I was awakened last night at 11:30 p.m. by the sound of whooshing water and an engine right beside my head. For a startled moment I thought I was still at sea and that something terrible was hapening, but when I realized I was on the v-berth I knew I wasn’t. I sat up, pulled back the screen and stuck my head out the forward hatch to find the above wall sliding past me. It belongs to a 45’ Lagoon charter boat. Could there be a greater contrast between boats? I have to crane my head to see their deck level. GANNET’s freeboard is 2’. Their’s must be 7’ and at the bows perhaps 8’. I feel as though we are in a hole. The little boat is certainly walled in.
A new Windex was noisily installed on the masthead this morning. Some people are quiet and some aren’t. I hope this one lasts longer than the last.
I bought four 2 liter/.5 gallon bottles of water in St. Helena in addition to my four 5 gallon/19 liter jerry cans. I drank the water bottles bought in St. Helena at the beginning of the passage and arrived at St. Lucia using my third jerry can of water. I had at least 8 gallons of water left. Considering that I don’t fill the jerry cans to the top, I used about 14 gallons of fresh water on the passage, which included a cup most days to wipe myself down with, or about .4 of a gallon/1.5 liters a day.
I sent many more emails to Carol than usual on this passage. The Yellowbrick app worked flawlessly. I started emailing to ask her to bring out a few items, such as a new JetBoil stove and Apple lightning cables, but we continued on almost a daily basis. To email you link the Yellowbrick to your phone via Bluetooth which, of course, increases battery use. However, the Yellowbrick was still at 34% charge upon our arrival at Rodney Bay.
As we neared land I changed its updating from 6 hour intervals to 1 hour at the suggestion of some readers. The track still showed us crossing land, but could be figured out.
I just realized that a year ago we were still in New Zealand. I had to look at the passage log to be certain. We sailed from Opua on April 26, 2016. We arrived in Rodney Bay on April 18, 2017. In slightly less than one year GANNET crossed the Tasman Sea and two oceans and covered 15,608 miles.
Carol is above the Atlantic Ocean. Her flight is due to arrive in a few hours. She will be here for a week. I won’t be posting during that time and perhaps not even answering emails. If you get bored you can always visit the main site, look at some photos, read the introduction and the credo or some articles or stories, study the lists. All better than watching the evening news.
See you in a week.
See you in a week.
