Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Day 32-34 on the gulf, Nov 28-30

Day 32 (day 4 on the gulf)
We heaved to all day and night. Which means we had a break. With me sick, and neither one of us getting hardly any sleep, it was nice to relax just a bit. Normally when you are heaved to, you do about 1 knot. Being that winds were still blowing good, we were doing about 3-3.5 kt in the right direction, so we left well enough alone.


Day 33 (day 5 on the gulf)
Sunny rolling seas and nice day, saw a freighter.

Day 34 (day 6 on the gulf)
Clear skies. Light seas, 12 kt winds, saw 2nd freighter. We used the autopilot finally. Ice in the ice box is almost gone. Near the end of the day winds started picking back up to around 20kt. We saw the spreaders on the mast were shifting out of place, which hold the mast in place. With rough seas and around 20 kt winds, I cranked Dave up the mast in the chair about 3/4s of the way up so that he could cut the flowed line on the main sail.  It was all I could do to try and steer the boat and get Dave up to where he need to be. Dave was using both arm and legs to try and stay near the mast. Dave's arm and back were black and blue all over from going up the mast to cut the main sail loose. We were running into a lot of current going North, fighting to get towards Cuba. Dave ran till 11:30 pm since we lost a bunch of ground working on sails and bobbing over night.  Light seas, but rough night. Boat rocked side to side and so got very little sleep.  After 3 days, the boat is starting to dry out. We now have all of the sails down.

No comments:

Post a Comment