No stopping, pressing on through the high seas

Wednesday 27 April

We had thought we might stop over, just the other side of the Venezuelan border, near the desert that Alessandro had shown us pictures of. It looked pretty bleak and we were in the groove, with winds in the mid twenties, doing great boat speeds so we pressed on. Contrary to the forecasts, the wind was meant to die down, in fact it increased and then hovered around 30 knots the rest of the day. Big choppy seas with huge waves, that we would surf down peaking at 15 knots of boat speed. I wince thinking of Kylie doing it in her very rocky monohull! Thank goodness Rowan has only told me now that it is rated number 5 as the top most dangerous sea passages! It never felt that bad, she (PolePole) seems to be very stable. We did have one fluke wave that unusually hit us from behind or side (not too sure), while I was on watch in the early hours. It rudely woke Rowan in bed as he had the window open under the staircase, it drenched him and the bed, all the bedding had to come off.

Passing land

Choppy waters

A lot of flying fish have hit the deck poor things. I wondered how their eyes adjust from sea to air. Maybe they close their eyes in blind panic when they leave the water? A lot of kamikaze fish with no birds around to have a free meal.

A flying fish hits the trampoline and doesn’t bounce off!

With big seas and big winds we got a second reef in before dark and then Rowan very sensibly furled the jib in completely. We were only sailing with the main sail up, which had two reefs in it (to make it smaller) and we were still hitting 10 knots boat speed surfing down the waves.

Trying to give a sense of the waves – the video starts in slo mo and then ends in normal speed

We had a delicious salad nicoise for supper, with some frozen tuna we had bought off a fisherman in St Vincent. We have huge delicious ripe avos and tasty ripe tomatoes. Dressed with a yoghurt, dill and garlic sauce. I had just discovered my frozen dill I had bought in France, works a treat, still bright green and fragrant. Our frozen mushrooms from the Canaries have also worked very well. We are slowly emptying the deep freeze.