Thursday, August 21, 2008

On route to Fiji, 20h00, 19 August 2008

Westward bound on route to Fiji, 20h00, 19 August 2008

A full 24 hours sailing later and we are making good progress towards to Fiji. So good in fact that our ETA has been brought forward to Thursday morning from Friday.



We have been under sail only - without motor assistance - since 10am this morning. In fact, it was the extinguishing of the motor which woke me from my slumbers after my first 12-4. It was a great experience, but you do really start feeling it post 3am!


As promised, I got stuck into enhancing my cooking skills on the bread making side. To be perfectly honest I’m not sure how enhanced that is, since the process was clearly marked out for cooking dummies. In theory, a failure free zone: ship’s bread, after all, is a paramount necessity!


I was not alone in my endeavour either, being ably guided by a fellow crew member with ample experience of the requisite skills.


Nonetheless we had one or two sticky moments, notably when we forgot to shut the forward window before getting the ready made mix out on the top and watching in horror as the South Pacific breeze began scattering the flour and yeast mix around the kitchen! Thankfully the mix still had enough juice to rise to the task.

And the number one benefit of making the bread is that you have the chance to eat freshly baked bread at 4am with lashings of butter and a good piping hot cup of tea, relaxed and happily tired after another watch. This afternoon was busier on the sailing front as we were doing a lot of work to trim the sails and extract every little last bit of juice we could out of them. At one stage we got up to the 7 knot speed - ship’s max speed is 12 I think - but for the most part we cruised along at 5 knots. Talking of knots, we had a session on knots and I proved to be one of the most challenging students I think the watch has ever had…clearly knots are not for me, something of a disability on a ship. Saying that, I did eventually make some progress. Of a kind.


No whales today and not another ship of any kind to report, big or small. We did cross through an extensive shoal of tuna fish around tea time, nearly catching two on the aft lines before they wriggled free from the attentions of the permanent crew. At least it spared this onlooker another experience of fish gutting on the main deck! Anyway, much tuna viewing of the live kind was to be had, especially from the forward watch - one of my favourite tasks, where you can stand astride the ship’s bow, pirate like, on the lookout for friend, foe or victim - presumably more the latter with the Soren’s tendency for pseudo aggressive behaviour towards passing marine vessels!

I spent the rest of the day sleeping and taking pictures and films of the ever changing sky and sea. Such a beautiful yet often foreboding environment; makes one realise how small one really is. Now post dinner and looking forward to the night watch, but with an eye on getting some kip before then. No bread making tonight, with that heavy responsibility passed on to another unfortunate victim!



Hopefully some more helmsman ship, following on from my first experience of taking the helm when under sail alone this afternoon. This is noticeably different from the motor environment, demanding more subtly in terms of handling and predicting the impact of the ship’s sails on the bow’s behaviour and counterbalancing accordingly. Nearly, but not quite, lost at sea!

Rob

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