Saturday 2nd June

At Sea

5 58.960 N
80 14.976 W (at Midnight)

Our Love and congratulations to Lucy and Steve on their wedding day, we wish you a lifetime of happiness together.

I was on watch at 03.00hrs when I began to get a horrid feeling about a cloud that had gathered behind us and seemed to be bearing down on us rather rapidly. It was thick black and extended out for a very long way either side of us. I closed the Strata glass curtains and all the hatches and then woke Gerry up to reassure me, he got up (well it was past his 3 hours anyway!) and came out on deck. The decision was immediate – we should take down all sails even though the cloud was still 4 miles behind us and closing. Away went both the jib and the main and we continued to motor with the cloud racing to catch us, which it did by 04.00hrs. It surrounded us turning the moon lit night into pitch black – good job we had all our lights on! To our surprise it didn’t drop a single splatter of water, just surrounded us and then continued to move away, we felt like we had dodged a bullet! I went for my sleep and by the time I came out on deck again Gerry had the sails back up and the motor turned off, the wind had come up and we were roaring along doing up to 7.1 knots, this of course didn’t last too long but we were still sailing! Gerry checked in at 07.00hrs with the radio schedule but found it difficult to hear the others today probably because the day had became overcast and there were squalls all around us. Our next little "happening" was mid morning when the main sail began to flap loudly – the reefing line had broken! Gerry went below and found one of the spare lines we have on board, leaving a wake of "stuff" behind him as the line was in one of the hardest to get at lockers – under the V Berth. With line in hand we replaced the old line which luckily for us hadn’t pulled through the track so we were able to attach the new line to the old and pull it through the track. I put the fishing line in the water figuring that we might get lucky at some stage, and it gave me something to do. We took turns to get ready for Lucy and Steve’s wedding, we might not physically be there but we could enjoy the day in spirit. Rose and Mark, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that we both took showers, washed our hair, scrubbed our teeth, used deodorant and spritzed ourselves with some nice smelling perfume especially for the event. I donned a lime green 2 piece ensemble with a black over top which has silk embellishment over the left breast, I topped off the outfit with a cream hat lined in green. Gerry wore sky blue shorts with black and white detailing and a yellow lined, navy blue jacket, completing his outfit with a hat similar to mine. I hope that you appreciate the effort we went to – at least we wore clothing even if it was just swimmers, tee shirts, life jackets and sun hats! We had a special lunch of fresh salad and a crunchie bar (the best I could do for wedding cake at the time) we toasted the bride and groom in soda water as we don’t drink any alcohol when we are under way – but I promise you we will make up for that as soon as we hit land! We hope that you all enjoyed the day, and we look forward to seeing the photos. We had pretty decent weather for most of the day but it began to rain late in the afternoon and whilst we remained fairly dry we have a pesky leak where our canvas joins to the hard top at the back end and had to remove the cushions from that area or they would have been soaked. As soon as the rain stopped we opened the boat back up and continued to sail as often as possible but turned the motor on to keep us on course when sailing became impossible. Both of needed an afternoon nap – well the wedding preparation knocked the stuffing out of us! Just prior to dinner we were looking out at the continuous landscape – sea, sky, more sea and ever more sky when we both saw something leap out of the water a distance away from us. Neither of us was sure what it was until a second later when a pair of dolphins leapt one after the other, skywards and the first one belly flopped into the water whilst the second one did a perfect backwards somersault into the water, it was quite spectacular and we waited for a repeat performance which of course didn’t happen. We wondered if they had been captive dolphins at some stage and had been taught to perform as that was how it looked from where we were. The excitement and entertainment over, we had another "instant dinner" from the pre cooked range we vacuum bagged just before leaving and then it was time to begin the overnight watches again. We managed to sail continuously until midnight making fairly good headway.