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| Sailing wing on wing. |
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| Detail of lines at the end of one "pole". |
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| Lounging in the cockpit on watch. |
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| Posing in my sexy summer wear! |
A somewhat long accounting of Friday, frst full day at sea on leg from St John's Newfoundland to Reikavik Iceland (with a few extra, also somewhat long, bonus notes about further days).
AKA A Teapot in a Tempest.
We'd left St John's Thursday afternoon and I'd have liked to start this tale off with "Friday dawned..." But there was no dawning. It was not that sort of a day. There was no dawn at all.
When I got up at 3 am for my first morning shift it was still a deep dark outside, not a friendly inky blackness with stars strewn above but rather the sort of darkness you expect to close in on you at any moment like the darkness you might find in the small closet under the stairs in a haunted house. And there was absolutely no lightening in the east, not then or ever. The wind was blowing 30 knots (which, for non-sailors, means howling) and the waves were 3 meters (scary huge). Drew was happy to see me and after very perfuntionary instructions (Stay as far starboard as possible) went off gratefully to bed. I took stock meaning I noticed that the dark was menacing, the wind was howling, and the waves were scary huge. There were 2 reefs in all 3 of the sails (genoa, main, and mizzen) (meaning they were small) but we were still charging along at almost 10 knots with waves roaring up behind us, lifting us up up to their crests, and then crashing in a white foamy mass as we surfed down the other side of them. Both the radar and the AIS confirmed that we were alone out here in the North Atlantic.
Being on watch involves a lot of repitition: each 15 minutes I scan the horizon in all directions (look out into the gloom pretending I might see something other than another even more giant wave approaching us at breakneck speed, like maybe a ship or an iceberg that we are on a collision course with), check all the instruments (true wind speed, apparent wind speed, etc etc etc), look at the sails, and go through a mental checklist of things that might need changing. This takes about 5 minutes. Then I sit watching the waves and trying not to panic for 10 minutes before beginning it all over again.
Slowly, very slowly, the blackness lightened into, finally, heavy white grey fog which gave a visibility of about 2 big scary waves in all directions.
At 5:30 am a torrential downpour started and the wind increased to almost 40 knots. I was kind of spooked by this and went to wake Drew up to come and hold my hand (metaphorically of course) but in he end, as he looked so peaceful sleeping, and there were already 2 reefs in all the sails, I didn't. I just sat in the cockpit and stressed as the visibility went from maybe 60 m down to 0 and i wondered how much adrenaline the body can produce in a day before it just runs out. Eventually the shower passed and the wind fell back to 30 knots and, by then, 30 seemed tame so that by the time Drew got up I was happy as a clam.
He took stock and noticed that both the wind generator and SSB radio antenna had broken at some point during the night and so put on his safety harness and went outside and climbed up to fix them. (I put on my harness too, in case he fell in and needed rescuing or something - have I mentioned that the waves were huge - but stayed inside finding and handing out towels and tools and duct tape as required, oh, and worrying a bit as well.) Afterwards I made him a dish of home-made-by-me granola (with blueberries, yoghurt, keiffer, and honey on top) before I went off to bed (leaving him to fix his own pot of tea).
The next time I got up he greeted me with the comment, "The teapot is a teapot." I was initially unsure of what to do with such a philosophical statement in the middle of the day in the middle of the Atlantic (though strictly speaking we were nowhere near the middle, of either, yet) but fortunately he continued on, "I've learnt that it has some sort of insulation in the bottom and it can't be used to heat water on the stove." "Ah," I replied, enlightened, "it's not a kettle." "Exactly!" he agreed. (This all makes more sense if you know that we'd been using a regular kettle to heat water when at dock and attached to shore power, which we could no longer do now we were at sea, and that the tea pot in question was really a fancy stainless steel thermos). We decided that Lili - his wife who usually sails with him but was sitting out this leg and visiting with her sisters in Europe - might have mentioned a sea kettle and that we'd look for it later. (And I wondered, looking at the ruined tea pot, how I was going to explain to Lili that I'd not made him tea.)
Later on in the day Drew, very happy with how well I'd done at keeping the boat to starboard, but, nonetheless, not happy with our current course, decided we had to put out a pole and go wing on wing. We dressed in our boots, farmer-john foul weather pants, jackets, gloves, and harnesses and went out on the deck to work. The process involves too many steps to list but one of them has me standing tall on the slippery wet deck (outside in the howling wind right beside the scary huge waves) holding onto the end of the pole with both hands, and then, at just the right moment as we're about to fly down a wave, throwing it with all my force out away from the boat while Drew winches in the last of the four lines that will hold it in place. Yikes. To make a long story short we did a great job. It was a great day. I made a fantastic chicken curry for supper which we ate with quinoa and cucumber slices and then was ready for my last shift (7 to 11 pm) which I always dread because, without fail, it gets dark.
I love being at sea.
Extra notes:
NB(1): With 2 of us on board for what will be about a 10 day passage out of sight of land we are on watch 4 hours on 4 hours off (sort of though not by the clock) which theoretically leaves time for three 4-hour naps inbetween. In practise, however, there are lots of things that are safer and easier to do with two people (like putting up a genoa pole out on deck) or more friendly and communal to do together (like eating supper and taking time to talk with each other) all of which we try to do near shift changes, though sometimes the wind is unaware of our schedule and necessatates the waking of other up in the middle of their off time to help with sail changes and then things get a bit mixed up. But it all works out.
NB(2): Everyday is different.
Saturday 6 am it's blowing 30 knots but directly from our stern. The boat is flying serenely along main and genoa out wing on wing and, with current helping us, our speed over the ground according to the GPS is 11 kts (which means super fast). I'm lounged on the portside cockpit bench with my feet draped over the captain's chair and I've started reading the first of the second hand books I picked up in St John's (20 for $10) (I've chosen to start with Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed because I'm thinking about a new relationship.) I still do my on watch checks of course, but only every 20 minutes (because nothing is happening) and they only take 1 minute each (because nothing is happening) which leaves me 57 minutes out of each hour to read!
Sunday at 6 am it's still blowing 30 knots but the wind has shifted and we're close hauled now with the sails fully reefed into tiny triangles. The wind and the seas (waves) are both rising and the bow of the boat lifts and crashes sending spray flying in all directions. Every now and again a wave breaks at just the right time to fling a boatload (hehe) of cold salty water down which hits the windshield with a loud SPLaaat and then runs off in all directions. The wind generator's propeller is spinning so fast it sounds like a helicopter and the various canvas covers on deck (BBQ and dingy covers for example) are flapping away noisily. The whole boat is rising and falling, shaking and vibrating, and the lines outside holding the sails are under such tension that they hum and twang with the motion of the boat. I'm standing braced in the companion way with my bum wedged securely against its frame, one foot on the cockpit floor and the other down lower on the top step that leads down into the cabin. The increasing wind and building seas were all a bit too much for me this morning and so Drew, bless his heart, who ought to be sleeping snuggled warm and dry in his cosy quiet bunk, is keeping me company. He's lying in boots and hat and full foul weather gear on one of the cockpit benches with a wet salty blanket tucked around him and I do believe he's actually sound asleep - though how anyone could possibly even doze off in such an uncomfortable looking position with all the din and commotion out in the cockpit amazes me. (I don't have a go pro but you can google Volvo sailing race videos to get the idea.) (All day we are in survival mode catching naps and snacks - tomato sandwiches for me and grapefruit cups with chocolate chips in them for Drew - whenever we can as the wind and waves continue to mount.)
But by Monday morning the wind has blown itself almost completely out and is down to practicality nothing and so at 3 am shift change - we're so far north now that it's light out - Drew and I put out both poles and fly wing on wing again, this time with the genoa and ballooner sails. By 6 am Drew has long gone to bed and I've had hot oatmeal, three cups of tea, and am back to reading my book while on watch. (We're only going 4 knots, which is very slow.)
Tuesday at 6 am the water is glassy smooth and we're motoring.
And Wednesday we're back to close hauled in 20 knots again.
This is all true. I couldn't make it up if I tried!
And I love it.
NB(3): For the record, for those who may not have read my every post, Drew, as well as being a very competent sailor and a philosopher, is a retired cardiac surgeon, fighter pilot, and astronaut who actually went to space. He currently works part-time as a professor and safety consultant when he's not sailing. And he can and does make excellent pots of chai tea.
