Into the Atlantic Nov 27,08

Monday, December 1st, 2008

The Mediterranean shoved us through the Straits of Gibraltar with a cold squally blast.

It was quite cold on watch last night and about 5:30am it began to rain heavily.  A big front moved
through and dropped the temperature significantly.

I ended up on helm in pitch darkness as the front moved up.  The Mate had John take over on helm as it
arrived, much to my relief.

As a watery dawn broke the wind dropped away and we briefly hove to until the mates were confident in
which direction the wind would come from.  We ended up sailing almost due North for a while.

The ship was really rolling in that brief calm but there was no sign of seasickness and I’m not even queasy
typing this which is cool :-)

No sign of the potential gale yet but there was a big low forming right over us when the wind dropped this
morning.

I think I will dig out my heavy sweater for the night watch this evening.

Later…

Just came off the evening 4-8 watch. Ended up not needing the sweater, which is good I was not looking
forward to using up all my ammo, so to speak, this early in the campaign.

The weather has moderated nicely and the forecast now calls for steady West winds with some showers
for tomorrow.  We are about 100 miles or so out in the Atlantic and the sky has cleared to reveal an
amazing  display of stars.  A bright planet to the west is even  shining on the sea, I think it is Venus.

Tomorrow we ill be heading farther South along the coast of Morocco.

Thanks for reading.

KJ

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving to all you folks down South!  We will be having our Thanksgiving tomorrow,
Friday, with a turkey dinner all the fixins and lots of pies (7 at last count) with various fillings. Yummy!

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