Weather on the North Atlantic
Every one of us had respect of the north Atlantic, the weather, the wind and the waves. We expected 15 metre waves and 30 days with 9 wind forces. So – in the end everything went smooth, 23 perfect days for sailing and the most of time, the sun was shining.
In school, we learned a lot about fronts, it was interesting but then it became reality: I remember one day, when I woke up on a school day. I was still lying in my warm and comfy bed, but when I stood up it was super cold. So, I got my pair of long trousers and my hoodie and went to the poop deck. It was actually a cold front and we were inside its sector, the cold-air-sector. That means, let aside the interesting facts about its origin, it’s going to be cold. On the other side, there were warm fronts and these days were naturally the really nice days. 25 degree Celsius, no clouds, sunny, short trousers and t-shirt, in conclusion the perfect weather.
The spectacular weather phenome was on the 22nd of February, when a cold front hit the warm air sector we were currently in. It was already dark, everywhere were clouds, you couldn’t see more than 5 metres not even the next mast. It was also raining for three hours, exactly in my watch. And then there were the lightning bolts paired with the thunder. It was so nice to experience something like this. I was standing behind the rudder when suddenly there was a lightning bolt. It was very light but still in a good distance away. After 15 minutes the thunderstorm was exactly above us. The lightning lighted the ship and the whole sea around as the sun. It lasted not even one second and it was away again. But now the thunder followed. It was ear defying and it sounded like the whole sky would fall down on us. This happened again and again. After one hour it was over, but you could still see the lightning bolts dancing over the horizon. That was definitely the most spectacular weather phenome I saw on the journey, or even in my whole life.
I want to mention also the storm on the first day of the ship’s handover. On that day, the 6th of March, we had waves, that were higher than the poop deck, more than 3 metres, but in the beginning, none came over and we were sailing 6 knots with 7 wind forces. Then the wind turned and we had 20 minutes with less wind to drive a jibe. While we drove the jibe, some got a full body shower for free and one wave even got over the whole deckhouse and down on the other side. After this time the wind got stronger up to a 9. Then some waves got over the poop deck and hit the pupil ships leader while they were using sextants to locate ourselves with the help of the sun. On that day I actually had galley duty, which was really “cool”. We had some bullseyes open and with one wave, we hadn’t had to salt the soup anymore. Additionally, all four of us were wet. After that, we closed everything that could be closed and we installed a security rope. On that day some wore their Raincoat and some wore short trousers. So, it’s really fascinating how the cloth style of everyone changed in these 23 days at sea. The first two weeks everyone was like: In the Caribbean it’s hot. And we were there before some days. So, naturally it should be warm. That was actually right, but the phrase: “The higher in the north, the colder it is.” won at the end.
All in all, even if more storm would be nice, we had a lot of luck that the weather was so good and we could see a lot of cool wetter phenome on the North Atlantic.