SLEEPING
There is something
absolutely soporific about the motion of this boat! ONO makes it almost impossible to stay awake off watch. I start to read or write and soon my
eyes close and I am off again. We
have a 3-hours-on-6-hours-off watch system – so today I went off watch just
after midnight, slept until 0520 when Richard knocks on my door and wakes me up
for the 0600-0900. This is the
most social watch with the blokes up for breakfast, and the time I am least
likely to go back to sleep. With
another 60 Miles or so to get to Palma, my next watch will be 1500. At the moment we have virtually no wind
and have been on the engine since we left Sardinia – the mainsail is up and
gives a little drive from time to time but we are probably short of fuel to
make it into Majorca. We will be
passing one of my favourite anchorages with KiwiStar – the small island of
Cabrera, 30 M South of Palma. 
Back to sleep – which
often seems to be deep and dreamless.
It seems obvious but once I have made my ‘nest’ of foams, sleeping bag
and pillow I am enclosed in a drifting womb-like space where it almost feels
that I am floating. If there is a
sea running and ONO is surfing down waves, I am quite literally weightless for
a moment – a bit like the split second when you go over a humpback bridge in a
car. The landing though is soft
and pleasant, and even a boat at sea probably goes through less movement that a
pregnant woman in the course of normal life. I truly believe that even the most dedicated of insomniacs
could resist. This in spite of
wave slamming, engine, radio, whistling kettle, creaking boom, rattling
blocks…. The skipper, of course,
is a special case and will wake to anything out of the ordinary. Slamming is what happens when the boat
reaches the bottom of the wave and crashes into it before rising up and over
the next one. It sounds like a big
soft sledgehammer, hitting the hull and sometimes making it shudder in a way
that really makes you trust and respect the designers and builders at Beneteau.
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