Tut Tut Here Comes the Rain

Today was a whirlwind!

Lots of rain on the radar for my night watch, but very few actually crossed our location. At one point, I had squall after squall lined up in front of us, it looked quite funny. However, since they’re much faster than we are we didn’t get dumped on once last night.

This morning, sun and oppressive heat. Heavy wind and a strong mileage morning. Then came the rain. Squall after squall, with small bits of sun peeking through in between dark and stormy looking clouds. As the squalls approached, our wind fled - leaving us to float at 3-4 knots and watching the vertical slashes in the sky get closer and closer. The ocean in the distance turned to tv-static-gray as the rain approached.

It was one thing after another. Here’s the play by play:

• Winds fairly light? Let’s put up the gennaker.

• Good, got the gennaker up but - oh, is that rain now in the distance? Let’s take it down and leave it on deck in case we need it again.

• Rain’s here! Let’s take a fresh water shower!

• Great, the rain passed. Should we put the gennaker up? No. Wind is too light now and we don’t want to risk it just luffing and wrapping the forestay.

• Take everything out of the starboard side garage so we can fix the heat pump for AC.

• Waiting for wind…

• Waiting for wind…

• We fixed the AC! This boat is awesome.

• More rain! Quick! Put everything back in the garage before it gets wet!

• Should we gybe thought? Nah, let’s wait for the rain to pass.

• Stay dry inside or stay outside? Outside is wet. Inside is hot and muggy but we can turn on the AC!

• We didn’t fix the AC… Boats are hard.

• Winds still light. Lunch, anyone?

• Also, let’s gybe.

• Let’s put up the gennaker now to dry from the forestay. It got all wet

• Light winds…

• Deck shower.

• Take down the gennaker and stow. Try not to feel weak while flaking a really long line…

• Dinner & clean up

• The wind is back! Charge the motors!

• Cut up pieces of this nice goat cheese wheel from Cabo Verde for a dessert snack

• No sunset tonight - too cloudy. But special in its own way.

• Argue about how the Autopilot works

• Brush teeth, read, time for bed.

Picture above: Jan drinking rain water as it falls through the mesh bimini.

Needless to say, I’m tired and ready for sleep. Only one lovely night of AC before it broke.. tonight we’ll resort back to hatches and fans.

Tomorrow is most likely our last full day on the ocean. Cross your fingers for us that we have good speed and can make landfall early on Monday. Sometimes it feels unreal that we’ve come so far…

E