The twentyeighth day was dominated by frequent squalls and rain. I lay in the yellow wet gear on the soaked cushions on deck and tried to fall asleep unsure if it was my watch or not. It was no storm anymore, but the wind speeds would constantly change, the direction shift and the autopilot fail all the time. We were still taking more formal watches than we had before the bad weather had hit us. After a watch we would feel tired and try to get some rest or even sleep.
Real resting was only really possible belowdecks though, yet there it was badly ventilated with all portholes and hatches closed in the rain. The boat was a much more confined place now, as the whole deck was not a pleasant place to be reducing the ship's size by half. On deck, everything was wet and didn't even get a chance to start drying. I was tired. And that wasn't only from the watches and the unsufficient resting time between them. I was tired of the wet, the damp, the yellow rubber clothing that would still let enough water through to give you a good wet bum. I was tired of the irregular waves of a cross-sea rocking the boat continually as if to try to find a twisted way to turn it over somehow. We were all wishing those days back with a slight breeze, blue skies and the southernly long swell when the only objective was finding a nice shady spot and let time pass.
It would be a long night, even though time passed much faster during the watches when you needed to steer manually. After watching a movie, my brother and I were to share a long watch, organization left up to ourselves. The moon had broken through the thick cover of clouds only to be swallowed by another grey cover overcasting the sky shortly after. The winds varied all night, but about half way through our watch, when wind speeds hit more than 25 knots, we dropped the mizzen sail. With only the two of us and the wind quickly increasing that proved to be all but easy. While my brother was handling the ropes I was pulling on the sail hard to get it down. But we were missing a third person to pull down the back of the sail that was wrapping itself around the lazy jacks. I managed to get the front of the sail almost to the bottom and turned to the back to get the sail down and under control. By now, the wind was beating and the only thing to cling to was the sail. If I would have let go, the rocking boat would have thrown my over board in an instant. It felt wrong and it didn't look good either as my brother would later confirm. Still, we had the sail down and wrapped it up safely before continuing our watch bare-poled.
The whole night we tried to find a place and position where we'd stay resonably dry and still get a bit of rest while the other was alert with the boat. Wether it was in the cockpit or in the map house, we tried all we could think of to make ourselves somewhat comfortable. It didn't really work even though I managed to fall asleep for a while on the wet cushions. My brother went below just before five in the morning while I waited for the captain to wake and that would not be until past six.
captains log:
rain + squalls
0600 unroll Genoa 1/2 to stabilize boat, Einstein seems to work
shift Genoa repeatedly, variable winds, light, but gusts
1100 upMizzen(R), off Genoa, upGen.
1130 halfway to Nicobars!!
1200 rain, all well, stopE 15 min
N2°27 E83°42
1230 rain squall
never ending rain, Einstein o.k.
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