Londoner Sees A Proper Night Sky On Sailing Adventure

Day 2 of the FCS crew’s Atlantic Adventure to Gran Canaria sees another blog describing the early effects of sea travel. It doesn’t last long and as you will see the benefits are amazing…

Finding Your Sea Legs

Prevention, they say, is the best cure, however failing to pre ingest seasick tablets makes that saying a moot point. In which case the best cure is to lie on a one’s bunk and that’s where I found myself on Thursday evening after an exhilarating reach down the Channel in somewhat lumpy conditions on our first day of the trip.

They also say it’s not good to bottle things up so I return topside to give free expression to my feelings and felt all the better for it. The evening meal of curry & rice never tasted so good and with that I returned to my bunk for a few hours. Not in illness but in tiredness, I think I had finally found my sea legs.

By 22.00 hours the wind had died off to necessitate the engine being turned on and shortly after the stay sail was taken down. On deck for the first night watch of the trip at 22.00 our first job was to take down the Yankee no.2 sail.

Seeing Real Stars

The close focused work did make me a little squiffy again but once the task was done I could sit back in the cockpit and enjoy the night skies. What a glorious sight! Living in London the night skies really aren’t a thing, I can’t remember the last time I actually saw the Milkyway. I sat back for a long time taking it all in.

I took my first turn at the helm, getting used to how the boat responded and attempting to keep on the correct course. The first mate called it a snaking course but I’m just trying to keep this wonderful trip going on for longer .Honest!
Adam Pope

The Beauty of the Milky Way

An amazing night sky is possibly the hardest thing to photograph from a boat so we’ve used this land-based photo of the Milky Way by Andy Holmes on Unsplash. He describes how he did it below…

“While I was away on a weeks holiday to Portugal, I decided to take a chance on seeing where the Milky Way and the Moon would be showing in relation to my location. To my surprise, the Moon was always below the horizon when the Milky Way was up. This was my first proper time photographing the Milky Way and I was seriously lucky to have really good conditions to capture it in. Would make a good phone background :)”

More blogs about this Atlantic Adventure can be read here: Portsmouth to Gran Canaria