Storm bound

Here we are in Roompot, crazy name for a crazy place, listening to the high whistling of the predicted gales. Roompot is a place inside the Oosterschelde, a man-made inland sea. It is a family holiday beach club with rather nice giant beach huts which are more like modern apartments set on a fine sandy beach.

Today everything needed to be washed, including us, to get rid of the salt which encrusted us from yesterday's hours of pounding, drenching spray. 

Nic sprayed the boat from stem to stern, while Lesley went to the laundrette with salty clothes, and washed hats and gloves and safety lines by hand, and also our cotton masks.

Now we are clean and rested, able to look back on yesterday's tribulations more clearly. 

The picture shows a broken rope top left, which was the offending reefing line which parted in a very dramatic way. This is a key rope which helps reduce the size of the sail to make it easier to sail in strong winds.  There was a very loud crack when it snapped and it was a bad moment in a bad situation. We need a new rope to pass through the boom- it's a job for another day. We also discovered that the rope securing the anchor had snapped and the pin holding it on the roller had washed out (luckily it was tied on) - so no harm done but it might have been interesting if the anchor had started crashing around on the foredeck ... not a nice place to have to go in heavy weather.

You may notice in the pic that we have a plastic bag over by the top of the wheel...covering the chart plotter or sat nav of the seas. This is because we forgot to bring the proper cover from home.

To turn philosophical for a moment, and in response to the Comment from a friend as to 'whether we're actually doing this for fun?' - no  yesterday was not fun. However it was a test which we survived, and today we feel a sense of achievement (as well as a lesson learned re forecasts and sea states off this coast). We think the self-reliance, problem-solving and general sense of achievement are the main things we get out of long-distance cruising, with the occasional lovely sail and (in non-Covid-19 times) meeting and socialising with kindred spirits.