Imagine someone coming into your room in the middle of the night, sneaking up nice and close to you with a giant gong and smacking it as hard as they can every 5 - 10 sec. Now allow your room to rotate and twist. Suddenly you have rolled to one side of your bed, and then the other, and then back again, all the while the gong keeps going. It is hot and you are sweating profusely despite having thrown your only sheet to the other side of the bed. Lying almost naked in the dampness of your own sweat, listening to the gong going constantly, getting rolled from one side your bed to the other, knowing you should get all the sleep you can because you have to be awake at 3am.
Welcome to sailing in the tropics when the wind dies. When wind doesn’t have the sufficient strength to keep the main sail and genoa full of air, every time the boat rolls with the swell, the wind spills out of the sails and everything goes quiet. Everyone awake waits…. a second or two passes….. WHACK, FLAP, WHACK and the wind fills the sails again and they slam back into place. Repeat all night. Turn the air temperature in the boat to about 32′C and remove all good ventilation sources. Flogging is the technical term for this sort of sailing. I think I almost would rather be flogged… Read more…
