Passage to St Helena Day 4
Misterx
Mon 10 Mar 2025 04:13
09/03/25
8:30 pm
Day 4
Atlantic Ocean
DTD : 1,156 NM
This was funny, well funny for me anyway. We had a time change yesterday, all the clocks went back an hour for us on board. We tend to do these around midday, so that mean i got an extra half hour off watch during my morning stint, as we split these so it is equitable. So there we are carrying on with our watches, 4 hours on, 4 hours off. Got to my 8 till midnight, got the log out at midnight, wrote the log, woke up Ian, brushed my teeth and got to bed... about 2 hours later, muttering from the chart table... a few swear words sotto voce and banging on the keyboard... I am now awake and asks what is occurring...
You little minx he said, you got me up at 11pm not midnight... an hour too early!
Certainly not, the clock was saying midnight, I know, although I did think my watch had gone quick, but then again time flies when you are having fun with cards games!
Which clock? he says,
The one in front of my nose when i am playing patience, the one on the computer of course!
Ah! he says that would be the one I forgot to change then!!
I did let him sleep in on his next watch, but i bet he won't forget next time!
Don't you just hate it when you only 4 days in and things already start to squeak! We had made sure the wheel was oiled before we left... nothing worse than a squeaky wheel on a long passage, it just drives you up the wall, and yes i speak from experience. So we always make sure it is oiled before we go. Obviously we didn't put enough lubricant this time, so Ian done this today. No sooner has he put the oil away the main winch starts a squealing of its own... and this one is not pleasant at all, a horrible screeching in fact... So this afternoon when the wind died down we had the cover off an did the needful... dollops of grease went in... Ian had done all the winches not that long ago, either the grease was not such good quality or not enough was applied. Pleased to report that the squeaks and screeching are being kept at bay... for now!
We had a decent day's wind today, not too slow, not too fast, 100 NM in 24h is correct for us. The cloud cover took all morning to clear and by lunchtime it was sunny again. And it is a bit more relaxed, all the shipping has not disappeared but it is so far away that we are not threaten by it. We are picking them up at over 70NM away, which is amazing really. We even saw one at 83NM... pretty sure we have never seen such distances before, we usually see ships around 40 to 50NM at best. Wonder what make this happen? Answers on a postcard, please.
One we didn't see coming from this far away was called Bubbles Up, a catamaran of 12 meters, he simply zoomed passed us at 7 knots as we were just managing 5.5! Bet he had his kite up too!!! We'll ask him when we see him in St Helena.
Not much else to report, I'll get back to my card game!
M