Diary for Sailng on Windwanderer.


Sunday 26th May 2013

2013-05-26

Sunday 26th May 2013

Day 7

Well some how I have messed up the dates, so I hope now I'm back on track, at least I had the days right if nothing else.

So a Big Big Happy Birthday to you Mr Anthony, I hope you have a fantastic day. xxx

And another to my Nephew James, I hope you have a great day too. xxx

Yeah I know we have a lot of Birthdays in and around May in our family.

6am

Well our stress levels are in overdrive,

For the last hour or so things kinda went pear shape once again.

I woke up with The Captain starting the motor, asked why, was told that we need to gain some speed if we want to make it into Sait Maarten in daylight, then offered my help he said no its fine just rest there.

Yeah right,

He goes down to check the bilge and its full of sea water, far out, I'm up in a flash, race down, well not really race, more like a sideways fast crab crawl, we have learned that if you don't want to get thrown from one side of the boat to the other, you start at the top of the stairs and slide down sideways with your butt on the handrail, and basically go sideways almost all the way around, grabbing onto stuff along the way, now we do have handrails on the roof to grab hold of but yours truly, is too short to reach them...haha

Anyway he has that all under control, the bilge pump is working fine, i'm a bit worried about where it is coming in, but we both think its from all the waves that crash over us all the time.

So I go make us a coffee each come up top, take one mouthful and The Captain races up the steps, and turns off the motor, earlier in the journey we notice that a hose had fallen onto the prop, that was supposed to be fixed, and the captain needed to go and tie it up, so down he goes grabs all his tools and gets to work, again he says he is ok,

That again last about 5 mins, three more sips of coffee, he needs paper towel, so do the crab walk down again, pass him the paper towel, about to come up again, he than wants me to grab a torch, and go around the other side of him and shine it into the hole,

The poor guy is on his tum, trying to tie up a rope and desperately trying not to face plant the floor with each wave.

We are rocking and rolling so much and I'm trying so hard not to chuck as I can feel myself getting greener by the minute.

When he gives me the green light to go I race up so quick and just hang my head over the side and breath in the cool air.

Ok so number three, he comes back up starts the motor,and there is this almighty crash, on deck, OMG, we both fly for a torch and race to the back of the cockpit to see what has happened, it's still quite dark, and can't see anything at all, then we notice a shroud from the rigging has broken away and fallen on deck, this is a very thick wire rope that holds the mast in place.

Another thing to get fixed it is ok at the moment as the Captain got the sail in and there is no pressure on it right now.

On a brighter note we just saw lights from land, yay yay yay.

We are about 10nm off our first waypoint, this is the island of Anquilla, and we will head around that and onto Sait Maarten, it is still about another 30 odd miles to go, and I know both of us can't wait to get there.

Well it's 9am and we can see Sait Maarten although its a way off its like a huge mountain in the sky. Another yay yay yay.

Wow we are getting at bit closer and all you can see is mountain ranges, it's amazing not at all what we expected.

It looks like from here like something out of Jurasic Park, you know when the helicopter come into view of the island, well that's exactly what it looks like, you can almost see the dinosaurs roaming around.

And we are here after almost 1,000 nm and 7 days we have made it, we are very very tired but quite proud of ourselves.

Well tomorrow is another day.