Squall right over the boat
Approaching squall
Morning start , metallic gray seas
23 Apr, 07 – 21.40
16.0031N,41.1905W
24 hr progress: 27.4 Nautical Miles
Distance to Antigua: 2499 Nautical Miles
Distance left to Antigua (straight line): 1177 Nautical Miles ( 2177 km) (1 NM = 1.85 km)
Wave height: 10-12 ft, Winds: 15-20 knots ENE, Bearing: 270 -310 degrees.
Gray, windy and rainy. Very difficult rowing conditions today. Waves from the East and South East, wind from the North East. No wild life around, apart from the breakfast breakfast show put on by the flying fish, gliding about 6 ft off the water near the boat. Sharks, dolphins, whales have all disappeared off the surface in the bad weather.
As I stepped onto the deck this morning, I saw the mast of a yacht near the horizon, heading due West. There was no warning from the radar reflector, so seeing another boat took me by suprise. Its been my first sighting of another man made object in 20 days (since that tanker that ran me over). Quite a weird moment. I've got quite used to seeing nothing around but water in all directions.
Had a shorter night rowing session as the conditions were too rough to row. It was also too cloudy to see any of the April Lyrids, the peak of the meteor showers that were promised to show up on the 22nd.
Not much luck in the sleeping department as well. Crashing waves all around. We got hit by a massive freak wave at around 4.00 am last night. It made such a huge crash, that for a moment I thought we had hit a floating shipping container or some other submerged object in the water.
The wave dumped a lot of water in the bilge again, making the boat roll even more than usual. I had to pump out about 1 foot of water from bilge before going back to sleep. Didn't have much memory of it this morning. Thought I had dreamt about about pumping water out of the bilge, until I found the torch that I had left out on deck.
A very exhausting and frustrating day of rowing – as reflected in the quality of todays posting.
B
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