The Atlantic is a powerful ocean, and its moods can turn
quickly as we discovered yesterday. After a glorious afternoon of speeding along
under big blue, our tradewind spinnaker, in an 8-10 knot breeze, the predicted
stronger easterlies arrived. Around us the waves, which had been our playful
friends during the afternoon, switched to become broad-shouldered playground
bullies; nudging us sideways when they thought we weren’t looking. Too much for big blue, so we switched to
polled out headsail and mainsail.
However, the wind and waves had not finished their fun
and laid on some more entertainment for us. After a friendly chat with ARC boat
Aqualuna close by our position, we gybed the boat – changed course by putting
the stern through the wind to set our sails on the opposite side. Post gybe, we
all noticed an unhappy groan from moaning Myrtle, our Watt&Sea
hydrogenerator . Unnoticed by the crew in the falling darkness, we had entered a
patch of floating Sargasso weed, which had wrapped web like around the leg of
the generator. Niffty work with the boat hook and the weed was cleared, only for
another batch to hook on not long after, then, for good measure, a third chunk
around the leg of our saildrive, causing worrisome vibrations. To clear this
weedy mess, we had to pull in our polled-out headsail, head up into the wind to
slow down the boat, reset the hydrogenerator, and then sail backwards to clear
the saildrive.
The night was dark; no moon to sail by and clouds
obscuring the stars. Twenty knot gusty winds and criss-crossing swells bumped
and bashed us around making helming tricky and giving the on-watch crew a
strenuous workout. In a flash-back we were again on ARC Day Two, was this
Groundhog Day? Not quite, with the warm moist tradewinds now pushing us along,
we were all in shorts and T-shirts, not the full foulies we began the voyage
in.
Daybreak and winds and seas have eased a bit. Overnight
squalls have dispersed and once more we are riding along on the crest of a wave,
surfing in the sunshine to 9 or 10 knots. The bothersome bully-boy waves have
now been tamed; we ride them like a surf-dude now. Tashy is once again the
mistress of these unruly boys.
Stowaway Bird?
We think we may have a stowaway aboard Tashy. In certain
sea states, we get a distinctive hooting sound from the steering column. Whilst
some folks might dismiss this as a quirk of the engineering, we prefer to think
that there is an owl on board; a stowaway, a sort of AWOL Wol. Time will tell
who is correct.
This is the crew of Taistealai – Chris, Helen, Will, Jem
(and the penguin) signing off for another day at 17 10N 46 22W with 860nm (one
and a half fastnets) to run to Saint
Lucia.