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At Sea « Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

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May 22 12:06GMT

32º18.7’N 58º38.9’W
SOG (Speed over Ground): 8 knots
Distance from Bermuda: 307nm
Distance to Horta: 1,511nm

For most of the last 24 hours I have been asleep waking mostly to perform my watch duties. This morning has been a turnaround with respect to the seasickness. My appetite returned and while I’ve been cautious I have eaten and drunk more this morning than the whole of yesterday and it is still just gone 9am ship time (on board we use the time of the last port).

Possibly related to my (almost) recovery is that the sea state has calmed a little. Yesterday the seas were 8-10 feet with winds in the 25 to 30 knot range. Today the seas are down to 4 feet and the wind down to 18-20 knots. We’re still making good time which means the miles to Horta are coming down each day. We’re still heading a little south of east to keep away from the bad weather system behind us. As we close on the Azores High (a mid Atlantic semi permanent weather system) we can consider going further north. We receive daily weather and routing information. Our decision to turn will be driven by this.

The word for today is ?damp.? Everything is now damp and it’s impossible to get fully dry. The heavy weather of the preceding two days was impossible to leave outside. The heavy seas means it is not possible to open our hatches. So the floors are wet. Our clothes are wet or at best damp as are our towels. Are sheets are wet from the damp and our sweat. We’re looking forward to calmer weather so we can open up the hatches and get some air through the boat. Perhaps we can also get some laundry done.

On the wildlife front we saw some more dolphins yesterday and overnight a flying fish managed a landing in the cockpit. Today we’ll try fishing again. Yesterday was too rough for fishing. The day before we had the lines out and managed to lose one when we turned to address the broken reef.

May 21 11:54GMT

32º23.4N 62º6.8’W
SOG (Speed over Ground): 8 knots
Distance from Bermuda: 131nm
Distance to Horta: 1,672nm

We left Bermuda by passing through the cut at St George’s at 3:05pm Bermuda time yesterday. Weather was great for sailing. The weather router for the fleet had advised us all to head due east to get as far away as possible from the weather that was due to hit Bermuda.

Very soon we spotted a squall so we turned the boat and put in a second reef on the main. Fortunately, the squall passed just in front of the boat so we weren’t pounded. By 4:30pm, because of the haze, we had lost sight of Bermuda all together. About this time I began to feel a little queasy and started going down with a bit of sea sickness which I’ve yet to recover from.

The guys had dinner at 5pm which I was unable to join bat chewing on a bread role which didn’t stay down. After dinner I spotted a small pod of dolphins off the port beam. They didn’t stay for too long. While we were all standing there wondering if the dolphins will return, the reefing line snapped. Previously it had been thought that the reefing lines that snapped coming up to Bermuda were due to their being old and worn. With new lines in we knew something must be damaging them. We lowered the boom and put in a manual second reef for the night. I was able to help out at first but the mal-de-mer kicked in and soon I was leaning over the edge again.

As the evening kicked in we settle on watch system. Essentially we were on a 8 hour rota. 2 hours on standby, followed by watch followed by four hours off. As I was already hanging around outside I took the 7pm (Bermuda time) watch. I was back up on standby at 1am followed by watch at 3am. On my 4 hours off I was able to get a lot of sleep. The boat is making good distance with speeds between 6.5 and 8.5 knots. My sea-sickness isn’t beaten yet although the fact that I’m typing this log in my cabin suggests progress.