I spent way too much time faffing about at the mast with the trisail last night and am officially wet. the insides of my oiies are now wet, which means the outside of my midlayers are wet, which means the insides of the cats meow are wet too... all a bit unsatisfactory really, but yes, I take full responsibility for it all since attempting the extremely brazen act of changing my socks yesterday. (they are sort of dry-ish- praise be to the hefty ziplocs!!)
Talking of extrememly brazen things... I was climbing into my bunk earlier just as Big A was climbing out of his, and he said, 'You know McQ, this might just be our last full Friday on board,' Of course I immediately berated Big A for voicing such a statement, but I have to admit that I had just been looking at tides for the Lizard and Falmouth next week and I did start with Friday... unfortunately to catch the tide at the Lizard though (and without Ernie, we need the tide with us) we need to be there by about 2pm, so I think its pretty unlikely, maybe maybe 12 hours later though...
But weather wise, things look alright, the southerlies blew themselves through pretty quick last night- there we are storming over waves, upwind, trisail, pitch black and then off to starboard, at about 3.30am, the horizon became clear and you could see the definite black line of the end of the stuff we were in, I watched and waited and hoped and hoped that was it, and it was!!! The wind veered, the stars came out and we kept storming along, only downwind and much, much less howly!!
Its been pretty consistent since, as expected, top 20's to mid 30's, sometimes a touch more, about half the headsail out. Sea is fine really, bit of a swell, occasional biggie and a slightly awkward angle but working WITH Kevvo and not fighting him, we can cruise over most of them!! This looks set till the middle of the night then should start to ease overnight and i reckon we'll be close to wallowing by tomorrow afternoon... Might be able to eek out the wind by coming up on the light SW's and creating some apparent, probably not enough for Lizzie though so have made water into all containers I can find, so thats one less thing to wear her down over the next couple of days if she doesn't have enough wind to go. (And Big A's been charging EVERYTHING too, so we should be ok) And then theres a bit of a low to keep an eye on for a few days time, that we might get some northerlies from... and then, fingers crossed, some NW's or W's again and we'll be storming on to Falmouth again in no time!!!
Oh, and I finally got 'Lucille' out of my head only to be replaced with the perhaps less tuneful 'Whale Fish' song!!
Lots of love and a very elastic Friday 19th ETA...
McQ
xxx
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