A New Year

New Years Eve, it was haggis watch's night for two shifts 6pm to 10 pm and 2pm to 6am so at 11.30pm we were woken to see in the New Year. A few members of the crew went the whole hog and put on their kilts. We shared a bottle of whiskey and held hands across the wheel to sing Auld Lang Syne . It was a little difficult doing Roman Soldiers marching backwards and forwards across the deck but I had taught a few people and we managed a couple of verses. (For those of you who don't know Roman Soldiers you have two lines of people facing each other, the Romans and the English who march backwards and forwards singing at each other and gradually shooting bits of each other off until everyone is dead and then they all come alive again and dance around. Ok it sounds bizarre but it's good fun). Anyway after 49 years ( or at least as long as I can remember) of doing this on New Years Eve, the whole concept was ruined for me by Paul who said that in the time of the English versus the Romans guns weren't invented......bet no one else had thought of that........Noctons/Websters own up!
Traditionally I hate New Years Day, the party's over, everyone goes home and it's back to work. Well January 1st 2012 was great ! Flat sea, reasonable wind and beautiful sunshine, couldn't have been better and I felt really happy. I think we have all felt happier on this leg for a number of reasons. Mainly because there were less people which we thought would be a problem but turned out it was lovely to have space and catering and washing up when you only have 12 is a dream. Also generally the weather has been hot and sunny, although that had the disadvantage of light wind. Squalls were the only thing to look out for and towards the end of the race we started to search out the squalls just to get some wind. Squalls manifest themselves as banks of localised cloud on the horizon, they are dark and contain rain storms and wind. It usually means you get drenched but not always and a squall can mean the wind changes from 10 to 35 or 40 notts in minutes. When you see one coming you can either reef in the main sail or try to ride through it depending on the size you think it is.

It's behind you! (Squall coming)

One morning a tornado was seen off the starboard bow, however, contrary to Skip's blog it was nowhere near a "wizard of Oz" moment.......good story though!

Gordon's Tornado