We spent most of the time today reviewing a lot of concepts from level 1: all the evolutions to hoist and drop sails, all security on deck, working with winches, man over board tethered and non-tethered, etc... All while still tied to the dock. I understand that this was needed but in the afternoon I was growing a little restless as I really wanted to go out and start sailing.
Finally, around 4 in the afternoon we filled up with fuel and sailed away with the idea of not returning back there until Wednesday evening. We had split our crew in port and starboard watches and from 8:00 pm we started running these watches. The watch system that we were using was to split the day in 7 periods, four of 3 hours during the night and 3 of 4 hours during the day. I do not really like this system as the rest periods are just too short. In a 3 hour rest period you barely have set comfortably into your bunk when you need to be raising again. And there is no really long period that really lets you rest. Anyway, the evening was beautiful, not a lot of clouds, no rain and not too much wind. We had a full moon and sailing was beautiful. I was feeling really happy. We set course South to go into the English Channel.
However, things started to go wrong soon. The sea state started to get quite choppy as soon as we left the Solent. Soon we had several members of the crew feeling seasick. One of the persons that was on mother watch was not feeling well at all so I volunteered to take his place and prepare dinner. A lot of work down below to get dinner ready with the boat jumping around in the waves. After dinner, even though I was not on watch I went out on deck as I was feeling great sailing under the moon. But it seems I was one of the few having fun as we soon started having other members of the crew feeling seasick. I went down for a short while to get some rest until was is my time to be on watch at 11:00pm. The boat was jumping around like a mad horse and it was difficult to rest.
When it was my time I went up on deck and took the helm. I was feeling really good, happy to be sailing but a lot of the people were not feeling well and we were sailing the boat very short handed, basically Gavin was having to act like Spiderman and do 4 different things whenever we needed to do a tack. Suddenly I realised that the course that they had given me to steer was North. North? That did not make any sense, when I went down below we were sailing South. I then learnt that, given that we really didn't have enough manpower to sail securely into the English Channel, it had been decided to sail back into the Solent and anchor somewhere to pass the night safely.
Finally, around 4 in the afternoon we filled up with fuel and sailed away with the idea of not returning back there until Wednesday evening. We had split our crew in port and starboard watches and from 8:00 pm we started running these watches. The watch system that we were using was to split the day in 7 periods, four of 3 hours during the night and 3 of 4 hours during the day. I do not really like this system as the rest periods are just too short. In a 3 hour rest period you barely have set comfortably into your bunk when you need to be raising again. And there is no really long period that really lets you rest. Anyway, the evening was beautiful, not a lot of clouds, no rain and not too much wind. We had a full moon and sailing was beautiful. I was feeling really happy. We set course South to go into the English Channel.
However, things started to go wrong soon. The sea state started to get quite choppy as soon as we left the Solent. Soon we had several members of the crew feeling seasick. One of the persons that was on mother watch was not feeling well at all so I volunteered to take his place and prepare dinner. A lot of work down below to get dinner ready with the boat jumping around in the waves. After dinner, even though I was not on watch I went out on deck as I was feeling great sailing under the moon. But it seems I was one of the few having fun as we soon started having other members of the crew feeling seasick. I went down for a short while to get some rest until was is my time to be on watch at 11:00pm. The boat was jumping around like a mad horse and it was difficult to rest.
When it was my time I went up on deck and took the helm. I was feeling really good, happy to be sailing but a lot of the people were not feeling well and we were sailing the boat very short handed, basically Gavin was having to act like Spiderman and do 4 different things whenever we needed to do a tack. Suddenly I realised that the course that they had given me to steer was North. North? That did not make any sense, when I went down below we were sailing South. I then learnt that, given that we really didn't have enough manpower to sail securely into the English Channel, it had been decided to sail back into the Solent and anchor somewhere to pass the night safely.
I understand that this was the right decision to make but I couldn't help feeling a bit frustrated that we could not continue our sailing. The problem really was that there were so few of us. If we had had a larger crew, we would have been able to continue sailing even if some people were sick. But when it is more than 50% of your crew that is sick, there is very little that you can do.
We continued sailing until we reached the place where we wanted to anchor, on the North side of the Isle of Wight. Setting the anchor was quite difficult, mainly because it weights a ton and we needed to attach it to a halyard so that we could move it around. And getting it under the pulpit so that it could be dropped was a struggle. We finally managed to be properly anchored around 2:00 am and I went down below for a deserved (but short) sleep.
