Around 0030 I wake and notice the boat's movement is more lively and activity in the cockpit, George is rolling in some reefs in the genoa. The wind has increased. I was wrong about just one reef. I get up to have a pee and then poke my head outside to have a look at the conditions and chat with George. Eventually I acknowledge we need another reef and we both tog up in full oilskins for the first time (they're not really oilskins - come to think of it I don't know why they were ever called that). This time I go up on the foredeck to do the donkey work while George looks after the helm and lines in the cockpit. Once that's done I go back to bed but it's quiet a lively night and I don't sleep well.
I'm up at 0200 to relieve George. It's pretty boisterous and cold, still 10° but the wind chill makes it feel colder. I get togged up. This now involves a lot of layers; long johns, jeans , oilskin trousers, socks, sea boats (I can only just get the right one on over my still slightly swollen foot); T-shirt, turtle kneck, shirt, light fleece, fleece 2, fleece 3, oilskin jacket, kneck warmer, woolly hat. Having a pee is a right performance. Not only that but I forgot to take my bladder and prostate meds and so have been pissing every hour or so!! Anyway, once I'm finally dressed I go back up top to check the fuzzy horizon and the radar and then retire below and make a hot drink and grab a breakfast bar.
I'm back up top every 20 minutes to check for ice bergs and turn the radar on every 40 minutes for the same purpose. Down below I write the blog and increasingly fall asleep in between trips to the cockpit and the toilet!
I have some very vivid dreams. In one I'm on the boat with Charles sailing very fast down a town high street whilst clinging on for dear life as we swerve around cars and buildings. I know I'm asleep and yell to Charles "wake me up, wake me up" but he doesn't. The dream morphs into another, I'm following an old woman along a path in some woods; the scene is a rather 'dark' version of a Little Red Riding Hood panto.
Eventually the old woman arrives at a house in the middle of the woods and stops outside the front door. I prod her with a stick. She turns round and looks at me. "I know you" she says, "my husband made you redundant." Then a figure of a sour pale looking man dressed in black materialises beside her. He looks at me. "So you're dead too" he says. Somehow I know the old woman can't see him but knows that he's there. She starts punching the thin air where he stands. He doubles up in pain and complains in the way that 'hen pecked' husbands in 1970s TV sit coms did. My watch alarm goes off and I wake up!
I go outside again to check all is well. It is.
The rest of my watch is uneventful and George relieves me at 0600. I go back to bed and agree with George that I'll stay there until 0830 and set my alarm. Before it goes off George calls - "Tom there's something you will want to see out here". I'm suddenly desperate for a pee again! "Have I got time for a pee?" "Yes". When I get to the cockpit George is pointing off to port. There's a large Ice berg about a quarter of a mile away shaped like a space ship. It's about the size of 6 terraced houses.
It looks like there's an even bigger one further behind it. As it disappears astern we enter fog ...
...that progressively and soon our excitement and wonder is replaced by anxiety and nervousness. Are there any more out there? Will we run into one? I switch the radar back on and George goes up to the bow as look out. I get togged up and keep an eye on the radar. The fog thins after about an hour and George goes back to bed around 1100. We're still only making slow progress,roughly northwards, in light airs.
I do the washing up and keep a lookout. Nothing much happens during the course of the morning and very little progress is made.
George gets up around midday and makes an absolutely fabulous brunch of poached eggs and bacon and mashed avocado on sourdough bread.
We enter very light northerly winds in the afternoon and struggle to make any progress at all. We also start to draw near a couple of Chinese Fishing boats and so decide to make use of the engine to clear them and make some progress North.
I go back to bed around 1500 to try and catch up on some lost sleep. George calls me 1600 because pilot whales and dolphins are in sight. They don't come close to the boat however. I go back to bed.
By 1615 there's just enough wind to sail slowly North East. We get periods of more fog. I start cooking dinner around 1800 and we download the latest weather charts to study over dinner. Over/after dinner we constuct a detailed weather route on the Predict Wind weather app. The weather over the next few days is set to be very changeable with periods of strong favourable winds, calms and strong contrary winds. We must decide which direction we should go in now in order to be in the best position to deal with the wind changes in the future and we need to decide what to do when we enter the period of strong contrary winds which should last for about 8 hours. We decide the best thing to do then is to heave to. Sailing close hauled then will be pretty unpleasant and we would probably make very little if any progress.
Then around 2130 we switch the engine on and motor towards our first new waypoint and I rig both running poles in anticipation of the arrival of strengthening southerly winds.
By 2230 we have enough wind to sail and I go to bed.
By midnight on the 10th we have covered 69 miles in a straight line. There are 443 miles left to run, which means we are about 70 miles nearer than 24 hours ago ( I know the numbers don't add up)
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