For those of you who have not sailed in a boat, I'm going to describe what it felt like to me, as a newbie, doing an overnight passage. This was my second overnight passage - the first one from Virgin Gorda to Saba was on a relatively windless night, so we had no sails out, only the engine going, so all I had to do was watch out for other vessels on the horizon. This time, the wind was in full force so when I tried to handle the boat (for the first 10 minutes of my watch), I was completely out of my depth - the wind kept gusting and blowing the boat off course, so the autopilot would disengage and the boat would come round into the wind. Not knowing how to accurately trim the sails, I'd have to call Phillip, or else I'd just set the boat back on course but it was only minutes before the autopilot disengaged. This is all due to the strong gusts of the islands - firstly being in the lee of the land and the channeling effect of the wind on us, and then inbetween the islands - where it gusted up to 30 knots. There was no way I could cope with the boat by myself, even in broad daylight and as soon as it got dark, I started to feel really seasick and could only crawl away into my cabin to lie down - Phillip sailed the boat by himself the entire night, while I lay in my cabin with a pillow over my head, feeling ghastly. I couldn't go up above deck (in the darkness, no horizon to see, it just made me feel even worse), so I was literally in the cabin for 12 straight hours, lying flat, wedged in the corner up against the wall so that I couldn't be thrown about at all.
The boat was heeling over "on its ear" ( as they say), so when I looked out the portholes, all I saw was rushing water, a glimpse here and there of sky, but mostly all I could see was underwater. The first time I saw that I thought we were sinking or about to turn over and called Phillip in a panic - but he explained that it's perfectly normal. So I would say I'm relatively used to it and it doesn't alarm me as much as it did before. It's still unsettling though to look out a window and see under the water.
The motion on this passage was wild - the wind ranged from no wind to 30 knots, and it would blow up in a matter of minutes, so one minutes we'd be fairly flat, the next the boat would literally take off and heel over in seconds, always making me squeal in fright. When I was lying flat in the corner though, the motion from side to side didn't really throw me around, but it transferred my body weight from one side to another, and the motion up and down would cause my body, particularly my boobs, to be weightless for a short period of time (nano seconds I suppose although it felt like longer) before they'd join me back on earth. It's like being in a rollercoaster.
The sounds of the boat were what I found so hard to describe, and the only way I can do that is to compare them with things that you probably know or can relate to. The sound of the water rushing by, separated only by a thin fibreglass boat wall, ranges between the sounds of river rapids very close by, to the sound of firemen with their pressure hoses trained on the portholes, to a group of people with buckets of water tossing them hard against the hull of the boat. Then I could hear washing machines and dishwashers, and it made me think aha, this is what it's like to be a load of laundry - noise, motion - all just like being inside a washing machine. I could hear noises on deck I could not decipher - from the miaowing of a cat (or should I say many cats), to the whine of a dog, to the sounds of three men scuffling on deck - which turned into an aggressive fist fight (with no voices obviously, just the thump and grown of three men fighting hard, staggering around the deck, falling, kicking etc) - then I could hear paratroopers landing on the boat - about 4 or 5 of them, some of them landing hard, some softly, all dragging their parachutes with them. Many paratroopers landed that night, too many to count. Then I could hear thumping and knocking, and the occasional banging, as if someone was standing off the bow with a hammer, randomly clouting the hull from time to time. I heard pots and pans flying around the saloon (they weren't imaginary, they really were flying around, even though they'd been well secured), the chopping board kept taking off like a missile, the door (although wedged tightly) constantly banging.
Oh, and don't even get me started on the wind generator! Fortunately, thanks to John Cooper in St. Thomas, it has stopped growling (he and Phillip tweaked the wires), so now it only howls like the tube (subway) hurling through a tunnel next to you, or a freight train. Sometimes (like now, in Admiralty Bay in Bequia), it is a gentle soothing sound, but on that night passage it sounded like some kind of angry engine with the throttle turned up high, the sound going up and down depending on the gust of wind that was hitting it.
I could hear the lines creaking and knocking, the sound of Phillip trimming the sails, winding them up, letting them out. I was sure I could hear him running up and down deck (I couldn't - he didn't leave the cockpit the entire time), people throwing chairs, dismantling furniture - you name it, I could hear it. It's loud down below - don't ask me how anyone can sleep through that, particularly with the motion side to side, up and down, back to front - my legs would go in one direction, my head in another, my tummy and chest in another - and yet people still tell me it's the most soothing sleep I'll ever have. I think they're nuts. All I know is that I hated this passage and was so glad when the dawn came. I was staggering up to the cockpit (really ready to be violently ill) and was greeted with Phillip saying look - DOLPHINS! And there were about 30 - 40 dolphins swimming alongside us, some under the bow, some jumping out of the water, it was an incredible sight - and took my breath away and while I still felt really ill, I wasn't - just kept an eye on the dolphins and tried to appreciate them for what they were. Normally I'd be so excited and I'd rush up front to take pictures, but this time I just grimaced at them and watched them from the cockpit, holding on tight. What a great sight.
