Life at sea

Tuesday May 14, 2024

When I woke up this morning, it was as if I walked out of a time machine. It was suddenly the start of spring, but only the best parts, blue sky, puffy white clouds and crisp cold air that makes you long for a pair of tube socks. Where did our endless summer go? Without land for any kind of reference, it still looks like the summer weather we left in St Maarten four days ago. The nights are now cold, I mean shoes and socks and a beanie cold. The days are very pleasant, but it’s definitely not shorts weather anymore. Even the water has turned cold. I was really glad Mike and I stopped for a swim before the water temp dropped below 80 degrees.

We have finally settled into a routine that works for us. During our last few multi day crossings we tried different schedules for our watches; three hours, four hours, six hours. But it seems like after a couple days we were both completely exhausted. Neither of us function well on day after day of poor sleep. So we settled on eight hour shifts during the night. Mike usually sits up in bed reading well after I’m asleep, so he has been doing the 1900-0300 shift and I am more of a morning person, so I do the 0300-1100 shift. During the day share the watch. It just depends on what each of us is doing. While the seas have been calm we have been able to get our workouts in. The open ocean has provided a whole new dimension to riding the peloton. You know those amusement park rides where you get into a roller coaster car that goes nowhere, and there are screens surrounding you and the car moves while a movie plays. That’s what riding the peloton is like. You can see the waves and swell out the window and the bike moves up and down and side to side while you ride. It’s actually pretty fun.

Even Stella has found her own routine, which is really great to see. She still gets scared when the ocean is really angry, but then again, so do I. She’s becoming more comfortable with the boat in motion and is much more relaxed each day.

We are in day five of the rally now, and so far we have mostly motored. We did get a full 24 hours of sailing which was amazing, but the winds have dropped out again. We are expecting a system coming off the east coast of the US that is supposed to bring some very big seas and very high winds as it moves east towards Bermuda. We should start to see winds pick up sometime on Thursday. We should be in Bermuda by Friday afternoon so hopefully we will only see the edge of the system and be tucked into our anchorage before the high winds come through.