Wednesday 26th June 2013
Day 2
7am my watch
Well I was rudely awaken by The Captain, well not really but , one minute I was dreaming away and then woken up by a concerned voice.
I jumped up so fast, heart racing, and was handed a pair of binoculars.
There was something on the horizon that The Captain could not make out, so bleary eyed I look, at first it looked like a very small island with palm trees, and The Captain was convinced that's what it was, but why was it getting pulled by what looked like two tug boats.
On second or third look to me it looked like an oil rig, which I told The Captain, he was like no way, he grabs the binoculars off me, and finally gave in and said yeah your right.
He was so concerned that it was an island that was not on the charts, and thinking man we could of just ran straight into that, ( he had been awake for a long time ) haha
So am thinking situation under control can I go back to sleep now, I look over at the time, it's 6.30am, I had been asleep for 5 hours, man that was a great sleep if woken up in panic.
We do not see much boat activity at all so it is great excitement when we do, so was glad he woke me, in the end.
At the moment I'm watching a tanker go by about 6nm away, so thats two in one day wow.
The only two other boats we have seen was a tug boat the first night, which we had a bit of a situation with as well we were trying very hard to get out of his way, he was not trying so hard, we ended up starting the engine, to make us go a bit faster, and we past each other by 0.3nm a bit too close.
The other was another one that gave me a fright, I was on watch it was night time and the alarm goes off on the AIS, yeah we have an alarm working on it now, thank god.
The fridge guy who could not fix our fridge, fixed our AIS...HAHA go figure.
So the alarm goes off it tells me we are on a collision course in about 4 minutes, talk about panic, I drop everything jump up, this time I woke The Captain, as I could not see it.
Wildly scanning the horizon, we eventually see it about 4nm away, the AIS got that one wrong, well the distance anyway.
And I know your waiting for it, nope no click, click, clicks... :-(
So yeah that one not so exciting, with that situation under control we both settled down once more.
Well we sure have had some highs and lows today, what a mixed bag.
The highs, I had clicks, :-)
The first fish must of been so big, he took off racing, with all my rig and a good chunk of line, the 2nd I caught, what a battle it was I had so much fun, when it got closer we realised it was a big barracuda, now we do not want to eat them as around the Caribbean they have ciguatera poison and we so don't want to get that, so we try so hard to get it off the hook, far out any other time they come off, so easy, so out comes our brand new trusty net, between the two of us we wrestled this damn fish on board, and man you should of seen the teeth on this monster, they looked like a cross between a shark and dogs teeth, scary stuff.
Now this guy was at least a meter long no joke, it was huge and the hook was right stuck, so we both look at each other, and both saying I'm not putting my hands near that mouth.
So The Captain goes and gets some pliers, while I have my foot on the handle of the net, which in turn is squishing its head still, then he comes back we swap places and the hook comes out real easy, next we had to get the thing overboard, man no one told me fishing would be so hard.
Man we were puffing and panting like crazy but managed to get it over with all fingers and toes in tack.
So am not sure if this was a high or a low.
But the real high was dolphins, we had three of them jumping and playing around the boat for a good half hour or so, we both actually, went up on the front deck and just enjoyed the show, was so nice.
Then the lows, it looks like we can't go a full two days without something breaking, once again, the main sails line chafed through, far out it never ends, The Captain managed to get the sail in, with a bit of a struggle, but is so not a happy camper.
The problem with the main sail down, is that we rock and roll all over the place, we have had really calm sea and it been so nice, well that changed in an instant.
We had been dodging rain clouds for the last hour or so and was keeping a close watch on one, off to our port side.
Everything was calm and The Captain decided to go and try and fix the main sail, he took one step out of the cockpit, when all hell broke loose, the storm came on us so quick we hardly had a chance to do anything, I was madly trying to get the covers down and zipped up, when I felt myself falling backwards, I grabbed hold of the closes thing to me and turned around, man I so wish I hadn't.
We were heeled so far over, And we were laying sideways in the ocean, I can tell you I thought the other stuff was scary, this went way beyond scary.
I just cried out to The Captain and he said I know I'm trying to face us into the wind, he was pushing buttons like crazy on the auto pilot, to get us turned around into the wind so we could get upright again.
I really could not tell you how long it took, as I was just crying and hanging on.
We actually did a whole 360° turn to get the boat right, and then it was over, it did not last long at all, but it sure was nasty.
I don't think I ever want to go through that again, its the first time that I really thought our lives were in danger, scary, scary stuff.
It's 6pm and I'm feeling so strung out, I can't even write anymore today.
Well tomorrow is another day.