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Diane's Diary1/15-1/21 In transit to St. Martin. We motor for the first 3 days due to lack of wind. Both Kirk & I get seasick some although I seem to be less sick than Kirk. We are all able to stand our watches though. Larry, as captain, does not stand a regular watch but is on call 24 hours day. Larry says we should call him with anything unusual. One night Kirk calls Larry as he sees a red blinking light. It was a star! It is very difficult to ascertain lights at night - your eyes definitely play tricks on you. For the first 2 nights, we have 2 crewmembers on each shift until we all feel comfortable with standing night watch ourselves. I find it very difficult to sleep. I use the sleeping pills several times just to get some rest. I only slept a few hours each night. I got seasick for 2 days but only mildly- I could still stand watch but found every time I stood up I would get nauseous. Harleigh was kind enough to relieve me one night early when I was having a particularly hard time with seasickness. I listened to my portable CD player while on night watch & felt it really helped with the night boredom. I also played my slot machine game also. It helped pass the time. Reading was out of the question with the boat rolling so much for the entire trip. We only see 4 other ships during our entire crossing & Harleigh sees them all. The wind finally picks up on the fourth day. It's a good thing as we are starting to run out of fuel. We know we don't have enough fuel for the entire trip to St. Martin. It turns out the fuel gauge on the boat is wrong it overestimates the amount of fuel left. It's a good thing we have 4 jerry jugs of fuel as we had to use them. The engine stopped once & Larry couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. I mentioned to add the extra fuel that maybe we were out & with the boat heeling fuel wasn't getting into the fuel tank. Well, guess what? I was right!!!. The most wind we had for the entire time was gusts up to around 25 knots but the boat was uncomfortable as we were on a beam reach & rolling quite a bit. We did hit several squalls but they we not too bad. We checked into the weather guy, Herb, on the SSB on a daily basis. We hear that Bermuda got hit with 2 gales one right after another 3 days after we left. So, it was good we left when we did. Our appetites are all not great. The Ramen noodles went over really well. We had a hot meal at dinner every day while it was still light out. It's difficult to eat in the cockpit in the dark on a rolling boat. It's much easier to eat when it's still light but that means eating before 6pm. I really don't like to eat that early but it worked really well on the passage. I really didn't enjoy the passage that much due to the rolling conditions & lack of sleep. I think I like coastal sailing better. Sail all day & get into a protected port at night. That is more my cup of tea. This will be our longest passage though. From St. Martin down to Venezuela we have maybe a 2 night passage at most as we will mostly island hop. |