I got very little sleep before my 12 am watch. I had gotten attuned to the voices and speech patterns of the crew we had for the Labrador trip to the point where people talking really wouldn't keep me up. I am not there yet with this crew and spent most of the night wondering: is that a good ooh or a bad ooh? Should I go up and help? They said that ship was close; how close is their close?
Eventually my watch rolled around and I pried myself out of my bunk. I could hear water running over the deck and could feel the boat lurching around but could imagine the weather to be to bad when it was so pleasant when I went to bed. By the time I got on deck, I was as close to seasick as I've been all trip. Just before getting on deck the wind had dropped from a consistent 30 knots to 12, leaving us with all our sails heavily reefed, bobbing around in 8-foot seas, which is about the worst feeling you can get on the boat. Without the boat moving forward, the motion loses all predictability and started to churn up nearly everyone's stomachs. Desperately not wanting to be seasick, there was a rush to undo the reefs and get moving, after which things went back to being not too bad. Pelagic actually sails much better upwind than I had given her credit for, and we spent the morning beating up the Quebec coast.
Once within spitting distance we turned the motor on to save a couple hours of beating and to charge the batteries. We arrived in Anse du Portage mid-afternoon, where everyone either went hiking or caught up on sleep. Afterwards we had a wonderful dinner made by Marc, took a look at our options for the next couple days, and hit the sack.
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