Tuesday 24th July

At Sea

14 02.799 S
145 42.939 W (at Midnight)

This had to be the most tedious day of this part of the trip, during the early hours of the morning there began to be small storm cells coming over us. As the rain hit us the wind died away to almost nothing and at one point our speed dropped to .8 knots – I know I could have swum faster than that! The good news was that I was feeling much better today – that was the only good news for the day! At dawn we faced the possibility that it was going to be another day of the boom banging and the sails flapping aimlessly, back winding each other. We took the drastic measure of furling away the jib and just running with the main to see if we could keep it full – huh, not a chance, so we put up with the clattering and banging for most of the day. Gerry did the radio schedule and let the others know that the weather was extremely unpredictable for this leg and that we were experiencing the worst weather since we left Panama. The entire day was another of those “nothing” days. We saw no ships, no whales, no dolphins (not that we’ve seen any this leg so far!), No turtles, no flying fish – that’s pretty unusual and definitely no wind to speak of. We contemplated if there is such a game as ‘I don’t spy” – we would be on a winner with that one today! So what did we do all day? Read in the cockpit, catch up with sleep and stare endlessly at the blue water and paler blue sky. By the time it came to sun set we were ready for one decent thing to happen and we thought that tonight might be the green flash night as there wasn’t any cloud in the sky around the setting sun. Did it flash? Not a chance! But it was a pretty orange ball vanishing into the sea. The night watches began with us wishing for wind and you know what they say about being careful what you wish for! It wasn’t too long before the clouds gathered in the sky in horrid looking black patches, the wind began to creep up and it wasn’t too long before we had 15 knots of wind on the beam – beauty! We roared along and began to take our sleep when we could get it.