It was the day before the races and since I knew I’d be busy the next couple of days I thought I’d try to get a few items on my list of things to do (a line of yellow Post-It notes at the navigation station) done and also catch up on the constant struggle against rust on the stainless steel. The saying goes that “Rust never Sleeps” but the truth is worse than that – rust neither sleeps nor does it take naps or coffee breaks and it always seems to be on double-time and an aggressive bonus plan as well!
The started rocking very heavily in the morning, at about 5 minute intervals; I looked at the WindGuru weather and saw that a swell of over 3 meters was hitting the island from the NE and that the swell period was around 20 seconds. The shorter the period the nastier waves are at sea, but the less energy they carry; a long swell period of 20 seconds between wave crests is hardly noticeable at sea, but once the water gets shallower the energy in the waves is transformed to surf and this was what was making life aboard positively uncomfortable. I had to loosen the gimbals on the stove so that the pot of boiling water didn’t slide all around.
I did see that the waves breaking over the reef guarding Falmouth Harbour were no longer little bits of white foam but large breaking waves and that there were a number of surfers out there so I decided to take a break from my war against rust to see if I could get a good picture or two of an unusually large wave pattern on Antigua; those are posted below.
After the pictures I realized that I needed to get ashore to escape the incessant rolling and went to the Loose Mongoose for happy hour drinks and later had dinner there before retiring to the boat and having a rather long night.
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