Day 13

I was up at 5 AM attending to the boat. The boat was making heavy rolls to the right with surges of speed, the wind was howling, and the Rutland wind charger was free wheeling. The chart plotter showed boat speeds of around 5.5 kts, which wasn't too bad. Fortunately just before retiring at 1 AM I had reduced headsail even more, reducing our boat speed to 4 kts in expectation of a rising wind during the rest of the night. But we were headed ENE, which meant an adjustment to Jeff's airvane to take us more south. I put on the wet weather gear, turned on the deck light, and went up to the cockpit.

Both sails were traveling well, but when I looked up at the wind indicator I saw the problem right away. We were still sailing maybe 40 degrees into the wind. I adjusted the air vane about 70 degrees, to take us downwind from ENE to SE and the result was dramatic. The apparent wind had dropped, we were no longer climbing over the waves, and the boat was calmer, even though our SOG had increased to 6 kts. Before I could get my wet weather gear off down below I heard the hum of the Rutland again. It had cooled off, re engaged. and was putting out 3.5 amps. The true wind speed was about 18 kts. The serious wind would come later - predicted to hit a gale force 34 kts at 6 PM. I would try to run before it as I was doing now, though a bit more downwind and very little, if any, headsail.

I spent a few lazy hours dozing and reading my Kindle (The life of Omar Bradley), and at 10.30 AM I decided to suit up and go topside for a look around. The wind had speeded up to the high 20's gusting to the low 30's and the boat was now running at over 6 knots. The first order of business was to roll in some sail in anticipation of even stronger winds, which I did with little trouble to either myself or the sail.

At the steering station I saw that one of the 2 cord holding in place the locking pin of the self steering was coming loose and I re-tied the knot more securely. Had the pin come loose it probably would have dropped into the cockpit but self steering would have been lost until I recovered the pin and reset it. The spring loaded mechanism for holding the pin broke months ago but fortunately a hole has been provided through the handle probably for this contingency. I've been coping well with the cord tie down workaround.

I had dropped the lazy jacks in order to accommodate the trysail and both sides of the sail cover were hanging down and fluttering in the wind. I worked my to the top of the cabin, weather side, and lashed the sail cover to the boom in two places. I then took the opportunity to work my way to the mast and have a good look around and all appeared to be in order. Unlike before I tightened the lower shrouds, I could visually detect no sagging on the leeward shroud and there was less sag on the headstay too. I had a good look at the headsail and estimated that it was down to 60 square feet, slightly more than the trysail's 42 sq ft.

I had looked at our setting before going back inside the cabin. It was a completely overcast day, but thin overcast because I could see hints of blue here and there. There was a bit of rain drizzle. The following seas were huge, occasionally showering the cockpit with heavy spray and shoving the stern of the boat to leeward causing a broaching motion. Back at the nav station I saw that the boat speed still reached 6.3 and 6.4 kts at times, though centered around 5.5 kts. Our heading was still a satisfactory SE.

At noon our position was 34S12, 026W36, yielding a n-n distance of 108 miles in the direction 115T. We were now 720 miles from TdC. The barometer had dropped 8 points to 1008 hPa.

Not long after the noon report I shortened the headsail again. After completely furling and finding that our speed had dropped to 2.5-3.5 kts I rolled out half of what I had before, giving us about 30 square feet. That was sufficient to give us a speeds in the range 4.8-5.5 kts.

Back down below I wondered what conditions I would find at TdC. The settlement is on the north side of the island, and the first gale and the current gale that is building up have produced northerly winds, making their anchorage untenable. Still, 700 miles is a long way and weather conditions may be different there, or I might get lucky and arrive at the beginning of a good weather window.

We regularly got phenomenal gusts that would cause the boat to round up parallel with the waves then the big waves would slam into her hard. I adjusted Jeff to take us more downwind to the point that the headsail was not doing much good, so I was fairly sure that it was not a headsail problem. While I was sitting in the companionway having one last look one of those gusts came up, I saw the anemometer stop working, then we got hit hard enough that half of the contents in the book case managed to get over the restraining cord and wound up on the port settee. Other items flew across also. The shock cord holding the computer on the desk was stretched hard. The anemometer had stopped working once before, on the way to Argentina, but then it came good. A real fix would have to wait probably until Fremantle. One good thing to think about was that the grib file predicted that the winds would begin to abate by midnight, 10 hours away.

The next three hours were the most difficult since rounding the Horn. The wind was at full gale strength and the huge breaking waves were not what I had expected in these latitudes. Try as I might I could not get Jeff to steer the boat reliably. I took over the helm and quickly saw why: the gusts of wind were creating so much weather helm that it took all of my strength to control the wheel, not that it mattered because the boat was sluggish with the rudder. The weather helm problem was helped by rolling in the headsail, but another hour of work told me that it just wasn't going to work either. To complicate things I saw my first ship in a week, heading west, and according to AIS would pass within a half a mile. That was too close in these conditions so I hailed the ship and eventually got a response. I explained the situation and asked him to keep an eye of my position. I gave him my position, course, and speed but explained that I had very little control of this. About 20 minutes later he called me using the boat's name, which told me that he was now seeing me on his AIS. He seemed surprised that the boat was only 11 meters long (12, actually), and then he understood when I told him again that I was under sail with limited control. He told me that he would alter course and I could not thank him enough. I then watched as his course changed from 265 to 220 and just as well because even that was almost not enough because Pachuca finally started sailing downwind toward the ship's path at over 6 kts. However, the ship's drastic course changed proved to be sufficient and we passed about 1.5 miles from each other. In our last exchange I told the ship's officer that it had been a pleasure working him and he responded that it had been a pleasure for him to. I've encountered this civility with most of the ships that I have dealt with. They are professionals and don't want trouble any more than I do. I think that they appreciate getting a Heads Up from a tiny boat that poses a danger of collision.

At 4.30 PM I gave up trying to sail downwind. Jeff was being worked hard, the trysail was subject to too many gybes, and too frequently the boat would speed up, round up to the wind, then we would be hammered by a wave or two. I put the boat in a hove to position by lashing the tiller to windward but of course I knew that the result would be simply lying ahull with a sail up and taking the waves broadside. But the boat was more comfortable, there was less stress on the various system, and when we got hit by a breaking wave it didn't seem as bad as before. My plan to run before the gale with the trysail had been a failure and in future I would go back to running with the mainsail double reefed and heave to when the wind hits 30 knots.

About 30 minutes later I sensed a lull in the wind. An hour after I went out for a look and saw that the wind had backed and even though we were lying ahull square to the wind we were now facing the big waves head on. Talk about luck. At 6.30 I began to dither on whether or not to resume sailing and at 7 PM I went to the cockpit and did just that. All I had to do was to free the wheel and steer the boat a bit downwind because the trysail was already set and could be gybed to either side. The next 30 minutes were of traditional sailing of judging the wind and waves, dodging spray, adjusting sheets, and working the wheel hard. Eventually I settled on a starboard tack on a course of SE. The Monitor wind steering still couldn't cope with the conditions but the autopilot took over magnificently. After an hour it had still not disengaged itself and we were still headed SE making about 4.5 kts with the trysail only. The boat was the most comfortable since before the beginning of the gale, due in large part to the fact that we were square on to the following sea.

I felt damp and clammy all over after being in my wet weather gear for hours, but that didn't matter. The blow was over and that trumped everything else.

At 8.15 PM most of the sky was clear and I could see the big yellow sun about to set. Glory Be!

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