Day 3 Thursday 10 October 2013
It’s 3:30 on a lovely afternoon, the chart plotter tells me we have 20 miles to run to the Grande Passage at the top of Noumea. Chimere is happy and bowling along at 7 knots with a 15 knot southerly breeze on the port quarter. We should be through this fairly narrow passage just before dark if the current is favorable. The decks are almost dry, some of the hatches are open and the off watch crew sleeping well.
It wasn’t like that last night. In the early evening the wind though light, blew from exactly from where we wanted to go. Not only was the wind on the nose but a lumpy confused sea came with it. Chimere was not comfortable and pitched up and down like a seesaw. No dry decks, no open hatches and even with our much loved Perkins doing his best there wasn’t much progress, and not much sleep for the hot and uncomfortable but uncomplaining crew either. The moon disappeared over the west horizon early in the evening, cloud obscured the stars and we pitched, rolled and wobbled our way through a dark night.
But by sunrise the wind come around to the south and picked up to a good sailing breeze just as the weather man said it would. Perkins went to bed, the jib was rolled out and Chimere came to life once again.
That’s how we like it!!
Onboard Cub Reporter, Cam Heathwood