Atlantic Crossing. Days 9–10

Atlantic Crossing. Days 9–10 From Storm to Calm During the night, a squally wind hit us with a heavy downpour. And off Lady Mary went, galloping over the waves as if on dry land. She reached speeds of up to 8.5 knots. While we were taking down the genoa (the forward sail, and the largest), the wind tore a hole in it. In the morning, we looked around and, without a word, rushed to strip the awning from the mizzen and over the cockpit: ahead, pitch-black clouds were boiling. The awning’s zips had seized after their long life on deck, so we had to cut them open with a knife. The first mate and senior young sailor swallowed the lumps in their throats, anticipating a storm and feeling nostalgic for the winter Mediterranean. Brrrr.... Lada couldn’t understand what all the commotion aboard was about, why her bed under the table had been briskly rolled up, and why everything that wasn’t securely stowed was being urgently lashed down. A cyclone? It switched on a warning blast of 30 knots of wind right in our faces. In other words, the trade wind shut off at that moment and began blowing from the opposite direction. After calculating the trajectories of cyclones in the Northern Hemisphere, we concluded that if this was a tropical storm and the wind was blowing right on our nose, then we must be at the cyclone’s northern edge. But to the south, the picture was not quite so black in either spirit or appearance, so we ventured to christen the cyclone the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and bravely raced south. And, on the whole, we were right. The squalls passed to the north; all we got was a couple of hours of 25+ knots over the customary high seas and prolonged rain. Well, We’ve Arrived Then the calm set in. The ITCZ herself. We took down the torn genoa and spent several hours patching it in the drizzle with a hand sewing machine disguised as an awl, with a spool hidden inside the handle. The young sailor frolicked nearby on the upturned dinghy, playing first at being a water spirit, then the fairy Fata Morgana, until she went head over heels towards the guardrails, which had prudently been fitted with anti-young-sailor netting. There was still a swell, after all. During the day, we marked the halfway point with a jar of Nutella at teatime. We covered 3 miles that day, and even those happened by accident ). Funny how, after spending a day virtually standing still (heading towards Antarctica, and sometimes even Greenland) and doing things other than our usual routine, something shifted in our minds: we stopped urging the boat to hurry to land and simply settled into our gypsy life on the ocean. A day more, a day less—it no longer mattered. By evening, after hoisting the repaired sail back into place, we even accelerated to 2–3 knots in an almost correct direction. Then, during the night, the yacht suddenly began yawing from side to side and once again trying to head for Antarctica. The thread had stripped on one of the windvane self-steering gear’s unique bolts. Andrei dismantled the entire mechanism and left it as it was until morning. ... Hand-steer for a thousand miles?? By morning, an almost smooth ocean and light wind allowed the captain to spend half the day suspended in a climbing harness behind the stern, repairing the windvane, occasionally being dunked up to his neck. The first mate passed him the ammunition. We fixed it, phew—no need to steer by hand )). Iron Felix is at the helm! Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven So, yesterday we dismantled the awning that was attached to the mizzen boom (the mizzen is the second mast; the boom is the crosspiece that holds the sail). We decided to bring the mizzen back into service. And today, since six in the morning, the sun has been rubbing its radiant hands together: “Well then, how are you going to live?!” 🙂 We began living like people in a gypsy wagon. The awning’s role is now being performed by 2 bedsheets and 3 pareos, creatively tied to the shrouds. It looks very funny and homely. While we repair the windvane and rig our fabric awnings, Nastya is working as a model Stakhanovite cook: she made pizza, baked potatoes and sweet potatoes, and then produced a milkshake as well. Before lunch, everyone took turns swimming behind the boat while under way, tied on with a rope. A Jacuzzi, water park, and anti-cellulite massage 🙂 At 4–5 knots, the water’s resistance against your whole body is exhilarating. And the water hardly cools you down anymore; it must be at least 27°C. We are sailing under genoa and mizzen at 3–4 knots. In 10 days, we have covered 1,000 nautical miles. Just over 900 remain...