day 11 - still rough...

decks & rough water
Originally uploaded by lawatt

I actually didn't take any photos on day 11, this one was from day 10 -- but day 11 (sunday june 17) was more of the same, everyone very short of rest and food, moving like zombies from sleep to steering to sleep to steering again... we finally put a second reef in the main, which helped tame the boat's motion down a bit -- not sure why we didn't think of that sooner?

night watch between days 10 & 11 had been incredibly bizarre, as it was completely overast, couldn't see a thing -- just utter blackness, and the wind kept shifting in both speed and direction so dramatically, all we could do was steer by the instruments, like pilots do when the lose visual contact with the world below. it took ENORMOUS concentration, and verged on surreal in the darkness. and when I did finally get back below & crashed to sleep, I had incredibly vivid dreams again -- not nightmares, but more like sweet & incredibly lifelike images of a life I can't possibly have -- making it hard to sort out, when i woke up again, where I was and what was actually real or not. very confusing couple of days.

noontime position on day 11: 35° 17' 2" N, 135° 30' W -- our 24-hour run between blustery days was only 111 nautical miles, which is the slowest day we had all trip -- ironic, when the wind was blowing the hardest! but the rough seas just kept slowing us down, making progress far more difficult than in smoother water...

sometime in the late afternooon Tim decided we weren't eating enough, and pulled the emergency easy-to-make dinners out: cooked us up some Rice-A-Roni, made with double the usual butter -- simple and hot and good, we all wolfed it down. and I actually got into a good groove on my 6-9pm watch, listening to Catherine Wheel (a rather cinematic-sounding band) in my earphones -- I suddenly felt completely in tune and immersed in the wild sea, steering us over walls of water moving past and under and threading the boat through them, standing at the wheel with my face in the wind and belting out songs as loud as I could -- it just felt so fantastic, so wild and thrilling, and made up for some of the discomfort of the past two days.

I think Tim got an email from the boat's owner that night, predicting a possible continuation of this weather all the way home -- leaving us wondering if we'd ever manage a sponge bath again, much less a shower? feeling a bit of trepidation as we went to sleep that night...