Our night watch started clear and moonlit but that quickly changed. A great black cloud loomed up
directly up wind of us. I was on helm and the rest of my watch started making comments like “Looks
nasty” and “we’re going to get wet” all while looking back past me. Kinda made me nervous that. Luckily
we had already gone below to get our fowl weather jackets when the squall first appeared on radar so
when it started to rain we were ready.
It really poured hard for a while but the wind gusts weren’t to bad and although we took in the spanker we
didn’t have to douse anything else.
We had a couple of other squalls roll through one with pretty strong wind gusts but nothing too terrible. The
last hour of the watch I spent scrubbing the slippery parts of the deck that our daily deck wash tends to
miss like below the edge of the hatch coaming and around the main mast under the fife rail.
We are now sailing NNW at around 7 knots with Grenada 1100 miles to the NW and the mouth of the
Amazon river due West of us. I expect we still have 10 days to go on this passage.
More later…
It’s later and I just got off a very exciting afternoon watch. We had a couple of big squalls roar through and
we have taken the main royal and the topgallant staysail. The wind is a steady Force 5 with gusts to Force
6. We are sailing along at almost 8 knots over the ground so about 7 through the water. Veronica says we
should pick up a new current shortly that moves North at almost 3 knots.
The video was taken around this time. We still had all the sails set.
Occasionally big waves crash into the side of the ship with a loud bang followed by a waterfall on deck.
We are also sailing heeled over to Port which is nice for me :-)
Should be an interesting night watch.
Thanks for reading
KJ
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