Day 10
6pm, 00:00UTC
pos 09deg26S, 109deg03W
Distance to Fatu Hiva 1742 nautical miles We are all well, just hanging in there. Yesterday (day 9) turned out to be a 170 mile day, one of our best days so far i.to. distance covered. I subtract our 'distance to go' figures (not the trip log figures) from one day to the next which accurately tells you how much closer you are.
Today was crazy. Like driving at 200kms an hour down a bumpy gravel road, fishtailing all over the place. And trying to sleep in your bed is like trying to sleep in the trunk of this fishtailing car. Shortly after Chantal took over from Andy this morning at 4am the wind strengthened to 25-30 knots SE. The sea kicked up along with it, going from 'quite rough' to 'oh my god'. Shimmi finally came out of the blocks, sustaining 8-9 knots with plenty of double figure surfs, are fastest was 15.5 knots, this carried on until well into the afternoon, we clocked 90 miles for the first 12 hour period of Day 10. Shimmi shudders as the rudders vibrate when we exceed 10 knots, you can feel this in your bed. Big swells and chops are heaving through, we took our first green wave over the port quarter, all the way into the cockpit. This off course happened during the only time that i decided to 'hand steer'. I just lost focus for a second, broached slightly and WHOOOOSH, a wave came right over. Thank the lord that we are running with this mess, when you look behind the boat you don't see a pretty sight. We are taking some big individual hits on the underside of the bridge deck, Andy says it sounds like a mortar explosion. We have learned to ignore all these noises. We are becoming battle hardened, like troops in the trenches. I made the headsail a bit smaller and we still have a reef in the main. Thank fuck i dont have to deal with a spinnaker. By 4pm the wind started moderating and swinging onto our tail, which is the worse possible scenario as the boom starts to shockload again and we have to head up into the driving sea and weather to keep from accidentally gybing. Now its 8pm and the wind is back up to 20 knots and off our tail, we are again running with the weather. But i can already hear the wind dropping again and the head sail is flogging...
Chantal cooked up some great egg, rice and mince tortillas for brunch, Andy cooked a pasta & pesto for dinner. Andy is doing ok, he even played a few tunes on his guitar. He saw a shark swim past shimmi, said it had the blunt head of a tiger shark. Josh and Indie are making lots of noise and carrying on as if we are on a Transkei holiday and Chantal and I are their personal nannies. Petri the petrodactyle has been waging an air attack on the ground based supers like Batman and co. But the kids are obviously enjoying all the intimate attention of close quarters. Thank god neither of them suffer from seasickness.
We are maintaining the water tank at half, we had a light drizzle last night and it looks like a squall for tonight which is why the wind cant make up its mind right now. The moon has finally shown itself as a first quarter sliver. The sun is going down later and later as we sail due west (the sun is now up 2 hours later than Galapagos). We are going to keep our clocks fixed for logbook purposes until Fatu Hiva, but we are adjusting our watch system and kiddie bedtimes to follow the sun.
We are now half way in terms of time to go to Fatu Hiva. Hooray. Not sure how we are going to cope with another 10 stormy days. But it least we can count 'down' now instead of up. Pray for a smooth sea!
