Yesterday, we already “celebrated” our
second advent at sea. This, to be honest, I only just realised as I sat down to
type this up. Since every day basically follows the same routine here at sea,
we didn’t even pay attention to the fact that it was a Sunday – and that Christmas
is in fact approaching really quickly. The only item that occasionally reminds
us of what time of the year it is, is a little cardboard calendar that Philippa
has brought with her and which is placed near the entrance.
From the early advent morning on, the previously
bright blue sky was for a change speckled with thick, darkish clouds. While it
was quite pleasant to be able to stay outside for some time without being fully
exposed to the glaring sun, the clouds also brought with them a warm, sticky, humid
weather. Especially on the inside of the boat, even the smallest activity made
you feel as if you were practicing Bicram Yoga in a diver’s suit. As a result
of this climate change, we all became quite lazy, reading, sleeping or just
resting on the deck.
After his phenomenal triumph with the hand
line and the discovery of a never seen before fish species, Jimmy had finally
decided to join my “Team fish”. We once again put both lures out, the regular
rod as well as the hand line. After my first lure was bitten off and the next
one kept on getting entangled with the sea weed on the surface, I, however, at
some point grumpily gave up and entrusted Jimmy with the sole responsibility of
maintaining our continuous supply with fresh fish. This task he took very seriously,
indeed. After only 10 minutes, he was still fiddling about with his hand line,
he already had the first fish on the line: a massive swordfish. This one,
however, we once again lost literally in the last second as we were hauling it
into the boat. 45 minutes after this setback – others would probably have given
up already but not Jimmy, oh no, not Jimmy! – he had amazingly hooked the next
fish. And this time, the fish stood no chance. Everyone knew exactly what to do
and with a great team effort, we finally managed to lift our quarry, which
turned out to be a large Wahoo, on board. After the obligatory trophy pictures
the Wahoo was immediately cut up into an impressive number of steaks and put in
the fridge.
In the evening, after another great dinner (the
last remainder of our tuna and an excellent Sunday roast) we all went to bed
early for a quiet night of sleep – at least that was the plan! When Dieter and
I got up at midnight to take over the night watch from Mike and Philippa, heavy
rain was already pouring down on us. The bow of the boat was hardly visible
anymore. Winds, we were told by Mike and Philippa, had so far been reasonably
strong but steady, enabling us to get along quite nicely. Only half an hour
into our watch, however, Dieter and I noticed the winds getting significantly
lighter. After 20-25 knots in the beginning wind was suddenly down to less than
10 knots, making it almost impossible to manoeuvre the boat in the huge swell
that had built up in the course of the night. As we had just furled away the
Genoua and switched on the engine, we realised that what we had gotten into was
really just the calm before the storm. Within seconds, the rain intensified
even more, surrounding the boat like a black veil, hammering down on us, and we
were hit by a heavy squall with
gusting in excess of 40 knots. We immediately woke Mike and Jimmy and, with
combined forces slowly managed to get the boat under control (my job being
primarily confined to throwing up into a bucket in the corner and not getting
in the others’ way).
Luckily, this morning, the weather is again
stable and a lot friendlier! We now have around 600 more miles to go, so if
everything goes according to plan, we should be arriving in St Lucia by the end
of this week.
All the best from the Thula!
P.S. On the second picture you see the
radar screen during the Squall (the local storm that we had sneaking up on us).
We normally use the radar to warn us about heavy weather coming our way. This
will normally show up as a little yellow dot in-between the red rings.
Nevertheless we were in the middle of a big load of rain when the little storm
hit us and was completely caught by surprise