We have now covered almost 1,500 miles since we left Las
Palmas a week ago, around half way to St Lucia. We celebrated this milestone
last night with Dark and Stormies at happy hour, followed by chicken curry
served with accompaniments created by Thermo, our high tech galley slave. This
tropical mood has been brought on by a marked rise in temperature as we work
our way south towards to the equator.
When dinghy sailing, one tacks or gybes every few minutes;
on a yacht in the Solent maybe once an hour in the rain; on Juno in the
Atlantic we do this once a week and today was the big day. We have been heading
west, or just south of west for the past week with the wind coming from the
north east, filling our sails from the starboard side of the boat, hence the
term starboard gybe. As the wind has veered, in a clockwise direction towards
the east, it has become difficult to maintain our southwesterly course so we
decide to gybe, putting the easterly wind on our port quarter. However on a
boat nothing is that easy and gybing Juno takes about an hour.
First we furl away our big genoa, then we have to stow the
spinnaker pole that has been holding the genoa out to windward. When we are
offshore we always wear life jackets whenever we execute manoeuvres outside the
cockpit, so suitably trussed up, Kerry and I go on the foredeck to manage the pole while Paul and Fatty remain the
cockpit, handling the sheets and guys that control the sails and the spinnaker
pole.Once the pole is winched down and stowed back on the mast we then turn the boat away from the wind sheeting the
mainsail in hard so that when we execute the gybe the sail doesn’t flip too
fast and damage anything. Then back on the fore deck to set the pole on the
opposite side so that we can once more unfurl our genoa, and off we go again,
now heading southwest. Just as we complete the turn, the wind graciously veers
a little more giving us a great wind angle to sail down to our next waypoint at
14 degrees north, 50 degrees west.
I am pleased to say that a crew of four works really well on
Juno and we have now settled into our daily routine. This starts at 0700 when I send a status
report to our weather router so that he can study our position and weather conditions
and advise us on the best route. At around 0800 mother starts making breakfast
and we all gather in the cockpit: bacon and eggs for Paulus and me, yoghurt and
other stuff for the girls, all washed down by strong cappuccinos from the
Nespresso machine (the spare as yet unused but on hot standby). After breakfast I run the generator to charge
our batteries and run the water maker. Between the four of us we use around
three hundred litres per day for showers, cooking and drinking and this takes
about an hour and a half to replace with our water maker that desalinates
seawater and puts pure fresh drinking water into our tanks.
At 1100 we have our morning radio call with El Mundo,
followed by the ARC roll call at 1300.
Yesterday Kerry was at the radio for the roll call and was asked by the
net controller to read the weather forecast, as our signal was stronger and
more likely to reach the now dispersed fleet.
Despite never having used a radio before she rose to the challenge
beautifully, sounding like an old fashioned BBC announcer with her St Trinian’s
vowels floating over the airwaves. Then
it’s time for lunch in the cockpit, always followed by fruit and always rounded
off with cold chocolate from the fridge ever since Fatty has made addicts of us
all.
During the afternoon is when we catch up on sleep, write
emails, read books; all the time sailing the boat as fast as we can but without
taking undue risks. We are now over 1,000 miles from land in any direction and
sailing conservatively. I can hear my friend Oults saying, “and if you believe
that you will believe anything”. The new fishing rod went out yesterday but
despite looking fantastic with its gold reel gleaming professionally in the
sun, the imminent bite remained imminent, while on El Mundo they caught their
seventh fish. The irony is that I am using a lure, custom built at great
expense by the fishing shop in Lanzarote, while Mervyn has lashed together his
own concoction which drew looks of disdain and disapproval from the same
fisherman, but which now needs a licence to kill, such is its ruthless
efficacy.
Happy hour is at 6pm in the cockpit when we have drinks and
canapés while mother is preparing supper. I run the generator again around this
time to charge the batteries for the night and the water heater for evening
showers. We try and have supper while it
is still light, then settle the boat down for the night and move into the night
watch system. Night watches run from 9pm
to midnight, midnight to 3am and 3 am to 6am, and we each take it in turn to be
on watch during these times . The best watch of the day is the 6am to 9am watch
when dawn breaks, the sun rises on the eastern horizon bringing new shapes and
colours every day and we all gather for breakfast once more.
Its amazing how fast the days pass considering how little we
actually do. Sailing the boat itself is
quite time consuming: trimming sails, altering course, writing the log, taking
turns at the helm and gybing – once a week.
I always seem to write on night watch and tonight is balmy and bright as
the moon grows bigger and brighter every day. We hadn’t seen any other boats
for a few days now until tonight when we had to take avoiding action as a huge
tanker bore down on us from astern at 18 knots. I am guessing that we must be crossing
a shipping lane because the probability of that encounter seems very remote out
here in this huge wilderness.
As we progress further west the chance of squalls increases
as clouds that have developed off the coast of Africa gather energy from the evaporating
sea as they travel west, eventually unable to retain the moisture any longer
when they reach their dew point, dumping rain and high velocity wind into the
sea below. A few squalls have
threatened, first appearing as angry purple bursts on our radar, but so far
they have passed us by with just a few drops of rain carried by the wind rather
than the full frontal assault of gale force winds and torrential rain that
comes with a direct hit.
Its breakfast time soon, Fatty is on mother watch today and
all is well on Juno.