Weather dancing
4 Jul 2009
Well what can we say - your weather dances seem to be starting to work.... dance again dance again!!
We are managing to get a bit of South in which is fantastic news as we were thinking that we were never going to be able to in current conditions. Looking at our track you might be wondering what is going on. Well let us enlighten you...
The last few days have been really tough - very strong winds and huge seas battering us about all over the place. A couple of nights ago Sarah was lifted from her seat by a huge wave and dumped unceremoniously on the side of the boat causing her to bruise her back and ribs. She has been out of action since as she's in a fair bit of pain so confined to the cabin which is miserable for her. So we're one angel down at the moment and the rest of us are rowing 2 hours on 1 hour off during the day.
At night the conditions have been too strong to row in so we have had to deploy our para anchor and try to sit it out. Last night it was so bad that it was too strong even for the para anchor which was putting a huge amount of strain on the boat such that it felt as though it could rip the bow cabin off (which is where it is attached). So we had to bring it in and just drift with the weather.
The problem we have is drifting inevitably means we go North as the wind is so strong from the South East. As a result we have gone up past the level of the finish line. The forecast shows strong winds continuing in the same direction into next week, which is why we need your weather dances to bring it round to our favour a bit.
Our priority now is getting there in one piece and safely. We are fighting in true angel spirit towards the finish, but if the weather means we end up North then we realise we might just miss it. We still will have an official ocean crossing but we would lose our race placing. Obviously we'd all be gutted by this and are really hoping it doesn't come to that. And if so, well, we'll still be the first female crew across the Indian Ocean and that can't be bad!
Well we are making our sacrifices to Neptune - he swiped an oar off us this morning. Sent a huge wave which took it right out of the gate and away into the sea. We also have no gas left (had a few dodgy canisters) so no hot food and we're having to rehydrate rations with cold water - yuk! Not ideal in current cold and wet conditions. And to top it all off we're out of chocolate would you believe!!
Anyway not much humour in the blog today but that's not to say we're not all ok if a little battered and bruised. Angels are all good - rest assured. Only 140 miles to go and keeping fingers crossed for landfall early next week. I think we're getting our final lesson to make sure we fully appreciate all the luxuries land brings with it - bring it on!!
