
May 22 - Steve's blog Number 11.
Days of contrast.
Well, what a difference a day makes as they say. Yesterday was simply
glorious, bright sunshine and light winds - downwind for most of the day,
and this morning here we are pounding upwind at around 9 knots into the Gulf
Stream, which reduces our speed over the ground by nearly a knot and makes
for a short sea like you get in the English Channel.
Yesterday evening I got prepared for a slog upwind, and made sure we had
plenty of diesel in the little tank that the engine draws from an a daily
basis and topped up the water in the jerry can at the sink that the tap
pumps from, as carrying 25 litre jerry cans full of water on deck is a bit
dodgy, and you do tend to pour more over the inside of the boat than you get
in the can when the boat is bouncing around! A chap who owns a well known
yard in France that a lot of these boats got to be worked on came down to
this boat when I had jut bought it. He came on board, scrubbed his feet on
the deck and announced very theatrically "This deck will kill you!" What he
really meant was a lot of the non slip has worn away and it can be pretty
treacherous up there, particularly if you are lugging jerry cans and sails
around at large angles of heel! I have not repainted it because if you don't
do a really good job you finish up with something that looks like woodchip
wallpaper in some places and smooth in others which would look appalling on
such a large flat area! I am just careful and so far it hasn't tried to kill
me!
In the light winds of yesterday I went to the low side of the boat at the
bow, where here are no ripples on the water because of the windshadow of the
hull, and you could see that the sea was just like soup - millions of
shrimpy things of varying sizes, krill I suppose, and small jellyfish, jut
small forms of life as far as you could see in the clear deep blue water. At
night when they get washed on deck these things flash a luminescent green
colour as they lie in the nooks and crannies and in the ropes before the
next wave washes them back into the sea.
I did manage to catch the sun too across my back. It is OK, but I do know
it's there this morning! I felt I'd had enough sun at a point yesterday
afternoon, but then left my shirt off whilst I had a shave which was a
mammoth undertaking that I tackled, you've guessed it, in the cockpit with
my back to the sun and my shirt still off! I only have myself to blame!
Not much chance of sunburn today, you need oilskins to be on deck. I am
hoping that we can just nip inside the Western end of the ice gate, we are
just and just making it on this tack with nothing to spare. It would be the
final twist of the knife to have to tack again to get round it. Cross your
finger, and if anyone you know has a direct line to Percy the Wind God as
David Beckett calls him, perhaps you'd give him a nudge and ask him to do us
a favour for once!