Night two…

It’s 4:30am Friday morning and we are now finishing our second night of watches. Thursday was the full moon which lights up the ocean at night. It will be a great companion this week as we settle into our routine.

We divide up the night watch in three 3-hour shifts. Bill and Sharon tend to eat later so we are often finishing dinner about 9pm. I remain on KP duty and do the dishes then off to bed.

Sharon has the first watch from 10pm to 1am. Bill has the toughest shift as he needs to nap, rise at 1am to relieve Sharon and then remains on watch until 4am when he rousts me. Bill then heads down to try and get a few additional hours of shuteye. I am on duty from 4am until 7am by which time the sun is up.

The first night was uneventful (which is what you want). It was a bumpy ride as the seas were very choppy so sleep was challenging. When the seas are rough there is lots of bumps and crashes – waves, the rigging, the gurgling of the sea under the hull when you are in your bunk. I can understand how myths of merfolk arise as sometimes the gurgling sounds like voices.

Thursday morning Bill did a quick mop of the deck as he always does and he found a couple of flying fish that had landed on the wrong runway. The routine during the day is pretty relaxed – no beach walks for a while. As always we monitor the instruments (AIS in particular) and watch for any big boats coming our way. Usually they are miles away but sometimes we see lights (at night) or get a clear view during the day.

Usually the freighters are moving quickly (15 knots or more) and they might alter course a degree or two to avoid us while still miles away. We always prefer they pass in front of us if possible as we do not want to be in their direct path when under sail.

Last night the moon was rising in the east behind us as I went to bed and now as we approach 6am it is ahead of us moving towards the horizon.

The last 24 hours winds have slackened and the seas are calmer which is fine, but it also means our speed has dropped off. The first day we did about 180nm miles and the last 24 hours looks like about 130nm.

Final comment on this post – as you can tell by the pictures we are very happy with the Starlink. It seemed to have settled into a clear view of the sky and in the last 12 hours we have had less than 1% downtime and we are getting 50 mbps download speeds. I had a couple of Facetime calls with Nancy that were amazingly clear.

My only concern is that with such great connectivity, she may not feel like she really missed me while I am away!