Conditions throughout the night were more moderate than we expected and
the wind angle has been good so we've continued to make fast progress
towards our destination. Not much has changed on the boat. Our gear is
stowed and the crew is well rested in anticipation of the upcoming
weather. The forecasts we've been getting have been hit and miss, so who
knows what we'll actually get.
So much has happened on the boat t hat we haven't had time to share. We
keep meaning to go back and write some things down... if only to help
ourselves remember the sequence of events...
Our first day on the water was certainly memorable. "Baptism by Fire" is
probably the best way to describe it.The seas were very confused as we
turned the corner around St. Thomas and headed out into the Atlantic.
While still in site of Savana, the island on the West end of St. Thomas,
the Vang line broke. Scott went on the fore deck to fix the problem by
tying the broken ends together with a couple of bowlines. Maybe about 15
minutes after that, we noticed there was a problem with the Battens in our
main sail. They were coming out of the batten cars on the leading edge of
the sail. We lowered the main and a few of us went up on the fore deck to
begin working on the problem. Our problems soon escalated as one of the
control lines for the lazy jack system came loose and went up the mast.
With the end of the line we needed halfway up the mast, the entire stack
pack/lazy jack system soon became hopelessly tangled... we hadn't even
started to address the problem with the battens. With the four guys
teathered to the boat and Lora at the helm, we eventually got things
straightened out on deck, but not before Steve, Scott and Pete got seasick
and threw up over the side. Rusty got pretty queezy, but managed avoid
getting sick. The incident ended safely.
So much excitement, so early in the trip... still in sight of land and
Mindy and Tris were still at the airport awaiting their flight home... a
few of us started to wonder just what we had signed up for.
Later that night the seas were still very confused as we sailed out into
the North Atlantic. The first round of night watches was a real learning
experience for those of us who aren't used to this kind of stuff. It was
so dark we couldn't see the water beyond the front of the boat so we had
to quickly learn to steer the boat by feel. It took a lot of concentration
and a little getting used to. We had to make course corrections on every
wave using only the movement of the boat beneath you as input. In the
confused seas, the amount and direction of the course corrections were
determined by the direction and speed with which your body was being
thrown or the boat was falling away beneath you. We were really flying
along at 8+ knots with a 22 – 26 knots of breeze coming from 120 degrees
off our starboard quarter. (The fun meter hit 9.5 knots at least once as
we were surfing down the waves.) Keeping the boat on course took total
concentration and didn't help with our queasiness. Steve and Rusty found
that they could each drive for about 15 minutes before the queasiness set
in and they could recover in about 5 minutes when they could kick back and
stare at the horizon. Similarly, our other two man watches traded off the
helm every 15 minutes or so throughout the night. There was one
exception, however, as Lora kept grinning and said, "This is great, this
is so much fun" and did not get sea sick at all! (never say never, but
after 1,000 miles, she's still going strong!) The queasiness eventually
passed as the crew got it's sea legs and the sea conditions became more
regular as we got further into the Atlantic.
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