Return Crew Day 5 – 12 February 2020
By Cam
Wow, just like that we are 5 days into our trip and are rapidly approaching one week. We’ve been hoping the wind would change direction in the past 24 hours. Due to the confused sea state and the changing wind direction the swell is huge with winds up to 40 knots! We have some good news though; it seems at exactly 18:35 the wind direction will change. This will enable us to head more south – this is all according to the weather charts!
We had a wonderful dinner last night, this being some lovely vegetable stew/ soup. We used potatoes, carrots and onions with some lovely beef stock! It was incredible and we managed to finish the entire pot, considering most of us don’t eat veggies that much. We skipped out on breakfast this morning as the majority of the crew were under the weather somewhat. It has still been raining nonstop and with the swell picking up it causes us to be down below a lot more. We are holding strongly and just had some soup with bread -we even get to pick our flavour. Since last night we have turned the engine on every now and again. This being since last night we were unable to start the engine due to lack of battery power. This is quite worrying as if we end up in the doldrums or a flat sea we won’t be able to start the motor or even worse, not being able to charge the batteries. There is currently not enough sunlight for us to charge the solar panels so therefore have to rely on the power that we get from the engine to supply power to the house batteries.
A nickname has been drafted for our special skipper Rory – The Meerkat. The reason for this name is that every time we are on watch or doing something In the cockpit, suddenly Rory’s head pops out the aft cabin ( the cabin in which Tony and Rory sleep in ) to check that everything is OK, which we are very grateful for as Rory is clearly the most experienced among us and is managing the boat and crew really well. At the moment everything on board is sopping wet though and needs a drying out! We ourselves are also in great need of a good scrub Including our bunks that constantly feel damp. We are hoping that the weather takes a change to heart so that we can both swim and do some washing. Interesting enough last night Francois saw a large wooden crate floating just above the surface with the edge being just visible – scary stuff although apparently yachts like ours tend to just deflect off such things in the water if they do manage to strike them. We also got to see bio luminescence as the boat glided through the water and our wake left some cool pretty lights.
Some of the crew have taken to sleeping in the middle of the saloon on occasions where everyone walks and passes by rather that bounce around in the forepeak which makes a lot of sense. Our guest tonight on ‘Who Came on Board’ is our one and only NSRI lifesaver Ollie! He is currently being home-schooled at the age of 18 and stays in Darling. He loves to motorcross but is also a very competent horse rider – I guess the former transport has better brakes than the latter! He volunteers at the NSRI station 34 and is a qualified lifeguard and level 3 medic. Ollie is currently looking for new adventures, which led us the one question “Why did you come on board?”: “ I came on board in order to discover what it would be like on a boat in the middle of the ocean and to experience something not many get to experience in 3 lifetimes!” Ollie is a hard worker and is always ready to help get any job done! Like the rest of us he is also looking forward to a good swim in the nice warm water.
We have travelled 71 nautical miles today Total of: 563 nm Chow!