John had to wake me up for my shift at 6 am this morning.
Only a light breeze greeted me so I knew we were still motor sailing. When I got up to the helm and had a good look around, I saw loads of dark ominous clouds near by. Behind us was a large squall cloud. John said he’d been tracking it and felt that it was now safely behind us moving away. A great relief.
Half an hour later the wind increased and turned, coming from behind us. I thought great, we can get the Code Zero up as this was the perfect wind for it. Conveniently Steve had just woken up so we started getting ready to put up the larger sail. All of a sudden the wind seemed to be coming from all directions and then died. Lightening flashed to the right of me followed by the load rumble of thunder. The dark clouds I noticed earlier were now storm clouds and much closer. The big large squall behind us was moving nearer too. When I looked to the left, I saw at a distance another squall and a tornado (water spout). I thought, oh noooo! All I had wanted was a little more wind! At this point Steve started getting worried too. We stuffed Steve’s laptop, a hand held GPS and VHF into the micro wave (our Faraday cage) to protect them from a possible lightening strike. Using the radar Steve worked out the size and directions of the various squalls around us and found the safest route away. We headed through a rain cloud, got a major soaking but manage to avoid the lightening clouds and the large dark squall. Once we were out of the squall area the sky stayed cleared for the rest of the day. Thank goodness!
The wind also stayed away. However the effect of no wind on the water was amazing. The ocean all around us, as far the eyes could see, was almost flat. The water was crystal clear and a deep sapphire blue. It was so smooth that it looked like waves of glassy silk. You could see the reflections of fluffy clouds on the surface all around. When we leaned over the boat, our reflection was like looking in a mirror. Every movement on the silky water could be seen clearly and generated an effect. A sudden slight breeze causing intricate ripples. Flying fish leaving trails of fascinating patterns. At one point we entered turtle highway. We saw so many turtles swim by that we lost count. All three of us were so mesmerized by the water that we spent hours just staring out at it. The highlight was certainly sunset. The red sun reflected repeatedly on water was so bright it was almost blinding. The ocean was like molten metal of silver, gold and purple. It was quite stunning.
I forgot to mention that since early morning there was this little bird flying around our boat. After lunch the bird landed on one our lines and just stayed there. We decided it must be lost and was exhausted. I put out some bread crumbs and water right by it but it didn’t move. It finally flew away at sunset towards the sunset. We hoped that it realized there was no land for thousands of miles in that direction.
After sunset Steve noticed an anomaly in the battery gauges while we were recharging. I won’t go into details as I’m sure Steve will in his blog but the upshot was the batteries had overheated. We had to stop the motors and allow the batteries to cool down. Since the sea was flat and there was no wind, we just floated there, going nowhere, just like being on an anchorage. We had dinner, then the boys watched a movie while I had a sleep before my 9 am to midnight watch. During my sleep the wind picked up a little, so when I woke up for my watch we were sailing albeit very slowly. Steve decided that he wanted to continue cooling down the batteries until he took over from my shift at midnight so no motoring. He and John were both very tired and so went off to bed. Soon after, the wind died again. I noticed a very small current so tried to keep the boat pointed toward our heading. As the boat drifted at a snails pace I passed the time reading. At the end of my three hour shift the boat had drifted just over a mile. There was only one problem. We’d moved backwards!