Bay of Biscay Day 3 (Max’s blog)

At one point during the night I was once again awoken by the  rocking of the boat due to the waves and swell. Also Dad was standing at the chart table right next to my bed and had to have the light on to check a few things. The boat felt like it was off by a bit, so I stuck out my head and asked him if everything was all right. He replied that he was just checking the wind, as there seemed a bit of a change around. This was at about two o’clock in the morning, so Heidi had just gone to bed and was in a semi sleep state. So, back to bed and tried to get to sleep. The next minute I hear a shout from outside that Dad needed a hand. The wind had blown the main sail around in a weird way and the wind vane had been messed up and twisted around. As I didn’t know the exact problem from down below and for all I knew the mast could have been ripped out of the boat (probably not to that extreme, though), I got dressed and geared up in record time. Once outside the problem became clear and Dad and I tried to get things sorted out just between the two of us. After a bit it became apparent that a third hand would help greatly, too, and as Heidi had been woken up by our activity she came out to help. So in the end we had to pull in the genoa (front sail), screwed that up, sent someone forwards attached to the boat with a safety harness, folded up the genoa correctly, turned the boat to get the mainsail around properly, make sure we weren’t messing up the wind vane during the whole procedure and do all this whilst it’s dark outside. It was, as said, two in the morning, and we were at least one hundred nautical miles from land with a bit of an unkind sea and wind. 

Following all that, Heidi and I got back into our separate beds and I got up again at about five in the morning. Dad was semi awake on the couch and just said that the chance to hit something was so small that we don’t need to check that frequently. Sent him off to bed and checked outside every once in a while again. The sea had gotten rougher from the day before and the wind was up, too. Not anywhere close to worrisome, as we just pulled in a bit of sail and Artemis was carrying on nicely again. Nothing noteworthy happened. I had a bowl of muesli to keep me going until Heidi got up at about nine and took over from me. I then went back to bed and slept until nearly midday. 

Got up to a brunch meal again and the rest of the day was once again smooth sailing. Only noteworthy things were, that we got the pole in from the genoa and we passed a container ship called the BBC Magellan from which we got the weather predictions for the next day when we hoped to arrive in Spain. 

For a change, Dad and I cooked in the evening. Not as tasty as Heidi’s food in my opinion, but still good and filling (something with pasta and veggies). Then back to bed again to be ready to get up for the next shift. Hopefully no more late night surprises. Lethargy has set in a bit, but relaxing is nice, too.