloud and the sun takes until around 10am to show through, we tend to get a beautiful warm blue sky from about midday until 5pm and then we are on repeat for the night, we are hoping that it will improve once we get well away from the Equator, only time will tell. Our water leak in the forward stateroom seems to have lessened or maybe it's an illusion due to us not taking many waves over the bow. We have netted a few more squid and flying fish on the deck patrol, have seen no boats and no whales in the last 24 hours. I did say at the beginning that nothing much had been happening but at least we are a further 134 NM closer to our destination, only about 2380 NM still to go!