Crew Blog

Dreaming of sleep

22 June 2008

It’s been rough these last few days, so rough that no one has even contemplated trying to sit down in the nav station, bracing themselves with one hand and both legs spread out into a tripod while trying to think clearly, not to mention type out a blog. Moreover, anyone coming off the deck is dripping in sea water so they wouldn’t be particularly welcome in the electronics saturated station. The only time one is dry enough to enter the nav station is before or after watch. Considering the cold, wet, headsail change infested watches we’ve been having in these heaving seas, including numerous calls for trim checks (which requires at least four people to leave the security of the cockpit and scramble onto the heaving, heeling and slippery deck, one of whom will become entirely soaked at the bow), all anyone really thinks of off-watch is one’s bunk. 

Even that isn’t the refuge we’d like it to be. Those in the forward bunks (such as myself) are repeatedly launched a few inches into the air as the bows flips up a wave crest before we slam back down, accompanied by a resounding “WHAM!” of the hull doing the same (followed by the nerve-wracking “boing a woing a woing” of the rigging absorbing the torsion loads).

Sleep, as one would normally think of it, isn’t to be found at such times. We just try to get as much rest as we can in a few short hours before returning back into the storm we’ve been enduring.

It’s ended…for now. Earlier this morning we dropped the storm jib and replaced it with the Yankee 3 (our smallest normal headsail). Just before I got off watch at 2:00, we replaced it with the Yankee 2.  I came back on watch at 6:00 p.m. to find the Yankee 1 (our largest headsail meant for the lightest of winds) in place. A few of us literally dropped our jaws when we climbed up the companionway and first saw it. Who would have thought it possible only 24 hours ago?

The forecast is for even lighter winds of perhaps 5 knots in the next day or two. We might even get a few hours of true sleep.  Who would have thought that possible only 24 hours ago?

Timothy Ettridge