Day 61 - Gale, and No Staysail

The weather that night was worse than the grib file had predicted and turned out to be full blown gale.

I wasn't to know this going into the night and I made a valiant effort to sail through the entire event. At 11.30 PM when the wind was supposed to be decreasing it seemed to be getting worse. I went turned on the deck light and checked the sails, and even with the wind approaching 40 knots they were coping well. I knew that the rigging would be OK with that amount of sail area, and the hull was moving remarkably well through the water, given that we were running downwind with the heavy sea coming from the port quarter. What stopped me was something that I had not anticipated: excessive weather helm. For about an hour I had been witnessing a cycle where every 4 or 5 minutes the boat would round up into the wind and the staysail would begin to luff with a terrible racket, then slowly fall off the wind and back to a broad reach. I was too worried about sail or gear damage to allow this to go on, so I suited up and went topside to have a look.

Conditions topside were wild, with huge seas threatening to invade the cockpit. The rolling was so bad that I had to keep low, hang on tight, and keep changing tethers as I moved around the cockpit. I was so thankful for that engine exhaust valve that was guaranteeing that no water would work its way into the engine cylinders. I got behind the wheel, disengaged Jeff, and took the helm myself. No wonder Jeff had been having problems. There were all sorts of dynamics going on. When the wind surged the boat would speed up to more than 7 knots, causing a huge weather helm where I had to use a lot of force to put the wheel on full lock to slowly go back off the wind. When the wind sagged he boat speed would drop to 5 knots and most of the weather helm would disappear. Then there were the waves. Huge waves would pass under the boat causing a violent corkscrew action and occasionally a wave would slam into the stern of the boast causing it to yaw to windward. It wasn't tenable.

Just before midnight I hove to. I tried tacking the boat in order to backwind the staysail but we didn't get even close to crossing the wind, so I gybed. The sails took that gybe remarkably well and soon we were hove to in the classical fashion, with foresail back winded and the helm tied with two lines to weather. This quieted the boat somewhat and with or speed reduced to 2 knots. However, I was disappointed to see that the boat was basically beam on to the seas. I wanted it to be 45 degrees off the wind. Even 60 degrees would have been an improvement. But that was OK because I had learned something important, and in these winds the boat would cope.

I went down below and after watching things for a while I took to the bunk. I was 45 minutes late in responding to the alarm and missed the weather fax. I reset the alarm for 6AM and at 5.45 I responded to the daylight and woke up.

I had coffee at the nav station looking at the numbers and trying to get a feel of the situation. The wind had backed to the SW as predicted, meaning that the front had passed. The wind speed appeared to be in the high 20's. The barometer was at 1006. It had dropped 17 points in less than 24 hours. (More, really because when I tapped the glass the needle went up.) I decided that it was worth having a go at sailing. I suited up, putting on an extra jacket and a wool beanie under the hood. No gloves. Outside I had a quick look around. The main anchor point for the spray dodger on the port side had broken (made of plastic, would you believe) and I tied the strap around a cleat. Otherwise everything appeared to be in order. I saw a patch of blue sky in the horizon. Resuming sail was relatively easy because the boat was already hove to pointing SE. All I had to do was to ease the staysail weather sheet and bring on its lee sheet. The trysail was symmetrical with its two sheets and needed no attention. We took off at 4.5 knots but after 15 minutes of battling the wheel I accepted that there was still too much of a helm problem. What to do? The simple step would have been to simply heave to again, but I wanted to use this opportunity to learn more about the boat, so I decided to drop the staysail and see how she would handle with trysail only. I had never dropped the staysail in these conditions and it wasn't exactly a picnic. I prepared the halyard so that it would pay out without snagging when I made the drop. I then turned the boat into the wind until the staysail was flogging like mad then let fly the halyard. The big flaw to a hanked sail is the need to visit the foredeck. I got to the mast in a crouch then crawled to the inner forestay and pulled down the sail while coping with the heavy rolls. I knew that I had gone forward without any sail tie lines because I had not wanted to take the time to open the companionway and go down to fetch them. Fortunately I had forgotten to remove the peak tie down cord from the bollard so soon the peak of the sail was being held down nicely. I rolled the body of the sail around itself and laid it along the netting. I looked around and noted that the Zodiac inflatable was still securely strapped above the life raft.

Then there was a 20 minute session back at the wheel to see how the boat handled under trysail only. I concluded that sailing was feasible and it took a half dozen attempts before Jeff was set up well enough to take over the steering. While dividing my time between the compass heading at the front and Jeff's airvane at the back I gybed the boat a half dozen times which the trysail took very well. After watching things for 10 minutes I went down below figuring that the worst that could happen would be the boat heaving itself to. However, Jeff was able to hold course and we were moving SE and a modest 2 knots. Down below the cabin seemed very quiet after the turmoil topside. We were really in sort of a moving hove to position, if that makes any sense.

Back at the nav station I drew back the shower curtain and started the laptop computer which I had shut down and left with cover down and plastic sheet over it to protect it from the occasional drips of water onto the nav table. A shaft of strong sunlight came into the cabin through the hatch and I began updating this blog.

I will risk boring experienced sailors with my list of lessons learned:

1. Self steering is not tenable with winds over 30 knots with huge seas.
2. The boat does not heave to properly with the staysail up and backwinded. (Use trysail only next time.)
3. If expecting a blow, drop the staysail when the wind is in the mid-20s.
4. The boat can take it. I have no doubt that if that mythical crew of young guns had taken tricks at the wheel we could have sailed all night at over 6.5 knots.

Just before noon I decided that it was time to try bringing up the staysail. The sea was quite rough but the wind had dropped to the low 20's with gusts into the high 20's. I got the sail up without too much drama and was pleased to see that it looked none the worse for wear after the night's ordeal. This got us moving from 2 knots to 4.5 knots and more at times.

At noon our position was 45S42,108W28, giving us a n-n distance of 85 miles in the direction 127T. The barometer had risen 3 hPa in 5 hours to 1009. The sky had cleared and was blue, but the sea still looked angry and grey. The gale was over. ... Did I really say "bring it on" in my last blog? Never again!

At 2 PM it was time to change the sails for running downwind. The wind had started to veer on its way from SW to W to NW. I decided to drop the trysail, then the staysail, then roll out the headsail. I let the boat to go upwind eased the trysail sheets, then brought it down at the mast. Before I had a chance to secure it I heard a bang and off went the staysail hanging from its halyard along the side of the boat. The deck fitting had failed again. It got a bit messy. Without a sail to steady the boat it began to roll wildly because it was beam on to the sea, the trysail was loose, fretting, and threatening to go back up the mast, and I had to deal with the staysail which was not a simple matter. I had to ease the halyard to put about half of the sail into the water. I then rushed forward and brought the bottom of the sail sail on board then eased more halyard to get the top of the sail onto the deck. While I unhanked it I noticed a broken strand of wire at the base of the stay. It had happened either overnight or from the shock of the parting deck fitting. Once I had the staysail down the hatch and the loose stay secured I tied down the trysail.

There must be a design or materials problem with the staysail setup. It should be stronger than that. It had bothered me before that the first fitting sheared off cleanly with no evidence of corrosion. I'll need expert advice with this. In the meantime, my plan to use the staysail to take some load off the headsail have evaporated. I'm now running a pure sloop and I'll definitely need to rely on a headsail. I take some comfort in the knowledge that we got from Australia through NZ, Tahiti, Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest and down the West Coast to La Paz without ever using the staysail, to my recollection. When things quiet down I'll probably put the damaged stay back up with my last U-bolt and use it only to support the mast. I've avoided getting depressed about this latest setback but it has been a big disappointment, though I'm grateful that it happened today and not last night during the gale. I've just lost one level of redundancy and I have a long way to go. I'm already thinking about getting out the sewing kit and begin repairs on the prime headsail.

While doing an engine run I got out the parallel rulers and did some work with the paper chart and the results startled me. The software that I've been using gives the bearing of the Horn as 128T. According to the chart the Horn is at 110T. The paper chart will be correct and I assume that the software has problems with the map projection that increase with distance. This changes my strategy a considerably. If I head east, 090T I am 20 degrees north of the mark. If I head south, 180T I am a whopping 70 degrees off the mark. I can head ENE at 60T and be no worse off that heading SSE at 160T. I expect to do a lot more easting in the next few days even if the heading includes a northern component. I am far enough south now that winds is no longer an issue.

At 6.30 PM the wind had moderated to the low 20's and we were moving at 4.5-5.0 knots on course 120T. However, the swell was still huge with waves crashing into the hull with monotonous regularity. I had formulated the policy before I left La Paz that in these situations of huge swells I would minimize my time on deck in case one of those occasional waves of 2 or 3 times normal size (aka rogue waves) slam into the boat and try to knock it down. The wind was supposed to veer during the night and with my new insight regarding my position I would be gybing when our course reached 160T.

-------------------- THANK YOU -------------------

Finally, I'd like to put my problems aside and thank everyone for the Christmas greetings they sent me through the blog. Brenda forwarded them all to me and I enjoyed reading every one of them. You can imagine how much they meant to someone in my situation. Love and best wishes to all.

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