And again, we’re in the pilot house on watch and it’s blowing like crazy, the sea swirling and rising and dipping, and with it, us! We’re being bombarded again – not so much by the winds, as the sea state, since before midnight last night and it’s now 15.00 the following afternoon. Through the night, we once again had the big thumping as Pelagic smacked down into the sea, throwing me upwards from my bunk (the four of us in the fore cabins are the ones most effected.( It’s not soul destroying, but I can’t exactly find the humor in it!

So, to place things in some perspective, here is the chronology of the last week. The storm of the millennium was last Thursday/Thursday night – OK, maybe the storm of the season – millennium might be an over statement. Incidentally, I misreported the wind speeds in an earlier piece. When we went back through the data recorded on the instruments, the highest gust was 72 knots, not 68, which is roughly 80 miles an hour – which likely pushes us over in to another Beaufort category – from Force 10 – Significant Storm to Force 11 – Significant Idiots only out in this! Anyway, that storm took until late Saturday/Early Sunday to really calm down (mainly the sea state) and then we had about 24 hours with decent seas and winds. And then, and there has to be an ‘and then’, it all kicked off again (Monday evening), ever so gradually, almost imperceptibly, but kick off it did.

And so here we are, Tuesday afternoon. The forecast doesn’t show this low to be anywhere near as low (bad) as the previous one, but the last one wasn’t meant to be quite as ridiculous as it was. In fact, the forecast has this one getting just a little worse later tonight (winds picking up) and then calming down late tonight/Early tomorrow with the wind veering from its current easterly direction back to the more normal North Westerly. The problem we have is that the winds this time are coming from in front of us, so we are “beating to wind” which is a more uncomfortable point of sail than running (as in with the wind from behind) which is what it was last week.

If you were here now, what you would see is more what you might normally picture when you think of a boat going through rough weather. The bow ducks way down into the waves (which tower above us) then the bow shoots up to the top of the wave as the wave continues to build. At some point, either the wave breaks or the boat rides through and over the wave. If the wave breaks as we get to the top, it does so all over the front of the boat and it dumps massive amounts of water all over the bow, deck and the pilot house – thumping against the reinforced windows (I presume they’re reinforced – or maybe more prayer needed). If the wave doesn’t break, then there might be a kindly wave waiting there, right behind the first, and that will catch our bow and kindly support it and we just plough on. Now, if there’s no other wave immediately behind the first, then the bow of the boat dives right back down towards where the sea should be (way down there), so it drops (remember, what goes up must come down) and keeps dropping until it finds the water way below and hits it – that’s when it violently smacks into the sea and the entire boat vibrates and goes BANG! Hitting the sea this way is literally like hitting concrete. Finally, there’s one more scenario – the monster situation – when there’s no wave to catch our nose and she dives down and down until she reaches the bottom with a huge bang, but to add insult to injury, a sneaky waiting wave above us breaks all over us from up high and drowns the entire boat which disappears under a thundering torrent of water!

Choose your poison, a drowning with convulsions or hitting concrete with reverberations and shock waves.  Me, I like neither. Show me the gentle conditions of the mill pond right now and make me smile! About 4 in 10 waves end in one of the two main scenarios, 1 in 10 takes the piss and is a monster, the other 5 are less spectacular, but still quite violent. In any event, we’re back to moving in unnatural ways to just get around the boat and, by the time we get to land, I will be a mass of bruises and bumps from hitting so many walls, ledges and doors.

My biggest concern right now is that as the watch keepers, we need to produce dinner in less than 3 hours! As we sit here watching and feeling this latest dumping of weather and ineptly chatting to keep our spirits up (and avoid talking about ‘what if’ scenarios associated with weather impact on the boat), we keep downgrading our dinner plans and at this rate it could be pot noodles with cold water! Earlier today, our Colombian cousins, who set the bar for the quality and variety of cuisine on this palaver of a trip, asked if we could all simplify our menus! Looks like they blinked first – or maybe the bangers and mash scared them off (or the rather nice Risotto a la fungi). However, in the end, the weather has made this decision for us, because cooking in these conditions can be life threatening. If the smell doesn’t get you, then the swaying will (cuts, boiling water, dropped ingredients). So, simple it will now be. But, I have my eye on several cans of Heinz Baked Beans in one of the food lockers, and I don’t care how much I like the Colombian guys, if those Beans appear in one of their simplified concoctions first, that would constitute a fully fledged international incident – the only beans a Colombian should be concerned with are coffee beans.

Back to what happens when beating to wind rather than running down wind! When beating, the wind in front of you starts to push the waves up in front of it, building upon the already nasty swell which comes from currents and weather further afield. The conflagration of the swell and the wind over the waves causes the appearance of complete disorder and anger within the sea, which leads to to the boat rising and falling in that corkscrew way I’ve previously mentioned. The winds today are currently only half those of the “Millennial Bugger” of last week, but the movement of the boat is probably more violent because of the wind’s actions on the waves and the fact that we are driving right into them.

This is not untypical weather for this boat to be going through – it’s what it encounters when it comes back from South Georgia Island to the Falklands – a regular exploration trip it makes each summer, beating through the Southern Oceans. I say roll on tomorrow when we should be abeam of Tristan with a much prayed for change of weather system (literally – roll on)!

But – big breaking news – needing to be reported immediately. Thomas, our first mate and all round great sailor and seaman, has just asked me if I would like him to cook dinner tonight. Would I? Oh yes I would indeed! He was obviously listening to the menu changes we were talking about (we started with a lentil and chicken stew and got to baked potatoes with baked beans) and decided if he wanted anything decent to eat, this evening he needed to step in. I usually don’t mind cooking in heavy weather, but right now, stick needles in my eyes please and let me stay up here watching “Son of Bugger rides again” in glorious 3D with surround sound! Sadly, which ever way we look at this, we’re in for another dose of fury from this sea and it’s not going to be a fun night on Pelagic.

Batten the hatches again!

Pip pip