It's dark now. Not so dark that you can’t see the horizon, but dark enough to see flecks of phosphoresence in QuickStar’s wake. The rest of the crew are getting some rest, and its 3 more hours to go until I am off watch at midnight. QuickStar continues to run forward as she has now for 4 days straight. As we tend to her sails and protect her from the uncertainty of the night, it feels like we are bargaining with her every time we reef sails before dark; her urge to heel to leeward at full speed in opposition to the need of the crew to feel like there is now one less thing to go wrong in a blackness made ever more so by being 700km from land.
We haven't seen signs of humans since leaving Sydney 4 days ago. Our farewell from the harbour was wonderful, but as we headed out to sea, the adventure felt all of a sudden acutely real. This is the sharp end of the adventure - 10 days at sea in a notorious ocean. The insurance company has run the numbers; excess is doubled for any damage crossing the Tasman.
But we are well; and we woke yesterday to a tremendous calmness of the ocean. An almost glassy surface with large gentle swell, rolling through. We had run the engine for the previous 24h and were ready for a break. It started with seawater bucket-showers and de-lousing ordered by the skipper on the transom. Great success!
The winds arrived from the south yesterday afternoon and QuickStar settled into sailing work. The sounds of a yacht at sea are true, groans and clunks of rigging, semi regular pounding on the hull, as it comes off a wave and crashes into a trough. The occasional chink of stainless steel of a harness as a fellow crewmember makes a cup of tea before going on watch. The sounds are a language, and any change can bring people up from below to see what the cause is, and if help is required.
The air here is spinning up from the south between Australia and NZ and is crystal. This morning large wind-flecked rollers of swell rolled through in very bright sun. The swell is large but benign, we corkscrew over it and I'm certain it has no idea, nor cares, that we are here. Gilly likened the swells to playground bullies walking past uninterested, to go and inflict their damage somewhere else. A huge bird, we guess an albatross, joins us now and then, and circles in the eddies of our wake and the dips of the swell.
About 6 days till we arrive in NZ. Another couple of hours till sleep. Time to scan the horizon again.