It was a dark and stormy night (Snoopy fans should recognize that one,I feel like I should be sitting on top of the dodger with the computer writing this blog!!) and man oh man was it dark and stormy. We were sailing in a sailor's worst nightmare, a thunderstorm. It was not just from one direction there were storm cells all around with huge towering ugly cumulus clouds. The sheet lightning would light up the sky but the rest of the time it was completely dark. All the stars were obscured and Barry turned off all the instruments so that if we had a lightning strike perhaps it wouldn't fry everything, (I seriously doubt it would have made a difference, if you get hit by lightning your boat electronics are all toast)so it was well and truly dark. Fortunately there was not much wind so I guess it really wasn't that stormy but it was wet as well. We motored most of the day yesterday on a flat calm sea, you could see the reflection of the towering cloud cells in the water. Twice we saw water spouts develop under heavy black clouds, these are the tornadoes of the sea, not something we were particularly happy to witness. I wasn't surprised to get hit with the lightning storms at night, it was inevitable given the weather conditions during the day.
So far this has been our calmest passage on record. If we don't get some wind soon we will be bobbing out here for quite a while because we don't have enough fuel to motor all the way to Sri Lanka. We have been on passage for almost 72 hours and we have motored 30 hours in total, we have made 250 miles for an average of 3.5 knots, we have been motoring at about 4.8 knot on average so when we have been sailing we are averaging 2.75 knots, at that rate it will take 22 days to get there, YIKES. I think we better make a sacrifice to the wind gods. Sorry to bore you with all the statistics but when you put it down in black and white it looks really BAD! We have almost crossed the Andaman Sea, the body of water between Thailand and the Nicobar Islands, which are claimed by India. Once we have passed the Nicobars, we will be on the Bay of Bengal and there is supposed to be some decent wind there.
We both seem to getting enough rest and there has only been one shouting match which took place in the middle of the night when Barry reefed and then motored because he was worried about the previously explained storm cells. What madness, we finally get some wind to sail, he reefs and then continues to motor, WHAT WAS HE THINKING!!! Well I should head to bed so I can maintain my usual chipper, optimistic self in the face of another potentially windless day.
