November 16th  

One of the many people who we talked to before this passage asked us if we’ve been offshore – to which we smiled and said “nope”! – and they smiled back and said “just wait until you experience swell”. Now we had plenty of swell on the trip to Bermuda during and after that small front that rolled us when we were out there so we knew that it was for real. However, Day 5 brought the biggest swell we’d had so far – it was HUGE. So so so hard to capture in photos but there were times when we were at the top of the swell and you could see down to the bottom of the trough and it looked like 40 feet down (and 100 feet away). Intimidating.

Now the forecast called for a peak swell of about 2.5m (so about 10 feet) – no big deal. But when the forecast says 2.5 meters that means there is a certain percentage of waves that around 2x that and an even smaller percentage that are even bigger. That made sense with what we saw…most of the swell we would ride up and surf down was normal feeling but every now and then there was a massive one that would put the boat right over of her ear as we surfed down and then on her other ear as she rebounded back at the bottom before rising up again. These moments had intense pendulum movements that included brief feelings of weightlessness that you could feel in your whole body and you could actually see if you looked at someone sitting across from you. I watched Greg napping for a sec in those conditions (that guy can sleep through anything – pretty handy as a sailor – I do not have this skill) and I could see his cheeks rising and sinking slightly with the movement (face cheeks people, not butt cheeks).

So imagine cooking meals for 8 people in these conditions hahahaha….well I managed. It was challenging but I think we’ve been eating pretty well considering the weather we had in the first passage the intense movement we experienced so far in this passage. We’d been mixing it up between oatmeal, yogurt and granola, pancakes and egg / veg hash for breakfast. Lunches were either wraps, or salad, or crackers / cheese / veg of some kind and for dinners we’d had soups, pastas, veg stew, risotto, and even steak dinner one night. There are always compromises in the prep…like tonight when I made risotto I couldn’t find my parmesan in the fridge and didn’t want to take everything out and have it roll all over the boat so I left it out and put in pine nuts for some buttery flavour instead. This was a not-problem J So despite the swell we ate well (haha I’m a poet…actually I think I am going a little nuts :P).

The swell was building all day, peaked in the night of Day 5…when there is big swell like that (and waves on top of the swell as the wind gusts) there really isn’t much you can do besides eat, sleep and tuck in somewhere safe to hang out. The kids played in the aft cabin most of the day, expect when Aden felt like she was going to puke and then she was tethered in to the cockpit and sat up on the combing with her face to the wind. She did this for hours sometimes and never complained about being bored or nauseous. She has been such a trooper. And the other two have really surprised us as well – they totally self-organized around the required rhythms of the day which included many times where either Greg or I were needing to sleep or the boat motion meant they couldn’t have out pencil crayons or couldn’t sit up at the bow. There even have been a few days where, believe it or not, I didn’t really feel like I saw much of them or talked too them too much – crazy right?!?! I mean these are 3 busy kids and I’m on a 49’ boat – how is this possible? They got in the groove of passage and just happily existed. I mean hey, if you are going to live on a boat, it’s great to have boat-kids.

So here we are, in the Trade Winds now with a consistent NE wind, big swell and fast sailing. We have a few days ahead of us yet but we are pretty close (all things considered) and our departure from Norfolk feels like a lifetime ago in some ways. The swell is supposed to come down overnight and tomorrow we keep moving forward.

Much love,

M