Cure de sommeil?

Bonjour,

Nous avions ce matin des difficultes avec l'ordinateur qui refusait
d'expedier les e-mails. Les choses semblent s'arranger, mais au cas ou
cela se reproduirait le telephone marche encore, et cette petite note
quotidienne serait remplacee par un SMS.

La journee d'hier a ete marquee par des grains frequents et parfois
violents. Pendant la nuit le temps s'est stabilise : ciel couvert et
vent assez-fort-mais-pas-trop. Vers la fin de la matinee le ciel s'est
degage et il fait tres chaud.

Mais a propos : comment occupons nous notre temps ? Une des surprises de
cette traversee c'est que les nuits occupent 15 a 16 heures par jour ! la
nuit elle-meme (obscurite) dure 12 heures, pendant lesquelles a tour de
role la moitie de l'equipage dort pendant que l'autre s'ocupe du bateau.
Le dernier quart de la nuit va se coucher a 8 heures, pendant que le
premier quart du jour prend ses fonctions, prepare son petit-dejeuner,
fait sa toilette. Vers 11 heures ceux qui se sont couches a 8 heures
commencent à réapparaître et font de meme, et finalement tout le monde est
operationnel un peu avant midi. C'est ce qui permet de dire qu'en
pratique la nuit prend fin quand le soleil est au zenith.

Les heures autour de midi sont très actives : boire un verre (soda ou jus
fruit),communications avec l'ARC, cet e-mail aujourdh'ui en retard,
analyse des dernières données météo, déjeuner, café, vaisselle, puis ceux
qui ne sont pas de quart vont... se recoucher. Après quatre heures on pèse
le poisson du jour (jusqu'à présent cela n'a pas été une charge trop
lourde), petit goûter, débats philosophiques, qui permettent de tenir
jusqu'au verre du soir, suivi du dîner, et hop le cyle redémarre vers 20h.

Tout à été perturbé aujourd'hui avec cette afaire des e-mails. Je vais
donc me recoucher en retard.
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It seems unbeleivable but we are at sea since a week today and we are
lamost haf way through.
With this I pesonally beat my record of 5 days, and by now it seems now
quite normal that 7 male can live reasonably welle in less than 80m2,
including the deck!

As expected during the first few days most of the crew has faced sea
seackness, as the sea is quite rough over here and the boat moves a lot.
For what I am concerned I was exempt thanks to the drugs that have a
very good effect on me... net for a few days only me an the owner were
able to be inside the boat.

Nevertheless we have been quite fast all the time, with average 200
nautical miles that puts us in an unexpected 3rd position amongst
racers, despite our X482 is a fast cruiser but not a pure racing boat
like the X50 or Swan 45. The crew is learning day by day how to sail
faster and in a confortable way the trade winds.

We started on a straight route to St Lucia, in North-Westerly winds
averaging 25 knots. Then it became evident that a low pressure zone in
front of us was going to bring light winds in the 'straight' route so we
are now sailing south to reach a zone where the trade winds will not be
affected by this low pressure area. This will make us sail more miles so
we mai loose some positions in the next few days.

The crew is doing great, we have all kind of confort, from fresh orange
juice (the real one that Jean Luis makes every day) to daily showers and
of course great linch and dinners with a good dose of pasta and
Italian limoncello of course.
We have an opportunity to improve our fishing: so far we got a good
catch and we lost 3 others...

During the day we work shifts of 4 hours with three on duty and three
resting, while the owner plays the joker entering a shift at night to
allow 2 of us to sleep 8h in a row every 3 days. It works pretty welll
even if it is of course tiring to sleep in a noisy and moving bed, for
only 4hours every 4h.

Normally we fish in the morning and then after lunch we sail the
spinnaker that allows us to be fast and have a better downwind heading.
Dinner is served at 7PM GMT and at 8PM we start with the night shifts.

The most surprising thing to me so far has been that we do not have much
spare time at all, many people suggested us to bring good reading but so
far I do not see when I could read them as we are always busy doing
something. Of course the fact that we do not use the auto-pilot requires
someone at the helm all the time and this already keeps us quite busy.
Then when we sail th espinnaker all the crew is needed to keep the beast
under control.

That's it for this first week, please do not reply dirctl via e-mail but
do not hesitate to post your comments on the blog!

Cheers
Sergio