An obscured waning gibbous appeared behind clouds on the horizon just after midnight, putting Justine in a panic when she noticed a light to our stern and wondered how on earth that vessel had appeared out of nowhere after she’d just check the chartplotter and radar. Needless to say, she was very relieved when Elaine informed her that it was, in fact, the moon rising.
By the time Elaine and Justine came back on their early morning watch, not much had changed from their midnight watch, so onwards we trundled.
There was, however, one small problem; the Iridium-Go had frozen for some weird and wonderful reason and wouldn’t reset when Elaine switched off the circuit breaker to it. It was a problem that had to wait until Captain Roy resurfaced. In the interim Elaine would have to wait to transmit her email to loved ones giving them an update on the status aboard Paw Paw.
She fortunately didn’t have to wait too long after Roy and Paul surfaced. Thankfully, after a hard reset, the Iridium-Go worked again. By then too the trade winds had picked up again for the day, this time out of the east; the wind direction we’d been waiting on, giving us a SOG of anything up to 8.5 Kts in 15-20 Kts of wind, under sunny blue skies and scattered puffy white clouds. The rather large following sea certainly helped to contribute to our speed. All this meant we didn’t have to do anything with the sail plan either, other than for Roy to do his morning circuit of Paw Paw to check the rigging before Elaine headed to bed. Justine had retired about an hour earlier having sat on duty at the navigation station for both our watches during the night.
What surprised us all, however, was Roy spotting a yacht to our starboard side at daybreak, less than half a nautical mile from us, without any navigation lights switched on, no AIS (Automatic Identification System) and no radar reflector, as Elaine and Justine hadn’t picked it up on the radar a few minutes earlier. Scary stuff indeed!
After her morning nap, Elaine surfaced at around 1230 to find Paul sleeping, Justine staring out into the big blue yonder and Roy baking bread. With instructions on when to put the bread in the oven and when to turn it, Roy headed to bed, leaving Elaine on watch for the afternoon.
By 1500, Paul had surfaced and had found his spot in the cockpit to stare out into the big blue yonder, the bread was out of the oven and slices had been devoured, before Justine and Roy headed to their respective cabins for some “me time”.
Dinner was complements of Roy and the meal plans had gone out the window. It was now a case of :”how many different ways can one cook chopped peppers, mushrooms and baby marrows?” Roy settled for a sweet and sour stir-fry tonight, which was delicious.
By then it was time for the girls to head to bed, but one hour into the boys’ watch an engine had to be put on, given the counter current we had and the lighter winds, making for a less peaceful night of motor-sailing.
When Elaine and Justine came on watch, their first duty of the night was to stargaze and enjoy the stunning starry night sky before the waning gibbous appeared on the horizon later.
With just 1120 NM to go, our second week at sea came to a close.
