GIANT waves today – I thought they were big before, but I wrong!  We have seen some big waves on Ruthless, but these waves sound so different on the catamaran.  It sounds as if our boat is rising on the wave and then crashing down on rocks – it is the worse sound in the entire world.  Each time the boat hits a wave it rips through my nerves.

Everything is covered in salt and is wet, even though the sun is out and it is warm.  It is the first time that I feel comfy in a skort and a jacket, but that is the only thing bringing me comfort.  All I can say is “thank goodness” for the drugs my doc gave me as they have prevented me from getting sick – even with today’s rollers (scopolamine Patch or “Transferm Scop Patch” and meclazine an oral medication).  Even though the wind is blowing hard, the waves are too big and to give us any boat speed – it takes to darn long to go up the wave and then corkscrew down – we are not making much head way toward our destination.  We will certainly miss our flights.  I kept my nose in my book attempting to ignore the fact that the boat literally disappears and is swallowed by each wave.  During my shift I had to suck it up, swallow my fears and get on the helm.  For the first time on this trip, I almost reached for the xanax (anti-anxiety medicine), but stopped short from actually taking it.  All I kept thinking was “what happened to a great tail wind, set the spinnaker and never make any sail changes” that is what was promised, what was said on the blogs, what the ARC website and previous people who crossed?  It was a long, wet night, but we all made it through.

Day 6 or the events of Saturday.

Sailing fast through the night the wind came up so when Christine came up for her shift, we reduced sail, one reef in the main and a shortened jib. Was cruising along, all night long, heading towards an easy 200 mile day.

Off to sleep. Woke up to some big waves and some nice sunny skies.

What do Vera Cruz, Race to the Boarder and now the Atlantic crossing have in common? I’m a frayed knot you are not gonna guess it. So the Topping lift chafed through by the time I woke up. But we were still single reef’d, and doing 10kn in the correct direction. The topping lift had chafed along the rear edge of the main sail, 1/2 dangling behind the boat, and 1/2 still wrapped around the spin halyards and mast.

Now the topping lift holds up the boom to keep it off the solar panels, so when changing the main sail up and down the topping lift is quite necessary.

So we made breakfast @ 10kn – hoping for flatter seas in the afternoon. After breakfast I figured we should remedy the situation and go up there, we weren’t getting bounced around “that” much. Since the topping lift rope was rapped around both spin halyards, I couldn’t risk using both of those for the ride to the top of the mast. Chose to use one of those and a rolling hitch for the safety line on the spreaders/rigging on the way up. Meanwhile Christine is saying NO, you can’t go up there, finally agreed if I wore my PFD.

Fractional spin halyard tied to bosun’s chair. Safty line with rolling hitch on rigging, and PFD safty harness clipped to rigging as well. Expected the motion to be fun, but holy rag doll batman, and I was only going 3/4 of the way up the 70 foot mast. Christine has some video, and not sure we need to go to any more cirque du soliel shows when we can create our own.

I about cried when I got to the topping lift and I was already tired from holding on, that I couldn’t pull it down. There wasy no way I was coming down empty handed. Untangled the rope got thrown out around the jib, and finally was able to pull it down. Probably the longest its ever taken to tie a bowline knot when I tied that to the bosun’s chair. Now back down, feet wrapped around anything and everything to stabilize, did take a 5 minute break sitting on the speaders at least that was comfortable.

Cold beer was had back on deck. An hour to rest, then tied the two pieces together, we’ll wait of some smoother/slower day to re-rig the topping lift as there is plenty of spare line.

That turns out to be one of the better moves as we got 30kn of winds and 10+ foot seas yesterday evening, so being able to add the 2nd reef became necessary.

We saw the thunderstorm coming so we reduced to the 3rd reef, but somewhere the lazy jacks got untied to sailbag didn’t catch the entire main, tired from the earlier activities and not nearly tall enough to reach high enough the bag is there and also waiting on calmer weather to really secure. When we put in the 3rd reef, the main halyard was thumping the mast, so we just dropped it in favor of slow motoring to the storm.

Probably a good thing too. 45k of wind came bustling through with rain to accompany the 12foot seas, then back to 30kn of wind.

We have been in a thunderstorm so this update is a few hours late, but we are still trucking due west across. We had a spectacular lightning show that we motored right through, turning off all electronics and storing some in the oven in case the strike was closer than we wanted it to be.

Right now, making water, one engine running, partial jib out – biding time as the weather is supposed to go our way within 30hrs.

Crew is well rested with the slowing down and motoring through the high seas. Christine is doing well too, in this freakishly huge waves, over one and into the next.

Everyone is doing well, just had some yummy omelets with left over pork chops from last nights sammiches, too much wave action for a big dinner last night. Some typing, couple reading and one on watch, chugging along!

Course over ground: 273 Speed over ground: 4.9kn Total miles through water: 858 Miles to destination: 2168 kn if we were a bird.

We are all getting into a routine where we know our shifts, roles and places.   My body is actually getting used to the schedule, the strange sleep hours, the rocking of the boat and the light eating.  The food is great, but the portions are “normal” size rather than the standard “American” giant portions.   Maybe we will lose weight J Matt thinks the weather is getting warmer, but I am still wearing the same layers and clothes day and night.  The good news is that you don’t go through a variety of clothes or a large assortment of clothes as you just re-wear the same thing over and over again as it just doesn’t matter.  In fact I am sleep in the same clothes that I am wear during the day and to my surprise I have no issues with it at all.

During the early evening our 10 year old topping lift frayed through. Thank goodness the main had a single reef so the boom did not topple on top of our cockpit cover which housed our solar panels.  Unfortunately it meant that someone was going to have to go up the mast to get the end of the topping lift to re-tie it and Mother Nature decided to send us some big winds, waves and boat speed.  Of course it had to be Matt to go up.  Matt grabbed the boson chair and had determined to make a running hitch, but I insisted he wear his pfd and latch it on the line as well – three times the protection.  It was the most horrifying thing to see my sweet husband up 60’ from the deck in 20 knots of wind, 10 knots of boat speed and 12’ seas – what was I thinking?  He bounced around like a rag doll – it was awful.  There were several times when he was only hanging from his safety lines and his body was bouncing around the lines and off the mast as if it were made of rubber.  The good news is was able to repair the line and make it down without any serious injuries.  My prayers were answered.  After that was fixed and most of us were in bed, we had a massive storm that brought lots of lightening during Matt’s shift.  He quickly turned off all of our equipment and placed some items in the oven.  We had over 45 knots of wind, bare poles, rain, thunder and lightening – pretty darn scary.  For my shift it was just rain, very little thunder and no lightening but it was still a long shift keeping me on pins and needles