Hooray!! We have the trade winds. We picked the wind up yesterday morning - 10 to 12 knots of consistent breeze. Thank the lord for that … we have been sailing on a beam reach ever since. Mistral is gliding through the water and the rock and roll is significantly reduced. We are on course for the Marquesas Islands and all feeling much happier with life. We had a second hairy night before we picked the wind up - massive thunderstorms, fork lightening, heavy rain and no light with black swirling cloud everywhere. Chris and I were up and down into the cockpit every hour or so - sails in and out, course corrections to try and avoid the worst of the weather. The radar was lighting up in orange and red everywhere - very unusual and somewhat scary. My watch from 4am to 7pm was positively miserable - cold, soaking wet and no visibility apart from lightening 5 miles away. Hugely relieved to see the sunrise and a couple of hours later, the breeze started to blow. We’ve had heavy cloud cover for quite sometime but pleased to report, the sky is finally starting to lighten and we’ve seen some blue with the sun working hard to poke through.
With very little sleep and the lurgy, Chris and I felt under the weather most of yesterday but a better night followed by scrambled eggs on toast has seen us both in better spirits. So today, after boat chores (changing water filters, deck checks, washing, cleaning etc), the cribbage challenge continued (Patrick and me), celestial navigation activity began again (Patrick and Chris) along with some music and reading. Happy days!
PS I forgot to mention we spotted a short finned pilot whale the other day - looks a bit like a dolphin but much longer (twice as long) and with 2 fins. Janie is definitely the David Attenborough of our boat!