Day 22 – Go Faster Haircuts?
Posted on November 24th, 2013
The forecast is for light variable winds for the weekend in my little patch of Ocean. And the forecast was right!! After light winds on Saturday, the wind disappeared overnight, and we ended up drifting along in zero wind, propelled only by the residual ground swell waves from the North East. The breeze is now forecast to slowly fill in from the east, but I’m set up for a slow day.
These patches of light and zero wind are mentally & emotionally hard, with very slow progress and needing to fight to take advantage of what breeze there is. I’d very much prepared myself for this one, and am slightly more relaxed, and taking advantage of the time to sort things out. It’s almost like having a relaxing Sunday morning at home. All I need now are some pain au raisin, the papers and a coffee!!!
In the calm before the …err…calm, I took the opportunity to tidy up the boat and the skipper a bit. This means we’ve both had haircuts!! I took the clippers to trim what remains of my curly locks, and tidied up Haskapa’s ‘Mo’ – which proved very resistant to removal!! Most of it is still in situ!!
Then, sporting our new turbo nutter haircuts, we put our baseball caps on backwards (me literally, boat figuratively – although was tempted to put white spinnaker on backwards to see if it behaved any better that way!), and waited for the wind not to blow, both smirking ironically at how funny we are!! I also put on my iPod warp-speed playlist of punk and rap, which had its last airplay during the passage through the maelstrom between Tenerife and La Gomera – when I was surfing down waves at 14knots under triple reefed main only!! In the event, we tickled along ok for most of Saturday, before the wind finally ran out of puff on Saturday night.
During the tidy up of the boat I managed to break one of the four pairs of sunglasses I have. I don’t really have a good head/face shape for sunglasses (or hats!!), so I have to choose styles carefully to avoid just looking odd. The other issue is that an active lifestyle and an occasionally tendency for clumsiness make it nonsensical to buy branded sunnies, so I normally buy cheap ones that vaguely suit me.
Having lost my main pair about 10 miles out from Gibraltar, then damaging the reserve pair en route, I had a series of panic buys in La Gomera – which is not a world centre for sunglass outlets. The result was panic buy number 1 – which were last seen being worn by someone in the 80′s, and number 2 panic buy of two paid which do suit me, but only cost €5 each!!
It will come as no surprise to any of you that the only pair which are unbroken are the silly 80′s ones! Thankfully there are no fashion police out here, or cameras to record how dumb I look, and I can anticipate a nasty fate for them prior to arrival in Antigua!! Also, there is a reason why things only cost €5 – because that’s all they are worth!!
The lack of wind brings other challenges too, in that it is incredibly hot! I know the UK is really cold now, so you won’t enjoy hearing how sunny it is here! There is no real escape from the heat – on deck and in the cabin are equally stifling! It is a bit cooler at night, which helps, but that will change as I drop further south in the next week or so. The only respite is when the breeze kicks in. Somehow I don’t expect much pity from you lot back in chilly Blighty!!!
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Huge thank you’s today go to; Bill & Joyce Mayon-White, Veronica Johnson-Roffey, Victoria Curran, Martin & Kim Lampard, Chris & Babs Duxbury and Kit Flemming. Thank you all so much for your very kind donations!
