Day 74 - Through a Gale

It was a rough night, with winds reaching gale force (upper 30's) for several hours.

I got a fright before midnight when I hear a new and frantic sound coming from the cockpit. I figured that something had parted. I jumped out of bed and slid back the hatch to have a look. It was only one end of the tarp covering the hole in the spray dodger that had come loose. I secured it under ropes but had to leave the companionway exposed to any water flying through that hole, which was the weather side. I went to bed feeling confident that the trysail would hold up well (after all, it isn't called a storm trysail for nothing) and the rigging would not be unduly stressed. I had done my best to prepare the deck cargo for the blow (e.g. extra lashing on the whisker pole) and felt that I was best off getting rest and leaving the boat to its fate. A lot of waves slammed into the hull and a lot of water washed over the deck. I had seen the hull being pounded so many times before that the noise and impact of the waves no longer bothered me. The deck awash was leading to a lot of dripping from the cabin hatch onto the port settee, and once in a while a drop of water would hit me as I slept on the starboard side. Soon after returning to bed after the 2.30 AM weather fax session we were hit extra hard by a well placed wave and water came gushing through the 2" gap in the companionway hatch. The shower curtain took the brunt of the water and the plastic bag over the computer handled the rest. Those two items without a doubt had saved the computer.

The weather fax showed that the center of a 972 hPa low was passing right over the boat. The doctrine is to run from bad weather if possible, but that isn't practical in a small boat. First of all, one would need state of the art weather reporting (or a weather routing service) to see one coming well ahead of time and next one would need the correct wind direction boat speed to effect a retreat.

I got out of bed at 6 AM and looked around. The boat was still sailing to the ESE at 1.5-2.0 knots. Peering trough the hatches and windows I could see that the trysail was fine and the fuel containers were still on the rails. I could not see the Zodiac but I was confident that it was OK because it was strapped 2 ft off the deck on the platform. The floor in the aft section of the cabin (galley and nav station) was fairly wet, and the bilge needed pumping.

Moving around the cabin in these rough conditions is very dangerous and should not be taken lightly because one tiny misstep can result your flying across the cabin causing personal injury or damage to equipment. I move around in a slow, measured, deliberate pace that is almost theatrical. Think of a rock wall climber gingerly working his way up the face of the cliff. I don't mind the theatrics given that I am the only audience. The important thing is to not get hurt.

By 7 AM the wind was down to the high 20's. According to the grib file it would continue weakening and veering, getting down to 17 knots at around midnight, then backing and rising again to the low 20's. I had requested a spot report for 52S, 90W and it predicted excellent sailing winds from the west for the following 4 days.

I figured that we might get hammered by one more gale before making the rounding, but we just might get lucky.

At 10.30 things had calmed down enough for me to venture topside. The wind was in the high teen and we were only rarely being slammed by big waves. Looking forward everything on the deck looked fine. The fuel containers on the starboard side had taken the brunt of the weather but they were still in place. However, most of the remaining starboard spray dodger window had been torn out. A new spray dodger was now on the agenda for South Africa.

I rolled out some jib then started the engine for a much welcome 2 hours of heat in the cabin. (It's amazing how well that heater dries out the cabin, and probably goes a long way to explaining the lack of mold in the boat.) Down below I saw that we were now making about 4 knots and we had lost much of our leeway and were now making directly to the Horn again. In the last 24 hours we had moved more east than I would have liked and when the wind veered I would follow it around to head more south.

At noon our position was 51S50, 091W01, giving us a n-n distance of 57 miles in the direction 098T. The barometer was up to 1011 hPa and there were patches of blue sky beginning to appear. We were slightly less than 900 miles from the Horn. The wind predictions had given me confidence that we would be making better progress in the next few days.

I woke up at 3 PM after a long nap and with the prospects of calmer weather I decided to spend a couple of hours sewing the headsail. In fact, I was at it for over four hours and to my amazement finished the first long run of sewing, which I carefully measured to be 11 ft long. The work was actually very relaxing (though hard on the hands) and for some reason warming to the point where I had to remove my jacket. The big problem is still getting the sail in and out of the forecastle. The sail is laminated with an internal webbing of some sort. This makes it very stiff and difficult to work with. It is unlikely that I would ever get this type of sail again. So today I worked on the lower part of the sail in the cabin with the rest of it snaking forward up to the forecastle. I'm going to try to figure out a way to keep the working end of the sail in the cabin by moving it from side to side depending on which bunk I am using. Once the repair is finished I will put in a lot of time to try to fold it neatly and perhaps even bag it. I do not expect that task to be easy.

The wind speed was supposed to bottom out at 17 knots and in fact dropped to half that speed, making the sails fret a bit, though we managed to keep moving, though sometimes as slow as 2.5 knots. However, the wind direction was good enough to give us a reasonable course to the SE. In the evening I was expecting the wind to back and strengthen to the low 20's.

I was looking forward to another radio session with my friend Jim on his boat in Fremantle. The session would begin at 4 AM boat time so I would simply stay up after the 2.30 AM weather fax session to eliminate any risk of oversleeping. I was now using the chart plotter's alarm system and it was very good.

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