Sailing South

Wow! What an experience. So, I suppose I’ll start from the beginning and tell you the whole story. We went through customs and set off from St Georges harbour in Bermuda at about 2.30pm on the 20th December, already a day later than planned. It reached just 4pm before Shannon vomited, setting in her sea sickness for the next few days. The beginning was incredibly uncomfortable; I don’t think I was expecting the movement of the sea to throw us around quite as much as it did. I managed to stop myself from throwing up for about four hours before having my first sober vomit in about 15 years. I was so out-of-it that I couldn’t even fasten the buttons on my jacket. So there I was, lying on the deck feeling cold, wet and horribly sea-sick, ready to help Alex at the helm if he needed me. I then looked up and noticed the silhouette of the sail against the lovely starry sky and could see the glowing green sparkles of the phosphorescence in the water next to me....totally worth it!

By the second day I was feeling a little better and had plenty of things to keep me occupied, which reduced the sickness further. We saw a container carrier ship that was probably on its way to Bermuda. That wasn’t the only ship we saw over the 13 day sail, in fact, we almost collided with a cruise ship at one point! It was nice to know that we weren’t completely alone in the vast ocean. Surprisingly, there was plenty to see other than water on the sail and I would quite often see a migrating long-tail bird that would attempt to land on the mast, but would fail miserably. We also saw copious amounts of flying fish gliding across the surface of the water to avoid predators.

Day 4 was extremely eventful. I went for a nap after my watch at 3pm, leaving a few rain clouds in the sky. I woke up a few hours later to find ourselves in the middle of a storm! Well, it technically wasn’t classed as a storm, but it was 50 knots of wind with big waves, that got about 25ft high at their biggest. This heavy weather lasted for almost two days; we seemed to get out of one weather front and straight into another. By Christmas Eve, everyone was so tired that we decided to put out the drogue to slow the boat in a down-wind direction so that everyone could go down below and get a full night’s sleep. Everyone apart from me that is, I volunteered to check on the drogue every half an hour to make sure everything was in order, that way the guys could get some proper rest and get us out of the weather the next day. I think Scott and Shannon found the whole experience pretty difficult and were sick, exhausted and worried for a lot of it. Alex was absolutely fine however, plodding along without a worry in the world. I think the only impact of the whole experience was that it made him realise how little he knows about the weather. I didn’t do too badly either, as long as Alex wasn’t worried then neither was I.

The weather had died down a little by Christmas day which was nice and we decorated our pathetic looking Christmas tree. Shannon gave us a stocking each with some sweets and chocolate inside and I also had a few cards and pressies to open from home which was lovely. It wasn’t the Christmas I’m used to, but it was good all the same. I really missed all the festivities back in England, so I’m looking forward to next Christmas even more. I was a bit ill in the evening, however, but it wasn’t all bad as I was allowed off watch and managed to get a solid 11 hours of sleep. Up until then we were on a 3 hour on-3 hour off system, so I was never getting more than three hours of sleep at a time.

Boxing day was fantastic! I had lots of energy after my long sleep and spent a lot of time on the helm playing in the big waves. That night was also brilliant as it was the first time I had seen a clear night sky since before the storm. The highlight of the night, however, was when dolphins came along and played around the boat. I could mainly see the phosphorescent trails of the dolphins in the dark water, but at one point I got a close-up of one as it jumped out of the sea. They stayed near Bob for a good hour or two playing chicken with the bow and swimming under the boat. It’s a shame it wasn’t daytime so that we could see them a bit better.

Bob was so far performing excellently, bringing us and the boat through heavy weather unscathed. It wasn’t without difficulties though as it turns out that Alex’s brand new $4000 main sail requires the strength of 10 Spartan men to reef it in. It didn’t help that it would usually need reefing in at nightfall, when the wind picked up. As a result I often found myself manoeuvring the boat in the dark while Scott frantically tugged on one of the lines and Alex dangled from the boom attempting to tie/untangle something-or-other. The weather was very sporadic throughout the whole trip, one minute the sun was blazing and the winds were calm, the next minute we’d be sailing through a squall. So this type of reefing technique became quite a common occurrence.

By New Years Eve we thought we could see signs of land as we could see great glows of light in the distance against the night sky. We thought they were glows of light pollution from the nearby islands, it turns out that they were actually the immense lights of nearby cruise ships (one of which we nearly collided with later that night). I celebrated the New Year at midnight (English time) with my first alcoholic drink of the journey. I had been avoiding alcohol for fear of getting sea sick again but as it turns out, it agreed with me very well.

I woke up on New Year’s Day to the sight of land in the distance. After being at sea for almost two weeks, I was surprised at just how much joy I felt when seeing land. The feeling only increased as we got closer and the land masses got bigger, the thought of getting a proper wash, calling home and buying some fresh food was fantastic. We arrived in St Georges harbour in Grenada that evening - what a fantastic way to start the New Year!

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