Yesterday started badly when I took over from Paul at 3am
and he said ‘you might need your foulies’. This was an understatement. Rain was
lashing the cockpit as he bade me goodnight and scuttled off to his dry cabin,
leaving me sitting in puddles of water in the cockpit. Then things got worse:
the wind dropped away leaving us rolling drunkenly in the swell, and still the
rain fell. We get these short lulls in the wind every so often but usually
normal service is quickly resumed and off we go again with 15 to 20 knots from
astern. Not so this morning. The wind refused to blow, the rain continued to
fall and although I was happy with the fresh water rinse for the sails and the
deck, it made for a miserable watch. After watching our speed bleed away to 3
knots I finally lost patience at 6am and switched on the engine. The rolling
motion and the sound of the engine must have awoken everyone else because by
seven we were all having tea in the cockpit, the sun was up and the
conversation had moved on to eggs and breakfast.
I concluded today that many of the successful operations on
Juno, from happy hour, spinnaker sets and galley productions come about with
inspiration from Fatty, application form Kez and mostly perspiration from
Paulus. An example was when we set the
spinnaker this afternoon in 12 knots of wind, perfect for our big red
asymmetric and we were soon back up to nine knots on a nice broad reach. Then
the squalls started to organize themselves on the eastern horizon, dark clouds
with solid black columns down to the water, the sure sign of wind and rain.
There is something menacing about these demonic beasts. We watch them on the
plotter where they appear as pink blotches that move and dance around the radar
screen, changing their course continually as they try and trap us.
Our spinnaker has an upper wind range of around twenty
knots, however the stronger the wind, the faster we go, reducing the apparent
wind over the deck, and its easy for the wind strength to sneak up into the
twenties unnoticed. With Paul calling
the squalls on the radar we had managed to miss them all afternoon, however one
big beast was lining up for its attack, directly upwind from us and Paul, the
squall aimer, reckoned on a direct hit. By now the wind had increased around
the edge of the squall, the cobalt water turning a more angry grey under the
approaching cloud with white caps tumbling off the crests. It was definitely
time to drop the kite. One of the big
investments over the winter was our Top Down Furler, a device that allows us to
furl away the spinnaker in the same way as we do the genoa, only it’s a little
more ‘sportif’ as the French would say.
Kerry organizes the furling line, Fatty sails the boat deep downwind so
that the spinnaker falls into the wind shadow of the mainsail and then she gives
a big ease on the genoa sheet to depower it further while Paul and I pull like
crazy on the furling line and the big red sail is tamed, furling nicely around
the forestay which we then drop into a big canvas bag on the foredeck.
The boys, Jesus, Oxie and Wombat, may think from recent
blogs serenading our female crewmembers that we are not missing their company
on this trip. Au contraire. We are very much looking forward to Andrew joining
us in January, maybe Steven on the Pacific crossing and Oxie if we can steal
him for a few weeks.
Here I am again in the small hours before dawn sitting in
the cockpit with my laptop. I now do the 3am to 6am watch most nights so that I
can send my morning report to Chris, our router, by 7am UT which is now 5am
Juno time. We put our clocks back one hour for every 15 degrees that we travel
west, making two such adjustments so far; the next one will be at 55 degrees
west, some time on Sunday or Monday. A big moon has been above us all night,
lighting up the sea with a silver sheen. Now it is sliding down behind the
clouds in the western sky, leaving us in darkness for an hour or two until it
is replaced by the sun that will soon rise on the eastern
horizon. I love the rhythm of the world at sea.
It looks as if there is a trough of light wind extending
about 400 miles east of the islands so we are heading south to give us a better
shot at sneaking around the back of it but we might have to resort to engine in
the last couple of days.
Our friends the
Oultons fly to St Lucia today where we hope to meet them on the dock. Oults has
promised to catch our lines. It will take them about 8 hours on a 747, against
16 days on Juno. Maybe we are not going so very fast after all.