Friday Aug 26
Had a very interesting night watch, the fog was very thick, but not very deep vertically. From the focslehead on lookout you could see the stars and then nothing below but grey. As it got darker the bow wave began to light up as it broke. There is now some phosphorescent organisms in the water. A pretty good indication that the sea is nearby. Lookout was really tough. I have a bunch of floaters in my eyes and they kind of spark and glow against the mushy grey of the fog. If I thought I saw something I would blink and look a different direction, if it was still there then it was in my eyes not on the sea!
It wasn't all that cold but without the foulies one would very quickly be wet through by the fog and then the wind would chill you to the bone.
My trick on the helm was great, I actually used the stars to steer successfully for the first time, more on that later.
Our watch this morning was more of the same, only with the sun shining the fog became intensely bright, necessitating the use of sunglasses. These are very quickly streaming with water, which means they are very hard to see through.
I ended up looking over my glasses and then looking through them to check out anything I think I saw. Not ideal but with the brightly lit fog any object will be a dark spot which would actually stand out pretty well. The mate says we have had several big ships pass within 2 miles of us but we didn't see a thing. You could tell when another ship were nearby because our fog horn sounds for a while.
Steering this morning was very easy as we are motoring with no sails set. Only a couple of spokes either way needed to keep her on course.
It is more than a week since I left my Jayne and Calgary to join the ship. How time flies when you are having fun :-) Sitting here in the salon typing up my blog posts it feels like the patterns of being at sea are falling into place. The steady rounds of watch, eat, sleep, scrub, haul, eat, sleep etc are like a big clock ticking the days past.
On the plus side my hands are mostly healed up and I have only felt a slight queasy twinge when below in the chain locker on ship check. I am wearing my motion sickness bracelet just in case but so far so good. Will see how they work out on the sea proper.
More later...
It is still foggy but now it is raining too. Blah.
We are eating dinner down in the salon for the second day in a row.
On the plus side I can hear the 4-8 watch setting the topsails, the sheets are chain and they make a distinctive rattle a they are sheeted home. Hopefully that means there is enough wind that we will be able to sail tonight too.
On the minus side it will mean that it will be much colder on watch too. Sigh.
I broke out my lite weight sleeping bag and stuffed it with the stuff I have been sleeping under so it i ready to dive into when I get off watch.
Thanks for reading!
KJ
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