When she woke at 0600, an hour after the start of her next watch, she found Paul on watch, replacing Justine, while Roy was at the helmstation letting out more of the headsail before he toddled off to bed; he’d given Elaine an extra hour to sleep for which she was very grateful.
It wasn’t long into her watch, though, when more squalls raised their ugly head, forcing her to put two reefs in the headsail, slowing us down and letting the squall line pass across the front of us. It wasn’t long after that, that Justine appeared for her next watch and Elaine could unfurl the headsail again after the squalls had dissipated.
We all truly were ships in the night on this new watch schedule and it clearly wasn’t working. The idea had been for Justine and Paul to each do a watch on their own and simulate waking Elaine and Roy respectively, when certain situations arose. Well, the reality was that all night those situations arose, requiring either Elaine or Roy’s involvement and it wasn’t going to get any better looking at the forecast. Over breakfast we all agreed that the schedule was actually pointless, especially given the conditions we were sailing in and was subsequently scrapped, returning everyone to the three on, three off watch schedule, with Justine and Paul in attendance to assist Elaine and Roy on their respective watches.
With all the commotion onboard, though, Elaine thought she’d missed the moon setting behind the clouds, but then it popped out again one last time. Fortunately she’d also had the time to admire it while it still hung in the night sky, as did everyone else.
By 0730, daybreak could be seen on the eastern horizon giving way to another beautiful sunrise. Soon thereafter Roy appeared again having managed 40-winks, breakfast was made and off Elaine and Justine trundled to bed, although Justine chose the cockpit to enjoy her morning nap.
Elaine didn’t resurface again until after 1300; she had been exhausted, but felt human again, thankfully. It was poor Roy who was incredibly sleep deprived by this stage, so off he trundled, even skipping lunch in lieu of sleep. He had, however, determined that the first reef line had, in fact, chafed through and this on a brand new line. The next issue, however, was getting a new reefing line in position, a problem that is being left until we have calmer conditions.
After everyone else onboard had made themselves lunch, it was time to start preparing the celebratory dinner, complements of Paul; we had reached the 1000NM milestone at about 0810 this morning and Paul was making potato leek soup to mark the occasion. Elaine’s contributions to the dinner was a freshly baked carrot cake for dessert. Not wanting to be clanging around in the galley while Roy was catching up on sleep, though, she left the baking until nearly 1600 when Roy surfaced, but, fortunately, it was still ready in time for dinner.
While the loaf was in the oven, though, Justine stayed on “stove” watch, while the rest of us jibed Paw Paw for the night and to set her on a better angle to the swell, the latter something that has plagued us for days now and caused great discomfort.
Then, while Paul put the finishing touches to dinner, we enjoyed our first music hour on Paw Paw, complements of Captain Roy.
Dinner was delicious, but before we knew it, it was time for the nightly ritual of watches again and, with that, Elaine and Justine headed off to bed.
On the sailing front, the boys had a quiet watch as did Elaine and Justine, something we were all grateful for after last night’s fiasco, bringing another day of sailing to a close.
