Week Two

Week Two
It’s been a week of ups and downs…and side-to-sides, and pushing and shoving. Paul has described the sea state in his weather reports, along with the meteorological reasons and explanations for the rough conditions. I prefer to focus on the drama such weather created. There’s only so much you can do with words to get across how dramatic it was/still is, at times. When it began to get choppier, I carried on regardless, remembering how I dealt with this type of thing on the Atlantic crossing. I adopted the stances I used then, such as standing with feet placed well apart, body leaning against the sides and moving with the motion of the waves when preparing food or cooking in the galley, which feels a lot more graceful than it looks I suspect. A golden rule is never to try to do things with two hands – make sure one is always holding on to the many wooden ‘hand-holds’ dotted around the boat (otherwise it won’t end well). I had even got a bit blasé about it all because I had learned to sense when a convenient lull in the rocking was imminent simply through getting used to the rhythm of the waves. This would allow for a quick ‘letting go’ to carry out a two-handed task such as chopping veg or doing dishes. So far, so familiar then.
Gradually the force of the wind and waves increased, bringing with them some alarming noises and a motion that I found scary and extremely difficult to move around in, let alone do anything more ambitious than inch my way to the toilet with my back against the wall. A couple of days before the worst of it, I had prepared and cooked some tasty evening meals, and got on with daily routine stuff with only the odd annoying jerk or jolt to catch me unawares. By Saturday (30th June) I had written in my journal that it was becoming hard to sleep with all the rolling, and that movement was more restricted so we were reading and dozing a lot more during the day. It began to feel chillier, too and the sky was grey and foggy with drizzly rain falling. We put the heating on for longer intervals and played offline scrabble on Paul’s iPhone; all very cosy and the speed we were doing showed we would reach our destination a week earlier than expected. I helped Paul to change the sail set up that afternoon, which was pretty hairy with the boat listing from side to side at such sharp angles. I felt sure one of us would get tossed over the side but even that fear couldn’t detract from the spectacular sight of the Albatrosses circling around us. They were beautiful, and so huge! I’m almost sure they were Albatrosses but I could be wrong. In an effort to picture them, I found myself smiling while remembering a Monty Python sketch which features John Cleese selling Albatross as a cinema snack instead of choc ices. I also wondered how the Ancient Mariner could have been so cruel as to shoot such a lovely bird.
July dawned with the roughest day yet, and a realisation that this was a much more challenging passage than the Atlantic crossing. Sitting in the cabin I could see and hear the water crashing into the cockpit. The waves had reached about 4 metres in height and the swell was strong. The wind was also strong and the boat was hurtling through this turbulent sea (it resembled the state water looks like when boiling in a pan) at breakneck speed. The difference from any other sea state I’ve experienced was that the waves were coming from all directions, so that it was like sitting on one of those ‘bucking bronco’ machines whose main aim is to throw you onto the floor. Sunday’s journal entry plaintively and somewhat melodramatically states that ‘moving and staying upright now requires a good deal of planning, motivation and effort’. Earlier I said that it’s hard to put words together to convey how trying it was, but some of the words and phrases that came to mind as I sat there being reassured by Paul that this was nothing to worry about might help: pitching, tossing, corkscrewing, plunging, slamming, banging, crashing, bouncing, ‘being lifted off the seat’ ‘high walls of water’, waves breaking over the top of the boat, listing from side to side at speed…you get the picture. We didn’t eat much that day, but hadn’t done much to work up an appetite anyway. The only thing to do was sit it out below while Paul carried out regular weather forecasts. I have to confess I’m a touch sceptical about these forecasts, but looking at the complicated weather charts and faxes as they come through made me think you need a degree in meteorology to make sense of them.
Neither of us got seasick I’m pleased to say, and difficult as it was I’m still feeling good about the whole thing. I think much of my concerns come from not having the knowledge that Paul has about the level of danger. The loud noises and the turbulence in a storm at sea serve to make it seem more alarming than it actually is. It’s also frustrating being rendered immobile when things need doing and the thought of the whole journey being like that was disturbing to say the least. In the end I did what I always do to escape in stressful times – read! We take turns choosing music to listen to in the evenings, and I have come to appreciate more of Paul’s choices (as long as it’s not cello music or Ivor Cutler). I think he now enjoys Neil Young because he hasn’t described him as ‘whingey’ lately 😉 . The World Service provides the only source of news we get, but is sadly lacking in its World Cup coverage so I have to rely on emails about how England are doing. We’ve also listened to some entertaining old podcasts from radios 4 and 6. I’m looking forward to picking up the American radio stations when we get closer.
Things have been a lot more calm and pleasant for the last two days. I’m back to creating meals from our vast store of provisions and have been recording details of our evening meals to include in a separate blog entry later on.
We’ve changed time zones again and are now another hour ahead, in Noumea time (New Caledonia). Paul tells me we’ll be crossing the international dateline in a few days’ time and will gain a day (in Groundhog Day fashion?). I really can’t get my head around it but it will be interesting to experience when it happens (or maybe not). We were a thousand miles from anywhere yesterday, and today we are 37% of the way across. I do enjoy those sort of statistics and facts, and still like to study the route and progress on the electronic charts. We’ve only been alerted to three other vessels in the last week so we really are ‘alone on a wide wide sea’ (another apt line from ‘The Ancient Mariner’). We did, however, finally see some whales and dolphins this morning. It was worth being called out of my warm cocoon to see them. The whales were too far away to see properly but their size and spouts distinguished them from dolphins.
We head into week three with good winds predicted to push us along and with gales and hurricanes far enough away to cause us no great alarm. The main concern at the moment is that we’ve almost run out of bread and Paul would prefer to wait until next week before we use any large amount of gas to bake any. Luckily we have plenty of longlife naan and pitta breads and tortilla wraps to see us through. Just hope it’s not too rocky when the time comes for mixing, kneading and proving dough.
Kathy