Hi everyone, a big hi to all my friends and people I know in the Bull, Beaumaris and Anglesey,
Have been getting on with keeping Guiding light ship shape, for the last 3 days I have been in very big seas. This all started on Friday night when at 7:15pm a very vicious rain squall had the temerity to hit GL and me during dinner. Fred was driving and I had him set up very fine off the wind, well, this wind went up to, and maybe more 40knt+ in seconds! GL staggered a bit and went over on her beam ends and accelerated away up to top speed, that only took a few seconds as well, as this was happening I was trying to disentangle myself from the saloon table and my dinner which I was now wearing!
GL was now doing something above 9Knts. Got the torch and popped my head out to see what Fred was doing, he bless his cotton socks was calmly driving the boat still at this very fine angle without broaching and going on a reach, amazing, then the rain came, not your normal stuff but the tropical variety, rain drops, no not the right word ermm... bucket drops traveling at 40+ in the horizontal plane, hitting GL like machine gun bullets! I put the washboards in and closed the hatch and let Fred, who appeared to have the situation well in hand, to it, and made myself a nice panad, a rolly fag and a sit down. After 2 hours of this, somewere past 2100 as suddenly as it had started it stopped, there was no wind at all, the waves which had built up were still there and GL was stopped. Then from the East an ever so gentle breeze sprang up and Fred put us back on course. It increased steadily and has been between 16 and 25knts since, the seas have built up to approx 12 to 15 feet swell and you always get those three biggies every severn or so don't you, they are the doozies, I look at them coming at my little low down stern and say, no way can I get up that one! But Gl does and off we go surfing down the front, You would have to pay a fortune at the fair in Menai Bridge for a ride like this!
Well I have had to pay attention to all the rig while this has been going on, but thought I also better let everone know were i'm at. Getting very close to landfall now, I am going over the north of the island to get out of the waves and furkle inshore gently bently, still have no propulsion from engine so need it to be quiet. right now Position: 13,26.41N , 55,32.12W Speed: 5 knots, Course: 256 deg. distance to Barbados 232Nm.
More later
Roy
PS You do realize that story would have taken at least 3 hours for me to tell it in the Bull,
so I've let everyone off lightly!
