No fun today

I can hardly write , my mind is almost at a standstill, because I've had another night of little sleep, and the day has been sunless drab and wet with showers. Very light winds were forecast and I anticipated a chance to rest, as the boat would probably stop sailing if the wind was under 10 knots. And indeed it was like that for a time and had a short nap, but within the hour the wind had returned and much as it would have been nice to ignore it, I felt there is a greater need to press on. So here we are on starboard still, a reefed main and half rolled up headsail, making about 5.2 knots to the east.

There were two problems last night - the first, the most depressing and demoralizing, was to find as I slipped into the sleeping bag that it was soaking wet. And so was the foam mattress underneath. And so was I by the time I realized what was happening and peeled the damn thing off me. It turned out another leak had quietly been filling a locker space beside the bunk, and now this was spilling out and being soaked up by the foam, unseen. I emptied all the tools and bits and pieces out of the locker - all soaked and dripping wet - put them on the floor and sponged out the locker - a tiny trickle only - but over preceding days while on port, it had been collecting. I restowed the tools in other places and left the locker empty so I could sponge out from time to time, and sponged up the floor which has remained damp ever since. The mattress will never dry in the present conditions so I cant sit on it even. Fortunately I had dry things in waterproof bags so got a blanket and curled up in the quarter birth, the one by the Nav Station.

But not for long as an anticipated front arrived with dramatic winds, massive thunder and lightening and downpours of rain. Going out to adjust sails meant sprays of seawater into the boat, and dripping wet weather gear on return , so the whole boat has become damp and depressing inside.

And outside horrible rainy squalls have continued, not as vigorously as last nights Premier Performance, but often enough to need me to pop up and back with a new set of drips, and prevent anything from remaining anything other than damp and unpleasant. However the nav station has remained dry, and yesterday till0900 today we took another 94nm off the journey.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com