– You said wind twice.
– I like wind.
Usually I do. Evenstar is a tough, heavy boat and she does well with a stiff breeze. And that we’ve had today and then some.
Remember the discussion on “Fetch” we had back during hurricane Sandy? Wind + open water = waves. Well when you’re a couple of hundred miles out in the middle of the ocean there is a lot of fetch! The result is winds that are strong but accompanied by some waves and roll.
Let me stress – it’s not dangerous, it’s just not pleasant. The boat does a lot of rolling and bouncing as we claw our way South. It’s kind of like living on a Tilt-a-Whirl carnival ride…for 36 hours instead of two minutes. So you have to think about doing things like cooking and making calls of nature on that Tilt-a-Whirl too. Right now we’re not worrying about heading East, as we will are predicted to have next to no wind later in the week.
But today it’s rock and roll in 20+ knots of breeze with waves around 10-12 feet, watching out for some squalls that bring rain and winds up to the mid 30’s. No one is getting sick but we’ve not gotten as much sleep as we like. On the plus side it’s warm now and staying that way. Shortly after sunset we got a kick up to 30+ for a while while we worked through a couple of squalls. We’ve opted to add some Southwest to our heading; we need to head East but everyone needs some sleep tonight and the ride is much better.
Nothing to worry about; tomorrow the wind unfortunately is supposed to die down in the afternoon. For now, we adjust the sails and move on!
