Rhythmic Roll

15:30UTC 08/08/07 44'35.9N 009'24.14W

Another beautiful day in the fearsome Bay of Biscay - we are very lucky. We are also very wobbly, we are running almost dead downwind in fairly light breeze, a force 3 from the NNE. What that means is that the wind is right behind the boat, and we have a sail out each side, moving gently along at about 5-6 knots. As the swells move under the boat she rocks from left to right to left building a little with each swing until reaching some sort of maximum when there are one or two sharp swings that have us all holding on and waiting. The tins slide about the lockers and any loose items cavort from one side to the other before the boat comes to her senses and sits upright with a little shake of apology to her crew before setting off again, serenely rocking along gently as if nothing had happened. And five minutes later, the whole cycle reaches another oscillatory climax and then returns to the level again. Repeat for many hours.

Life on board proceeds now around this rocking cycle, with activity slowing at the end of the five minutes as everyone reaches for something to hold on to and waits for the last two rolls before continuing their conversation, food preparation, typing, navigation, snoozing or whatever they were doing. We've been thinking about a gybe - heading across the wind in a slightly different direction - for a bit now in order to take us a little further away from the Finisterre coast and the big ship motorway that is 50 miles off that coast. The appearance of a supertanker on the radar, and then on the horizon six miles ahead, on a direct course for us, gave us the excuse to make the gybe so we've spent fifteen minutes preparing and doing that.

It's a bit different to racing in the bay when we say 'ready to gybe - gybe-oh' and it's done. Here we roll away the jib, lower the jib pole to the deck and switch the sheets over. Then we remove the main boom preventer and bring the boom to the centreline before it swipes across of it's own accord. We re-rig the preventer on the other side ready to use. We take the boat off autopilot and turn her carefully through the wind. The boom is let out gently and the preventer tightened up as it goes until all is in the right place. Then the autopilot goes back on and we wait for Georgina to finish clucking wildly, which tells us that she's happy with the course given. We tweak that course to what we want, then hoist the jib pole into the right position, unfurl the jib, sheet it in and tighten up the pole downhaul.

Easy as that. You can see why the skipper says 'we need to think about a gybe' to which the crew asks 'when?' and the answer is 'we'll do it mid-afternoon, after lunch and afternoon zzz's'

And the supertanker had seen us and was already turning away but you know what they say about it taking 5 miles to turn one of those things - it's true.

Tonight's cocktail: 'Sloppy Seas' - Sangria (can you tell that the cocktail cabinet is a little light on base ingredients?)

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