St Patty's Day Gale

Well, things Have started "roaring" a bit to day. Its actually not really roaring, more howling. I'm in my first real gale right now!! Just a small one, with the wind about 35knots and some nice 10-15 foot or so waves. Its been cloudy and rainy all day long, but the sun came out tonight for a few minutes just before going down making a very pretty sunset.

Its not exactly the type of weather for running around up on deck but it looked so nice out tonight that I suited up to go and take a 'quick' picture. I ended up out there for a good long while. It was very wet out there and before too long I was quiet drenched as my hood kept blowing off letting every wave that hit go right down into my jacket. So, I'm not exactly happy with all the pictures I ended up with but my fingers were too numb to push the buttons on the camera!

After being outside for a while the 60 degree cabin feels nice and warm. Sixty degrees isn't all that cold but when it is when you've spent most of the past month in 100 degree weather, so hot you can hardly sleep at night. Going from that to 60 degrees in three short days really makes it feel absolutely freezing! But the nice thing about cold is that you can always put another jacket on!

In answer to a question from the comments, no, I don't have an Eskimo suit :) But I have something close!! A survival suit. Its big, orange, like a full body life jacket and impossible to move in. Its for if I decide to go for a dip down around Cape Horn. As of now, I have no plans for using it, but just in case! I also have lots of different kinds of layers thanks to Patagonia. I even have some high tech wool that Steven Mann said was the best of all.

As far as the weather goes, tomorrow will be the day to decide what course to take over the weekend. Tropical Storm Tomas that formed SE of Fiji is headed south and at this point if I am on a collision course with its mighty remains if I continue SE. The conditions where we are supposed to meet on Saturday night or Sunday morning are 50-60 knots of wind and seas to 30-40+ feet. I'm sure that Wild Eyes and I could handle it if we had to but if we can avoid it, we probably should. That isn't all that is going on down here. I still need to get south quickly after that system passes because there are more fronts on the way.

For now I'm having quite a bit of fun in this gale. Everything about it seems so much better than a nice calm day (in its own way, calm days are nice every now and then too!) All the noise, the waves crashing over the boat and water getting right up to the window as we speed along!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Abby