N 39 10 W 073 43
A very annoying aspect of sailing off shore is the noise. On days like this the seas are 8-10 feet coming from our stern quarter. Tarwathie rolls a lot under such conditions. Wind pressure on the sail stabilizes us some, but not enough. Last night as we tried to sleep, both Libby and I were bothered by the constant noises. Loose things rattle and bang. They may repetitive noises from all directions, but mostly from the galley. It is the cans and bottles and pots and pans of all sizes and
shapes that make most of the noise. Once in a while, the bottles fall against a cabinet door and it swings open.
Earlier in our sailing career, things would fall on the floor and slide around. At least we learned enough to prevent that from happening now.
In your house, you would never tolerate such noise. You would get up, locate the source and fix it. In a boat, it would be mostly a futile gesture. There is no practical way to silence all those noises. The best way is just try to ignore the noises and hope that they fade into the background.
We're making excellent time on this passage. We completed the first half of the 320 nautical mile passage from Block Island to the Chesapeake Bay entrance in 28 hours. The second half will probably take longer because the winds will slacken some. Two years ago, with Carmello and Diane on board, we only managed half this speed, and we had to motor the last 50 miles.
We saw six vessels yesterday. One ship called us on the VHF radio from 1/2 mile away. The captain was very nice. He wanted to tell us to raise our radar reflector because he says that we are nearly invisible on radar. The disconcerting part of that is that we DO have a radar reflector hoisted. I can't explain how we are still invisible.
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I just want to say that it is possible. I detest rattling around type noises while underway, and did manage to arrange the galley, etc. to avoid them. Of course there were still boat/sailing noises, but those are far, far less annoying (to me anyway).
ReplyDeleteIt did take me awhile to get my methods in place to silence them all, but then it was easily repeatable before setting off each time. So there is hope!