Imagine your house is suspended from a giant bungy cord. The cord isn’t in the center of the house but to one side so your house isn’t flat but hanging at an angle of 30º. It is continually being jerked from front to back and from side to side. Every few seconds it is lifted up then dropped down suddenly and every now and again it is lifted a bit higher and dropped so that it hits the ground with a bang and everything shudders and shakes.
You can’t move at all without holding on as your world is never still for a second but you somehow have to go about your everyday duties, cooking, reading, writing, trying to get your cursor steady enough to hit a particular dot on the screen…
The movement isn’t predictable at all but completely random and chaotic. You make a cup of tea but you can’t set it down anywhere and all the while someone is throwing bucketfuls of saltwater over your windows.
You are lucky enough though to have a cooker that is gimbaled i.e. the top stays reasonably flat while the house swings around. So cooking is possible once you get to the stage where everything you’ve prepared is actually in the pot. Then, of course, you have the fun of trying to eat it without ending up wearing it.
If you can imagine that you will have some idea of what life is like on Elsi right now. We are battering to windward in a F5-6 a couple of hundred miles north of the equator. The equator can be stark calm with blue skies or it can be like this. For all the movement though I would far rather have that than have nothing at all and be going nowhere. At least we are moving albeit in every direction as well as forwards.
The wind was more or less steady all night at around F5-6 and I slept through most of it. At first light there was little change but by late morning the wind had eased a bit and I could set the full mainsail again. The sky was more blue than anything else with a warm sun shining through. The upper cirro clouds appeared almost static and sentinel. The lower broken of bits of cumulus were fast drifting across us but as smooth and steady as a hand passing over sheaves of corn. Down on the water there was nothing smooth about it and we were still being pitched about as much as ever.
I’m not sure if these winds are the N’ly limit of the SE Trades. They feel steady enough and the sky is taking on a Trade wind appearance but we are still north of the equator so we’ll wait and see what happens over the next two days.
By Les & Julie Thu Dec 19th 2013 at 9:05 am
Hi there again Andrew,shame you did’nt get closer than a mile to see those whales and how many there were but great to see them all the same.
Sorry to hear that you are having such a rough ride at the moment but like you said in a larger boat you would’nt be able to reach both rails at head level in cockpit at same time.
Well done Andrew for getting 3000 nm under your belt and for being so close to crossing the equator, lets hope you get into the SE trades proper soon and get some smoother sailing.
Look after yourself and Elsi out there Andrew we are thinking of you.very best wishes to you Andrew,Les & Julie.
By Warren and Jill of the Swn Y Mor Thu Dec 19th 2013 at 4:24 pm
Andrew you know our thoughts are with you and we hope you have fair winds and flat seas over the coming Christmas and new year may you always have at least a hands width of water under your keel
Love
Warren and Jill
By Warren and Jill of the Swn Y Mor Thu Dec 19th 2013 at 4:41 pm
Andrew you are often in our thoughts and we wish you fair winds and flat seas for the coming Christmas and New Year may you always have at least a hands width of water under your keel.
Much love from Warren Jill and Helen
By Ian Pole Mon Dec 23rd 2013 at 4:13 pm
We are enjoying reading about your latest adventure and are thinking of you as we approach Christmas. Best wishes for smooth sailing in 2014. Ian and Franc.