With a beautiful full moon hanging in the night sky, Elaine and Justine spent the first few minutes of their watch sitting in the cockpit watching it, before settling in to their respective duties.
Fortunately there weren’t any squalls showing on the radar initially, but some popped up at 12NM away during the last hour of their watch and dissipated, but not before Elaine had furled the headsail with help from Justine.
Shortly thereafter, their watch ended and it was the boys turn. They weren’t so lucky, though. With two reefs in each sail, they spent the entire three hours dodging squalls, leaving the remnants of one for the girls to deal with. Fortunately that dissipated fairly quickly, allowing us to unfurl the headsail again.
The remainder of their watch was rather peaceful with a beautiful full moon setting in the west and the sun rising in the east to seal their early morning watch.
By then Roy had surfaced and it was time for breakfast, However, nights of interrupted sleep had caught up with Paul. After Justine woke him he simply turned over and went back to sleep, having to be woken a second time to come on watch with Roy so that the girls could retire for the morning. Justine chose her usual spot in the cockpit, while Elaine headed to bed.
During the morning watch Roy and Paul each enjoyed a shower; not their first on passage to be clear, but, given that Roy had run the generator earlier and with both engines running for a short period of time to increase our SOG (Speed Over Ground) in order to allow S/Y Anila to pass astern of us, although they were the giveway vessel, they had inched closer during the morning and they were flying a parasailor; not an easy sail to manoeuvre. Their Captain and Roy also enjoyed a chat on the VHF radio, as they too, like S/Y Newbee, hadn’t seen another yacht in days.
When Elaine surfaced around noon, everyone had had lunch, so she hopped into the shower too, taking advantage of the hot water supply so that Roy and Paul could go off watch. Justine was saving her shower for later, since she still wanted to enjoy the rays.
The girls had a number of afternoon squalls to contend with, but most kept their distance and dissipated, thankfully.
By 1700, the Captain’s music hour was in full swing, which, on this occasion, involved a lot of air guitars or indeed the mop aptly serving the purpose and lip syncing, with a wooden spoon serving as the mic and not a stitch of alcohol involved. Frightening!
Dinner, a tuna bake, was complements of Justine, which she managed in between her performances.
Before we knew it, the sun was setting, the girls had headed to bed and another night of watches was upon us, but not before “sweetiegate” ensued aka serious negotiations in swapping contents of our goodie bags or indeed, trying to swap yacht chores and watch duties in exchange for a favourite chocolate. Needless to say, there were plenty of “no way in hell”, “are you crazy”, and a few other expletives that can’t be put in writing. It’s going to get ugly as week three rolls around.
Unfortunately, though, we’d lost the wind, making for a very slow crawl. These light conditions were forecast for the next few days. It’ll be Christmas before we reach St Lucia at this rate; our SOG (Speed Over Ground) was barely 4.5 Kts in 7-8 Kts of wind!
