Once anchored and before I went to my bunk for a well deserved rest I learned that I needed to get up again at 5:00 am as we needed to do "anchor watch" to make sure that the anchor had not dragged. This involved checking some bearings every half hour and checking the anchoring line for chafe every hour. This turned out to be incredibly boring. At that time of the night my mind only thought about going back to bed and managing to stay awake to be able to do this task was just a big struggle.
Finally at 08:00 it was my turn to leave the watch but just about then I was feeling energised again. But it seems I was the only one to feel like that. Everyone else seemed to be knackered after the rough night and it was not until 09:30 that some people started appearing. I went to my bunk for some rest and a short while later I got called for a group meeting. Our skipper informed us that, given the issues that we found last night, and given that the forecast was for the wind to increase today and the following days, with even the possibility of force 8+ winds, we would drop our plans to sail continuously. Instead we would be sailing all together, with no watches, during the day and we would find a place to anchor or dock at night. I understood the reasons for this change and I think it was the right decision. But that does not mean that I liked it as it removed one of the main objectives of level 2, which is getting used to sailing continuously under a watch system.
It also meant that we went back to having to set up everything every morning before we started sailing and we needed to put everything back before we settled for the night. This detracted from our actual sailing time and it was another reason for me not liking the change. But what can you do, we were just not enough people to do anything else safely.
It also meant that we went back to having to set up everything every morning before we started sailing and we needed to put everything back before we settled for the night. This detracted from our actual sailing time and it was another reason for me not liking the change. But what can you do, we were just not enough people to do anything else safely.
Pulling the anchor back into the boat was a back-breaking process, we needed the whole team pulling and even then we were all exhausted when we finished the process. And the boat was just full of mud everywhere... finally around 1pm we managed to start sailing. The wind was certainly increasing, we were sailing under 30knots. We did a "tackathon", doing many tacks in quick succession. I found that I had completely mastered this evolution, I felt really confident in all the different positions and I understood the process perfectly. We also did a couple of gybes and there I felt much less confident, with some of the steps of the process not completely clear in my head, I was going to need more practice.
We did a tethered man over board practice and it went perfectly. It was interesting to see how badly into the water you could end if you fell on the low side of the boat, even if tethered if you were using your long line. And how different the situation was once you were on the high side of the boat. In a tethered man over board situation when going upwind it is really very important to heave to as soon as possible.
At the end of the day I felt quite exhausted, my brain was not working correctly, I clearly saw this when mooring, I found myself trying to do some stuff to help and my brain was just not responding. We had docked in a floating pontoon in the River Hamble. This pontoon was not connected to land, so no pub! Not a problem and I was glad to turn in early, around 10.
We did a tethered man over board practice and it went perfectly. It was interesting to see how badly into the water you could end if you fell on the low side of the boat, even if tethered if you were using your long line. And how different the situation was once you were on the high side of the boat. In a tethered man over board situation when going upwind it is really very important to heave to as soon as possible.
At the end of the day I felt quite exhausted, my brain was not working correctly, I clearly saw this when mooring, I found myself trying to do some stuff to help and my brain was just not responding. We had docked in a floating pontoon in the River Hamble. This pontoon was not connected to land, so no pub! Not a problem and I was glad to turn in early, around 10.
