By the time Elaine and Justine went off watch, though, the night skies had started to lighten as the moon rose behind the clouds. In the distance, to the southeast of us, we could also see flashes of sheet lightening, which continued through Roy and Paul’s watch and was still occurring when the girls came back on watch for their early morning shift, except it had moved almost due south of us. This was an indication that the tropical wave was continuing to move westward as forecast. We were relieved, though, that this weather had stayed south of us and remained grateful for the continuation of the stronger winds that had filled in yesterday morning.
At the end of her watch, Elaine made Roy boiled eggs and toast for breakfast before she scooted off to bed, having struggled through her watch with Justine. It hadn’t helped matters that she kept having to reef the headsail as the wind continued to strengthen. Instead of heading to bed, Justine had decided to skip an early morning breakfast and wait until Paul surfaced to make them omelettes, given that we still had an inordinate number of eggs for this stage of the passage.
Elaine only surfaced after 1300 to find Roy on watch, Paul sleeping and Justine enjoying the cool breeze in the cockpit; it was certainly getting hotter and more humid as we continued west.
During Roy’s morning watch he let out the reef Elaine had added, but added it back in soon thereafter as the wind strengthened yet again, so onwards we went on a double-reefed headsail alone. Of course, it definitely didn’t help matters that our anemometer had decided to then go on the brink, leaving us without wind speed, although we still had wind direction; not ideal, but better than nothing.
The swell had also remained at around 3 metres as forecast, but was expected to start easing sometime tomorrow. More importantly, though, it was expected to change direction to coincide with the wind direction as apposed to the current situation of remaining on our starboard quarter, coupled with a separate northerly swell which continued to have us rockin’ and rollin’ as each wave hit Paw Paw on the beam.
When Elaine was back on watch after Roy had headed to bed, she did her usual cleaning of the galley and saloon, breaking a glass in the process with all the wobbling around we were doing in the unrelenting side swell.
On the upside our DMG (Distance Made Good) was sitting at 2020NM by the time the 1500 deck log readings rolled around, the storms appeared to be staying south of us, the sun was trying to break through the overcast skies and we were continuing west with S/Y Wilma for company.
Additionally, our orchid plant, Daphne, had definitely moved to the maternity ward as one of her buds had started to open and it was looking likely that two more would follow suit in quick succession.
Dinner was a humble affair as we worked our way through the last of the fresh produce onboard; besides oranges, we still had potatoes, onions, garlic and the last packet of chopped carrots and string beans. All things considered, we’d done well to still have fresh anything at this stage of the passage.
Since it was Elaine’s turn to cook, she decided that some potatoes needed to be consumed before they went off, so dinner was tuna fishcakes and chips, accompanied by a tartar sauce; a nice garden salad would have gone down like a treat, but the meal was tasty enough.
Before long it was time for the girls to head to bed. The boys, however, had plenty to deal with on their watch due to the squalls that popped up to our stern then passed overhead, bringing with them rain and stronger winds, including a wind shift.
Once the girls came on watch and following the handover briefing, we decided that sitting at the helmstation was probably a good idea and a better place to be to manage any squalls, if need be. Elaine also decided to add the third reef to the headsail; it was staggering that we were still flying along at 6.5-7.5 Kts on a handkerchief of sail. Elaine and Justine then spent the next three hours managing squalls that, fortunately, passed to the south of us, and had a good chinwag, given that we didn’t have to whisper; no one could hear our voices over the noise of the ocean as Paw Paw glided over the waves.
At the stroke of midnight, with an hour left of our watch, we had a smidgen of over 750 NM to go. Slowly, but surely we were getting there!
