Until Barbuda we were yet to do a night
passage on Orion. The whole point of us coming to the Caribbean and
buying a boat was so I could be introduced to cruising gently, no
rough weather and no long passages thank you very much! The rough
weather was encountered on our second ever journey and I had put off
the night passage until we had no other choice. So we were in Barbuda
and wanting to get to St Martin as soon as possible to start ticking
off some of our task list that had been building since leaving
Grenada in January. With hurricane season in the back of my mind and
no real desire to go hang out with the 'it' crowd in St Barts (that
would be a long day sail), I gave in and started championing the idea
of our first night passage together. I stress the word 'together' as
this was a brand new experience for me but Dylan had done them tons
of times before.
Sure on my day skipper course last
summer myself and 3 others had done a night entry into a port but
that wasn't the same as sailing between islands, taking a watch by
myself and taking control of the boat whilst Dylan slept below. The
more we spoke about it, the more I was looking forward to another new
experience where I would be totally out of my comfort zone.
Working on a 5 knot average and a 90
mile journey we figured we didn't need to leave Barbuda until 5pm. By
the time we reached our first land mass (St Barts) the sun would be
rising and we would be able to see for the rest of the journey.
That morning, Dylan jumped out of bed
early, very excitable and got to work on putting the jack lines in.
For those of you who don't know (and I certainly didn't until a few
weeks ago) these are long seatbelt material straps that run from the
bow to the stern. They are used particularly on night passages to
clip your safety line on to when having to go on deck so if you did
stumble and go to fall overboard, you couldn't as the jack line would
keep you on the right side of the guardrail. The safety line is also
a seatbelt material strap that is hooked to your lifejacket. And yes
parents, of course we wear these at all times!
I took a more leisurely morning reading
then set about planning our passage on the charts. Figuring this was
a good a time as ever to learn how to use the GPS properly, I read
the manual and set about programming in various waypoints so we could
follow a route considering there were no islands to navigate by. I
usually manually plug in waypoints on a paper chart but with
navigating in the dark, a lit up display would be much more
effective. Sourcing the torches and head light I found a red bulb to
use so it wouldn't detract ruin our night vision. We also have this
option in the head (toilet) when getting up in the middle of the
night.
As I like having 'clutter' around the
boat (Ok so Dylan calls it clutter but I call it homely possessions)
it is always my job to stow it away when preparing for a sail. The
baskets, shells, beads, wooden carvings and cushions all go away in
lockers so when we are rocking at sea, there shouldn't be any damage
or anything flying about. I say shouldn't as inevitably every time we
have been sailing so far there is always something that manages to
find its way onto the floor.
Wanting to ensure we had food already
prepared if we got the munchies I boiled 4 eggs, made tuna mayo
sandwiches and put aside some Munch bars (peanut brittle) just in
case. As it turned out I didn't touch them but Dylan made a
substantial dent in the provisions, the cold (now cooked) eggs going
down a treat.
At 5pm on the dot we upped anchor and
using the setting sun in front of us, navigated our way out of the
reefs and into the open ocean. Setting Orion up on a port tack and a
bearing of 300 degrees I hoped that we wouldn't need to change
anything once the sun set. With little light left, Dylan started his
lesson on how to take a watch. It seemed quite simple, just meercat
every 5 mins at what was going on around you. Look for any lights in
the distance, any change in direction, any change in wind speed and
any change in wind direction and then he was off down below for a 45
min snooze, leaving me fully in charge...eeeeek! So I got a big
cushion out to make myself comfy and sat in the dark listening to the
waves slapping the sides and straining my eyes for any lights on the
horizon.
After 10 minutes I was bored. I had
noone to talk to, I couldn't read, I was getting tired, it had
started to drizzle and I had another 10 hours ahead of me before the
sun came up. Confirming pretty quickly that I couldn't continue like
that, I wacked out the iPod and started singing away to my disney
soundtracks, stopping after every song to check the GPS, compass and
horizon. I must have entertained the fishies that night with my
rendition of 'Just around the river bend' and 'A Whole New World'. 45
mins later much to my annoyance (I was just getting into my singing
session), Dylan appeared claiming he couldn't sleep and he wanted to
relieve me of my watch already so I could go and get some sleep. Now
I must confirm at this stage that it had nothing to do with my
singing abilities...its just our boat is very musical. She bangs,
clangs, jiggles, shakes, groans, creeks, putters and clinks all the
time. However normally in the v berth this is just a minor background
noise but sleeping in the sea berth (on the seats in our saloon) you
are right in the middle of the Orion symphony.
Never having a problem falling asleep wherever I am, I went below to have a 3 hour nap. Arranging myself on the narrow settee I threw a sheet over me and closed my eyes trying to block out the loud noises coming from the mast and companionway. No luck, even I couldn't sleep so instead I dozed on and off until 11pm when Dylan woke me up and we swapped places.
With running down wind Orion was
rocking from side to side and after a couple of hours I threw up over
the side. Having had callaloo soup (spinach) the night before, it was
disgusting. Luckily though it only interrupted 20 seconds or so of
'Bare Necessities' and I thought nothing of it. Until I threw up
again half an hour later, this time the contents of my stomach didn't
agree with my throat and it burned my voicebox rendering my voice to
a whisper, feeling like a thousand needles were poking me. I remained
with that pain for 3 days after, feeling like I had just got my
tonsils removed, barely able to swallow a glass of milk never mind a
sandwich! Unlike some seasickness mine seems to disappear as soon as
I am sick so it doesn't limit my ability to take a watch, just takes
my eye off the ball for the seconds I need to feed the fish.
Anyway enough about my vomit and more
about our watch system. We had talked about how many hours we would
do per watch beforehand and settled on 3. We started at 8pm so Dylan
did 8pm – 11, 2am – 5 and I would do 11pm – 2 and then 5am –
8. Although I never really took the 5am – 8 as a watch as we were
at our destination by 6am! A combination of strong and consistent
winds (gusting 25 kts) meant we averaged 6.5 knots cutting our
passage time down.
By 8am we were at anchor and back in
our bed for a well deserved rest before we went to check in and stuff
ourselves with french food. Not only have we now completed our first
night passage (ok and it was no big deal I admit it and a word to sum
it up - uneventful) we have also topped our 500 mile mark – total
professionals now!!
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