After the lovely flat calm seas of the first few days we are now in the big
Atlantic Rollers with about 3m of swell making the boat move up and down, side
to side. Everyone has been a little bit queasy with a run on the sea sickness
pills.
Everything on the boat moves around and although we have anti-slip mats
last night we had a chicken disaster when the boat made a particularly violent
screwing motion. A pan with fried chicken leapt off the counter top on to the
galley floor including the door and floor of the cabin immediately behind. This
is Hugo’s cabin our youngest crew member who has just graduated and is
vegetarian. He still thinks the easiest way to find things is to leave them on
the floor so everything was covered with bits of chicken. Managed to retrieve
most of the food for the meat eaters and another quick flash fry it was all good
to eat. I think all of Hugo’s kit was sorted and we continue on our way.
It is going to be a very dark passage: the moon, which is now quite small,
rose at 3.30 and soon we will have no moon. There was almost full cloud cover so
no stars and difficult to see the horizon. I do not much like sailing with so
little light, hurtling on into the darkness. A small bonus is the fantastic
phosphorescence which is magnified behind us by our Watt and Sea generator.
Our cruising chute came down through the night in the early hours off
Tuesday and we are now sailing with a poled out gib and reefed main making
steady progress in about the right direction. We get excited if we spot another
boats on AIS.
We have not managed to catch any fish, although we have had a couple of
bites but they got away. We are still trying and hopefully soon fresh fish
will be on the menu.
The weather has taken a turn for the worse and we have steady rain needing
full oilskins. All looks a bit too much like home sailing.
I’m surprised to be able to write this as was not even able to read on our
way down to the Canaries but am using hyoscine patches and they seem to work
quite well for me.
Hoping for some sunshine and fish.
Val