After the overnight blow and yesterday morning's big seas we spent a relatively leisurely day "recovering" reaching under part genoa and staysail in bright sunshine in big seas with the odd small breaking crest. If that's what 40 knots produces, what's it like when it's windy? Lunch provided the energy to get the sails up and get going again and we had a good afternoon and evening doing 6+ in calmer seas.
Dougie organised a ship's Tombola this morning and, to increase your chances of winning you paid an extra 50p to get your name in twice. Little did us suckers know the prize was cleaning the heads. Poor Phil; fixes the steering, fits the lee cloths, repairs the engine and is currently cleaning the bogs - then he's going to make lunch!
Plenty wind in the boat today but hee haw outside. . On sailing; we had good winds until about 23:00 when the wind turned east, on the nose and faded to a few knots. The engine has therefore been running for the last 10 hours and we're all going deaf. We should be getting 14 - 20 knots from NE but for the last 6 hours we've had nothing except 2 metre swell and no wind and the boat is again rolling like a pig and, despite our attempts last night to pad everything so we could run quiet, life inside is back to the spanners in a washing machine deal. It seems as if the boat gets into a critical cadence with the waves and the roll gets more and more wild until the rhythm is broken and we roll into an oncoming waves and that stabilises us again - until the next one.
We just started a roll pattern again and our lucky Tombola winner flew out the bog followed by his bucket, cleaning fluids and mop. Poor Phil is now mopping the rest of the cabin. Really not what we expected in Trade Wind sailing. however, there are signs the wind will fill in shortly so that will help.
Last night motoring east. following the stars for navigation, just like Captain Fred, (Letton folk lore has it that "Cap'n Fred" navigated to Perth Australia from the UK without charts following the stars; and got bollocked by his bosses for it)
Dougie and Phil embarrassed me by producing a fresh version of my tinned lunchtime extravaganza of beans and more beans; a hedonistic mix of Heinz UK and Boston beans.
Did a stock count this morning and we're down to our last 28 litres of orange juice and 40 litres of milk. We've so much water we're going to shower once every 5 days whether we need it or not.
Lunch today looking like stew and corn currently defrosting on the worktop, the floor, the nav table....
We've had to motor so much the freezer has kept the ice from the 1st still frozen solid.
We've attempted to do our sun sights but, apart from creating stress fractures in our right arms from holding what seems like a 10lb sextant, the violent motion of the rolling makes it totally impossible.
Undeterred, Dougie is currently rushing to get it out, head on deck and get a sight. Given he could hardly get up the companionway the chances of getting it are pretty much nil.
Midday now passed and opinion is that it's absolutely impossible.
We crossed our first time zone last night so we are making progress. All is swell (get it?).