White Satin - Surfing to St Lucia

Less than 1000 miles to go now, and we are still hurtling along as fast as the boat can go. Such a contrast from last week. At that stage we were well aware that the overall distance we need to travel is roughly equivalent to coast to coast of the USA, and we were moving at the pace of a very slow walk. Thinking of it like that you don't really need to do any maths to see that is going to take a very long time !

However the benefit of slow sailing is that it is very comfortable, so apart from the frustration and wondering which crew member we would have to eat first, it made for enjoyable sunny days. Now it is much more exciting, and though it is great to be sure that we will arrive at a reasonable time, comfortable is not the word any more. I will attempt to describe it.

Firstly the noise - as the boat is now going as fast as physics allows the hull to go through the water (about 7.5 knots) it is under quite a lot of stress, so there are creaks and groans and other strange noises coming from all over the place. There is also a constant loud sound of the water whooshing past the hull. Then of course the snoring of tired crew (no names to be mentioned), and occasional dubious noises from the heads (again, no names !)

Then there is the movement. Now we have been in settled strong winds for a few days, the sea has now developed a consistent swell about 8 feet high, this is moving faster than us and coming from behind the right side of the boat. As each wave hits us the rear right hand corner of the boat lifts up, the boat then rolls sharply sideways, then tips forward and lurches round to the left and surfs down the wave, once the wave has passed us the boat levels off and lurches back to the right and all is steady for a few seconds, then the sequence repeats. Depending on the size of the wave and exactly how it hits us the surfing can be quite dramatic, the boat briefly speeds up to beyond its normal speed (we have seen up to 11.5 knots), and the surf produces a loud roaring sound - like a stormy day at the beach. When on watch in the middle of the night and you can't really see what is happening this can be rather unnerving. The lurches are sometime accompanied by a loud yell from any crew member who wasn't holding on properly when moving about the boat when it lurches. As you can imagine all day to day chores are made tricky in these conditions.

I suspect if the government kept prisoners in a cell the size of the boat and added loudspeakers producing continuous noises like we are hearing and somehow added a motion generator to shake the unfortunate prisoners around incessantly they would be taken to the the court of human rights !