Sleep on deck

[Roberto]

In the Moody for the Med thread on Live-ab many posters say they sleep on the deck at night: how do you manage to be dry and not completely soaked the following morning ?

At sunrise I always find the whole deck as if it stopped raining five minutes earlier, only way so far has been sleeping in a hammock..



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[Sans Bateau]

What a problem to have, cruising in the Med must be a real drag.

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[copterdoctor]

stay in bed till lunch time and everything will have dried out.

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[Roberto]

a drag can be indeed! actually my next boat will be based in Brittany, just wanted to solve the puzzle before leaving -.<)



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[Roberto]

an invitation for my few month old daughter to come and sleep in your boat ?

-.<)


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[steve_cronin]

YOU should know.....

..Roberto that local weather lore says that you must expect a blow when the decks are wet with condensation in the mornings.

I often sleep under the bimini where no dew collects. However that is usually due to the influence of too much 7 Star and my wife not encouraging me to come below and disturb her with my snorring.

Steve Cronin



<hr width=100% size=1>The above is, like any other post here, only a personal opinion

 

[jerryat]

Hi Roberto,

I agree with Steve. We often sleep in the cockpit but usually (though not always) under our bimini and it is very seldom damp in our experience. Frankly, in many places in the Med. the problem is not one of dampness overnight, but of getting chewed to bits by the bl**dy mozzies!! The sods seem to find me utterly delicious (understandable I modestly claim!)
while leaving SWMBO entirely alone. TAINT FAIR!! and it's very difficult to stop even with liberal use of sprays and the like.

Cheers (off for a long scratch!)

Jerry

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[Talbot]

I understand that chewing some yeast will help to move the mossies on to some other neighborhood as the yeast is then released through the pores and upsets the mossies.

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[USM]

cruising in the Med is awesome! warm weather in summer, good sun, bathing, non current and yet, on the other hand if you want technical cruising you can go in Bonifacio strait, Cyclades in Greece (check ou the Meltemi) and in the Area between barcelona and Marseilles

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[jerryat]

Hi Talbot!

Yes, we tried that one. Good story too, as the Portugese chemist mistook my translation and sold us suppositorys! Luckily we spotted it as we were leaving the shop and fell about laughing with the chemist, who then sold us the yeast tablets we wanted! He said he'd been surprised by the number of tablets we had bought! Didn't work though, and neither has any of the loads of different remedies we've tried. The best thing seems to be a foul smelling spray (can't remember the name, and the smell goes after about an hour) that we were told to spray onto the mozzies screens fitted to all openings. That was fantastic and killed the little bu**ers as soon as they set foot on the netting! One spraying lasts about two months or so.

Trouble is, you have to go out sooner or later, and at least one or more mozzie will be hiding behind the companionway and nip in too quickly to stop! Then it's down to spraying the bits of you that aren't covered at night, and hoping!

The green mozzie coils work well, but only out in the cockpit as the fumes will kill you below. The Med chemists seem to know what to recommend when you HAVE been chomped so, at least in my case, the bites don't itch for too long.

Cheers

Jerry



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[benjenbav]

I have a pet theory that the mozzies actually bite everyone pretty much equally but some people (me, for example) suffer a more virulent reaction than others (mrs benjenbav, to take another random example).

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[LadyInBed]

Re: yeast tablets

I tried taking yeast tablets, started taking them a couple of weeks before I got to Port St Louis.
When I got there the buggers were queuing up to take their turn at me as soon as the sun went down.


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[pugwash]

Better still...

The sure way to avoid mozzies is to share your bed with a soft-skinned young woman. It works.

Chewing Vitamin E tablets works against sandflies so it might also hit mozzies, but as I found out in NZ, your sweat smells of Marmite.

I was in New Guinea last year where a local guide had a mozzie repellant down-loaded into his mobile phone. Really! It sets up a high-frequency buzz that only mozzies can hear. Best to plug the phone into a power source. In the Far East evidently all the big companies like Sony Ericsson market it.

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[jerryat]

Hi Benjenbav!

Yes, I think you're right actually. SWMBO does get bitten quite often but, as you imply, has a job to find the bites, whereas my bites swell up and itch like hell!

Hi Pugwash, I've got one of those little anti-mozzie battery driven sound thingys (presented to me by sympathetic SWMBO) that emits a very high pitched whine. This is supposed to represent a male mozzie sound I think, and drive the biting (female) mozzies away. Doesn't work either and, would you believe, SWMBO says the buzzing keeps her awake so would I mind turning it off!!!

Lots of my cruising friends reckon that sooner or later, the immune system adjusts to the anti-coagulant (or whatever causes the itch) and ones reaction reduces accordingly.

I do think there's something in this theory, in that after about four years, the bite swellings were a lot less, though they still itched maddeningly at night.

Oh well, guess I'll just have to spend more time there to see it the theory does work. The things I do to help you lot out!!!

Cheers

jerry


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