Elaine and Justine’s early morning watch started the same as every other one they’ve done together on this passage; after the watch handover briefing, Justine made herself comfortable at the navigation station to keep a vigilant eye on the instruments, including the radar, for any signs of a change in the weather or traffic to bring to Elaine’s attention, in the event the change warranted the headsail having to be reefed or jibed or indeed prompted an alteration required to our course, etc. Elaine, on the other hand, made herself a cup of tea and some toast; something Justine declines more often than not.
Afterwards, Elaine sat at the helmstation to listen and to feel how Paw Paw was moving, as well as to get a better feel of our surroundings in terms of cloud cover, direction of the waves and swell, she examined the sail to make sure everything was in order there and spent some time monitoring the instruments to ensure there was a consistent pattern in the numbers.
Once satisfied that nothing needed to be tuned or tweaked, she returned to the saloon to start the daily blog, send the status email to loved ones, download the weather provided by ARC 2023 and peruse the latter. At one point, though, she did have to put a couple of turns in the headsail as the wind strengthened.
In between the set timeframes for checking the radar and instruments, which varies depending on the conditions, as well as updating the deck log every hour, Justine entertained herself in her usual way; playing solitaire on her phone.
Before we knew it, daylight was breaking in the east and the boys had surfaced; it was time for breakfast, something Justine skipped this morning, although Paul enjoyed his morning coffee.
With that, the girls were off watch and Elaine headed to bed, only to be woken by her stomach revolting against the constant roll; inevitable, given the contrasting directions of the wind, waves and swell that have continue to plague us throughout this passage.
Fortunately she managed to get back to sleep after her incident, surfacing around 1100, which was, in fact, 1200, given that the ship’s clock was turned back by another hour. Finding Roy at the navigation station navigating squalls and Justine and Paul in the cockpit, she made lunch so that Roy could get some sleep.
Back on watch and getting her cleaning activities completed too, she, however, could have done without more squalls to deal with. Quite frankly we were over this unsettled weather that’s been with us for most of this past week. Coupled with the persistent horrible sea state, we definitely weren’t having a comfortable passage. Feast or famine it seems!
By the time dinnertime rolled around, no one felt like a cooked meal, so we settled for tuna wraps, complements of Justine, following which Elaine took advantage of having an extra hour’s sleep.
However, before she could settle, with the weather continuing to deteriorate, she made sure Roy was clipped on and assisted him in reefing the headsail, given the enormous squalls that had developed either side of us. With an engine running to maintain our speed and everything under control, she could rest easy then.
Once Paul joined Roy on watch, they continued to face squalls, but, thankfully, by the time Elaine and Justine came on watch, the weather had settled. Keeping the one engine switched on, though, we continued to motor-sail, given that the flaky winds were back and, by this stage of this long, drawn out passage, we were definitely not in the mood for faffing around; keeping the engine on helped keep up our speed to ensure a Sunday arrival. Burning some diesel was the perfect solution! We clearly had “get-there-itis” now with just 380NM to go!
On other news, Daphne, our orchid plant, has bloomed and presented us with a deep claret flower, christened Dahlia by Aunty Justine. Having nurtured her since leaving Turkey in April, she continues to brighten our day.
