Adam catching a nap between squalls.
We abandoned all thoughts of keeping records over the last three days save a note on our location scrawled in the log book. We’ve got a serious case of the -can’t make any progress because we spend so much time heaving to in order to make it through the squalls that perpetually come and go and then when the wind dies there is too much of a swell to do anything but rock around, get everything soaking wet, and go insane – blues. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the gale on the way to the Magadalen Islands; there were no scary parts and no one was seasick but we were pretty miserable for the whole time. I spent at least two of my overnight shifts curled up at the entrance to the boat, soaking wet and kidding myself that if I just scrunched up small enough the dodger would keep the rain off - the rain which was coming in from all angles it seemed. I did this while we spent hours heaving to (purposely stalling out the boat and just drifting when the wind and weather is bad). The rain seemed to stop when I wasn’t on shift and Daniel was starting to predict when a squall would hit based on when I was on deck. The depressing part is that you can’t make progress while drifting so we lost at least a day– but we are back on track and drying out and today we saw a sperm whale, about 30 feet away from the boat, resting on the surface of the water. Interesting fact from Daniel, whales are hemispheric sleepers which means that they sleep one side of their brain at a time. So while right side of the brain is taking a cat nap, the left side is functioning and keeping the whale floating and breathing and then it switches sides when the right side of the brain is charged up. This blog is certainly entertaining and educational . . .