Last night was another fairly miserable night. I spent my 2000-2200 watch desperately keeping the boat on course to avoid the rocks. The wind speed had increased to 20 knots, and I was getting hit with quite a bit of spray as I was adjusting lines on deck. I was looking forward to ending my watch so I could dry off a little. Imagine my chagrin when I finished my watch and went to my bunk, only to find one of my pillows soaked and my sheets damp.
The leak which I had experienced on the Tenerife leg was back. Luckily, the wet pillow was one I was using to pad my lee cloth with, so it didn’t matter so much that it was wet. I shoved the pillows over, straightened out the sheets, and pole-vaulted into the bunk. It didn’t feel too bad, then after a few minutes a wave hit the port side and I felt a single drip on my leg. A few minutes later, another drip. I draped a t-shirt over my leg to dampen the effect of the Chinese water torture, which helped… until I felt a drip on my torso. Now this was starting to piss me off.
I struggled with different combinations of the t-shirt and the sheets (with the tropical heat I couldn’t keep myself covered with the sheets), when finally I heard Eric and David in the cockpit, and Eric uttered those golden words, “We need to tack”. When I at last heard the order “Ready about… Hard to lee!!” I knew my troubles would be over. On the other tack, I did not have the waves hitting my side of the boat, and the drips stopped. Also I was in a better sleeping position, being nestled in a valley rather than teetering on a mountaintop. I got to sleep for a while, then again heard the orders “Ready about… Hard to lee!!”. I was crushed.
I had enjoyed my new position for only an hour before reverting back to hell. This next time wasn’t so bad, as the leaks magically had stopped, and I soon had to get up for my watch. When I got up, I found that the wind had shifted temporarily, causing the tack, but when they realized the new course was taking us to the rocks, they tacked back. Also, one of Victor’s steering lines had broken, and rather than try to fix it in the dark with 20-25 knot winds, Eric decided to let George steer. This requires a certain amount of vigilance on the part of the person on watch. George can only steer on a compass course, not relative to the wind direction, so when sailing close-hauled I need to watch to make sure George does not bring the boat into irons. I spent the entire watch cowered in the cockpit to avoid spray, watching the wind direction, ready to tweak George at any instant. The wind speed was staying around 20 knots, and we had full main with triple reefed jib, and we were heeling dramatically.
We officially crossed the equator at 1204 today, crossing at longitude 30 degrees 15’W. We celebrated by having a drink of Porto Branco (Portuguese white port) in the cockpit. Tomorrow we will have an official ceremony where Father Neptune will appear and pronounce David and I as sons of Neptune. I will be a pollywog no more.
Today Eric started baking bread again, as we have run out of store-bought bread for the first time since the Azores. This is something I have been looking forward to, though I am sure Eric hasn’t been looking forward to it. The winds are now moderating, and I am not fighting the boat as much, thus my state of mind is much improved over yesterday. At these difficult times I always ask myself if I have the constitution to continue on this voyage. I just have to keep reminding myself that all these conditions are temporary (did I say that already?), and milder times are around the corner (maybe not the next corner, but around some corner).
After I wrote the above paragraph, I took an afternoon nap, and when I awoke, the wind was less than 10 knots and we are barely moving. Now I am wishing to have the wind back. We are never satisfied.
Our Visitor
Yesterday evening, we had a visitation from a Brown Booby. This is a brown bird with gray markings underneath its wings and body, and a gray, human looking face with big round, black eyes. It came swooping around the area of the boat, hovering close above the water and occasionally diving in, causing a flush of flying fish to rise out of the water. It flew up right next to the sail, acting like it wanted to land on the rigging or the masthead, but the boat’s motion was too furious for a landing to be possible. Finally, he decided to make an attempt at the radar antenna, and after a few aborted landings, made his perch there. He sat on the antenna for at least an hour, resting and preening himself, and allowing us to get a few pictures. The bird book associated the brown booby with the Paulo and Pedro rocks, and we were close to the rocks at that time. Other than this bird, the flying fish, and frequent sightings of little black birds with white spots on their backs (I believe those are Wilson’s Storm Petrels), we have seen no other life in the equatorial region.
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