Day 12
The beginning of the end
We've all been there, or there or there abouts. An invitation to a Saturday wedding in Cornwall. Do we go M4/ M5 and then work our way across, or M3/ A303 and over? The former is potentially faster, but if there's a jack knifed lorry, then we're stuffed, or if its bank holiday or half term then forget it. So ok M3 / A303 it is then, but no that part around Stonehenge, and then there are those road works... You get the picture.
Then there is the other debate: should we race down early Saturday on the M4 or perhaps we'll make a weekend of it using the M3 and drop into the Nicholsons in Stockbridge, we haven't seen them in years. Yes these are debates we are all familiar with, take it a stage further and take us to Monaco for the week and the Route de Soleil down the middle and then across or through Grenoble on the N Roads.
The analogy with the ARC discussions are remarkably similar. Our M4 faster route is the 'Great Circle' which ploughs through the middle, but involves lumpy seas and nastier weather. The M3 scenic route - go south until the butter melts and then turn right - can be faster at times and potentially more reliable, but... Each alternative has many options of ducking off the main road to find diversions down country lanes, but,and again...So you pays your money and takes your choice.
You opt to race or not,and then the route. We in the end took the M4, but had to get off at Staines and head south for a while as the weather was bad, we have meandered around running parallel, and are now past the road works and the accident and have joined the M5 heading south west at Avonmouth.The road seems clear, no caravans in sight, the wind is correct for us,Next stop St Lucia... We have a full tank of gas and we have sunglasses on.
In fact we've got to that stage on our journey, where, looking back,it's hard to remember what happened when. It was partially for this reason that I stuck my hand up when, before we started, Valerio was looking for a volunteer to do the blog. A diary of events to jog the memory, and a few snippets for others to read should they wish, was basically my proposition. I was anxious to avoid simply cataloguing events, listing them like an almanac. I wanted to able to share what it would really be like on the inside, so to speak. Social history is so much more interesting and illuminating than conventional textbook stuff? So I thought the blog should try to avoid the pursuance of objectivity in favour of a shamelessly subjective perspective. A personal view.It should have a voice. It should provide a little colour to the goings on aboard Milanto on its latest voyage over St Lucia.
To be honest once you've seen the sea, you know what it looks like and I'm talking in broad terms here. Ok it changes by the second, a wave there, a splash here, swell and ripples and so forth, but, well its pretty similar most of the time. But what really makes it, is the colour, and the light.
Artists will tell you that it's the shadows,which makes things come alive. The areas of darkness are what truly colours and shapes a scene, and it's the absence of colour in its truest sense, that makes the night so special at sea, that provides the colour in the abstract. In that period when the sun has gone and the moon has yet to appear, we are left with a feint ambient light, which seems just to be there. The colour is drained away and in essence what we have as our reference are one or two flavours of dark shadows, as the seascape flips into monochrome. When the moon finally comes up, the definition and contrastare turned up and the monochrome comes to life in, not your fifty, butmore like a million shades of grey in the passive cold light. There is something mesmerising about it.
We've tried everything in the sailing cupboard today, the changes predicted are upon us, albethey not quite as laid out. We started the morning with the spinnaker with the wind behind, and as it shifted, as the weather models have said, we have progressed through various combinations and then back to our yeehah position, and sailing like demons.
This afternoon this is made even more dramatic than usual with the addition of lashing horizontal rain coming from the South. Evenmore unusually is it happening with B Watch up top. Gusts approaching 35knots howl through the rigging and we have had to reef the sails to keep the boat under control. But it would be our turn soon.
Sounds are a constant feature of sailing and naturally they are with us here on Milanto too. There is the creak and clank of the mast as it swings this way and that in the swell, accompanied by squeaks, moans of rigging and boom and, now and again, skin jumping pistol cracks as thehull adjusts to the on going movements around us. Then there is the noise of water. Water crashing, water raining, water flashing past thehull as the 18 ton boat powers through the sea. If there is such a thing as the heartbeat of the boat, it is this irregular yet constant noise carried with us with every turn, which might be it.
Its variations tell us instantly what is happening outside, an increase in speed, a change in direction, a roughening of the sea, even a new helmsman.Especially a new helmsman.We got wet. We had to battle through some violent squalls, lightening,rain, people throwing stuff at us from the shadows.
But the morningbroke with blue sky, we're on the road again.
RedSkyAtNight