Well, we’ve certainly transitioned from hostile waters to hostile weather; gale force winds in fact and certainly not what we wanted 200NM short of such a long passage. As a result, we did not have the most pleasant of nights, with sustained winds of 35 - 40 Kts, gusting 40 - 44 Kts, which continued this morning and had us both up for a second consecutive night, although this time we were up together and had Roy dressed in his foul weather gear, only the second time he’s worn them during our circumnavigation, to sit at the helmstation and use the engines to ease the strain on the ground tackle.
Thankfully, by this afternoon, the winds had moderated somewhat to 25 - 30 Kts; who would have thought we’d be happy with 25 Kts of wind! We were, however, astonished to realise the winds had been so strong that the covers on our bridle had been completely ripped off, although they were fixed in place with Velcro and cable tied for extra protection.
Needless to say, we then spent most of the day catching up on lost sleep. While Elaine snoozed a little longer than Roy, he checked the weather forecasts again, started the watermaker, brought the “emergency” anchor back to the cockpit and washed the saloon windows, so we could see out of them again. The amount of dust that has settled on Paw Paw is horrendous and going to require a major cleanup!
It truly has been the craziest weather, the likes of which we have never experienced before, particularly since it has been relentless for six days and has created waves across the bay reaching one to one and a half metres; this in a so called protected anchorage! Our extra crew members, our Anchor Plus application, installed on two separate devices to help with the GPS accuracy, though, certainly helped relief much of the stress in constantly monitoring the status of the anchor.
However, while we sit and complain about weather, we need to keep matters in perspective, given that during our ordeal we have friends in different parts of the world the world currently dealing with the loss of a sibling, recovery from major surgery after a potentially life threatening diagnosis and the loss of a parent. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them.
