Shortly after I went to bed last night the wind picked up to a force 8-9 Gale. Since we were hove to the
ship began to seriously roll, like 45 degrees or more. All sorts of things rattled and crashed as well as the
seas pounding against the side of the hull. Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep.
This morning we wore ship to get back underway in a steady force 7 with much larger seas, the captain
says 18-20′. Still rolling, making movement very difficult. Starting to feel a bit queasy after 12 hours of
this, blah.
Moving food around is difficult and doing the dishes an exercise in acrobatics. I found sitting at the stern
to be the best even though the motion is greater simply because I can wedge myself in and not have to
worry about sliding around.
The nice thing is that the sun is shining at least, there are rainbows in the spray when the rollers come
crashing aboard.
Last word goes to the Bosun Kolin who said “This is what you paid for right?”
Right :-)
Thanks for reading
KJ
P.S. When I went on night watch at 4:00 I had first lookout. The seas were too rough to be on the fo’csle
so we had to stand watch on the bridge, which is just in front of the chart house. About a half hour into
my watch a great black bank of cloud blotted out the stars and the wind began to howl. The gusts were
strong enough to knock me off my feet. The mate says they were easily 50 knots in the gust close to Force
10 steady! We hove to again to ride it out then wore round and reset the sails at 8:00am. We are now
sailing South again. Hopefully that is the last we’ll see of that system.
Posted in On Watch | 1 Comment »
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Postscript 2014
Jayne suggested that I should maybe comment on some of these posts from the perspective of nearly 6 years on. I am reluctant to do that on most of them but in this case I think it might be worthwhile.
This is an interesting post which shows how things in our memories don't always match what actually happened. Ever since I returned from this trip, anytime I'm talking about it people always ask if we had bad weather. The incident described in the P.S. above is the one I relate. What is interesting is that we had gales and "interesting" weather for several days beforehand!
Also there seems to be a post missing here, this is the day AFTER our big American Thanksgiving Dinner during which we were hove to so everybody could enjoy it. In my memory it was that same night that the incident on the bridge related in the P.S. occurred but actually it was the following night!
Funny thing memory.
Here are a couple of pictures from that time.
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| Thanksgiving dinner. By John Gareri |
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| The Morning After |
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