...Faroes to Sweden
AKA One last big blow.
AKA Be careful what you wish for.
The last leg of my sailing trip this summer is 600 nm from the Faroes to Sweden - about 5 days. I tell Drew that I'm willing to wait for good sailing weather but we're so far behind on his schedule that he just wants to go. Saturday morning he puts his wife on a plane to Europe (she's not interested in passages of any length anymore which is why I'm here to crew for him) and we head out to sea. He's rechecked windguru and windyty and downloaded the latest GRIB files. None of them agree with each other with respect to where the wind won't be coming from but they all agree that there won't be any so it looks like we'll be motoring at least to start. I'm disappointed. I wanted one last good blow to finish up the summer with.
We untie and cast of the dock lines and motor over glass out of the harbour but as soon as we are in the sound 12 knots of wind appears from nowhere. Quickly we raise sails and kill the engine. This might be the only wind we get. An hour later out in the North Atlantic proper the wind rises straight to 20 knots and then builds from there. Not, at all, what had been forecast. Seas are choppy and confused. And we're close hauled.
Drew is the first to get sick. Initially he alterates between going to vomit in his head (washroom) and then lying on a cockpit bench looking very green but soon he is so sick that he just opens the bimini zipper and vomits straight onto the deck. My body reacts differently - I always have multiple foul fluids spewing simultaneously - so I have no choice but do dash repeatedly to my head and vomit explosively in a bucket while snot runs out my nose, cold sweat pours off my forehead, and diarrhea spurts from my other end. The combined smell is lovely.
For the next 12 hours we have what would have been great sailing if either of us had felt any better off than roadkill. We lie on alternate sides of the cockpit fully dressed in boots and hats and full foul weather gear. I have my alarm set to ring each 30 minutes and we take turns getting up to check the AIS and radar to see if any other boats are about. It's freezing cold and seems to get dark very early. Outside it's squally, raining on and off, and, with random larger waves, boatloads of seawater are forever being dumped on us. The cockpit is almost waterproof but not up to taking a beating like this. By midnight the cushions we are lying on and the blankets we pull up over ourselves are cold, wet, and salty but we are both so sick we barely notice and certainly don't care. As the wind continues to rise we work as a team to reef the sails once, twice, three times and then take the mizzen completely in so we have just two small triangles of cloth out. The boat flys up waves fast enough to get airborn only to crash down the other side with a slap that is a bang.
By 4 am Drew seems slightly better so, after a particularly violent episode of dry retching, I choose to sleep on the couch in the main salon instead of going back up to the cockpit. At 7 am it's getting light out and the boat is still flying over the water. I drag myself up to replace Drew on watch and he rolls over, pulls his wet blanket a bit more tightly around himself and lies as if dead. "I'm glad we're sailing," I can't resist saying. Drew opens one eye and gives me the wryest of smiles, "Lili would not be enjoying this," he replies. I am too tired and too sick to figure out if I am or not. I know I'm starting to get seriously dehydrated but also that if i took even a sip of anything it would just come right back up. I go to check the instruments and see that we have a near collision with a military vessel coming up. Tracking its progress and making sure we don't actually hit it will keep me out of trouble for the next half hour. And so the day continues...
Eventually the wind drops and swings round beside us, the seas settle, and we pass between the Shetland and Orkney Isles without stopping and then are into the North Sea where hundreds of oil rigs tower out of the water like gargantuan alien abodes from a futuristic sci-fi movie, tugs tow drilling rigs about, and huge tankers are a dime a dozen. There are fishing trawlers, many with their AIS turned off, presumably to hide their location from others in the same business, and research vessels dragging five mile long sounding instruments. Drew says in 10 years at sea he has never seen so much activity.
The next morning the wind has lowered some more and is directly behind us so we rig both poles and sail all day wing on wing with Norway on our left, Denmark on our right, and Sweden straight ahead. The boat skims effortlessly along under a blue blue sky. We shed our foul weather gear for the first time since leaving Halifax, shower, and sit warm, clean, and dry out in the sunny cockpit. It's our last full day of sailing and conditions could not be better. We have the windows open. Tunes are playing. It is heavenly. Yes, the day is perfect. Perfect. Not even one last whale could make it better. Drew says he'll take me out for supper tomorrow night. What? Are we going to be there already? I don't want this leg to end. I can't believe that the summer is almost over. I want to sit right here, on the starboard cockpit seat, with the boat gently rocking and the sun warming my back, forever. I wish once again that life was more like plums and you could somehow bottle up the best parts and save them to take back out to enjoy again later. Instead I'll just have to try and remember: what the rocky Norwegian coast looks like, the joy of being warm, how much Drew makes me laugh... (And just when I didn't think the day could possibly get better I did the first night shift - still sailing blissfully along wing on wing - and stars came out as the sky darkened and a bright orange moon roze lazily from the sea and then pink and green northern lights danced for hours as if in celebration...).
Man, it's been a great season!
AKA One last big blow.
AKA Be careful what you wish for.
The last leg of my sailing trip this summer is 600 nm from the Faroes to Sweden - about 5 days. I tell Drew that I'm willing to wait for good sailing weather but we're so far behind on his schedule that he just wants to go. Saturday morning he puts his wife on a plane to Europe (she's not interested in passages of any length anymore which is why I'm here to crew for him) and we head out to sea. He's rechecked windguru and windyty and downloaded the latest GRIB files. None of them agree with each other with respect to where the wind won't be coming from but they all agree that there won't be any so it looks like we'll be motoring at least to start. I'm disappointed. I wanted one last good blow to finish up the summer with.
We untie and cast of the dock lines and motor over glass out of the harbour but as soon as we are in the sound 12 knots of wind appears from nowhere. Quickly we raise sails and kill the engine. This might be the only wind we get. An hour later out in the North Atlantic proper the wind rises straight to 20 knots and then builds from there. Not, at all, what had been forecast. Seas are choppy and confused. And we're close hauled.
Drew is the first to get sick. Initially he alterates between going to vomit in his head (washroom) and then lying on a cockpit bench looking very green but soon he is so sick that he just opens the bimini zipper and vomits straight onto the deck. My body reacts differently - I always have multiple foul fluids spewing simultaneously - so I have no choice but do dash repeatedly to my head and vomit explosively in a bucket while snot runs out my nose, cold sweat pours off my forehead, and diarrhea spurts from my other end. The combined smell is lovely.
For the next 12 hours we have what would have been great sailing if either of us had felt any better off than roadkill. We lie on alternate sides of the cockpit fully dressed in boots and hats and full foul weather gear. I have my alarm set to ring each 30 minutes and we take turns getting up to check the AIS and radar to see if any other boats are about. It's freezing cold and seems to get dark very early. Outside it's squally, raining on and off, and, with random larger waves, boatloads of seawater are forever being dumped on us. The cockpit is almost waterproof but not up to taking a beating like this. By midnight the cushions we are lying on and the blankets we pull up over ourselves are cold, wet, and salty but we are both so sick we barely notice and certainly don't care. As the wind continues to rise we work as a team to reef the sails once, twice, three times and then take the mizzen completely in so we have just two small triangles of cloth out. The boat flys up waves fast enough to get airborn only to crash down the other side with a slap that is a bang.
By 4 am Drew seems slightly better so, after a particularly violent episode of dry retching, I choose to sleep on the couch in the main salon instead of going back up to the cockpit. At 7 am it's getting light out and the boat is still flying over the water. I drag myself up to replace Drew on watch and he rolls over, pulls his wet blanket a bit more tightly around himself and lies as if dead. "I'm glad we're sailing," I can't resist saying. Drew opens one eye and gives me the wryest of smiles, "Lili would not be enjoying this," he replies. I am too tired and too sick to figure out if I am or not. I know I'm starting to get seriously dehydrated but also that if i took even a sip of anything it would just come right back up. I go to check the instruments and see that we have a near collision with a military vessel coming up. Tracking its progress and making sure we don't actually hit it will keep me out of trouble for the next half hour. And so the day continues...
Eventually the wind drops and swings round beside us, the seas settle, and we pass between the Shetland and Orkney Isles without stopping and then are into the North Sea where hundreds of oil rigs tower out of the water like gargantuan alien abodes from a futuristic sci-fi movie, tugs tow drilling rigs about, and huge tankers are a dime a dozen. There are fishing trawlers, many with their AIS turned off, presumably to hide their location from others in the same business, and research vessels dragging five mile long sounding instruments. Drew says in 10 years at sea he has never seen so much activity.
The next morning the wind has lowered some more and is directly behind us so we rig both poles and sail all day wing on wing with Norway on our left, Denmark on our right, and Sweden straight ahead. The boat skims effortlessly along under a blue blue sky. We shed our foul weather gear for the first time since leaving Halifax, shower, and sit warm, clean, and dry out in the sunny cockpit. It's our last full day of sailing and conditions could not be better. We have the windows open. Tunes are playing. It is heavenly. Yes, the day is perfect. Perfect. Not even one last whale could make it better. Drew says he'll take me out for supper tomorrow night. What? Are we going to be there already? I don't want this leg to end. I can't believe that the summer is almost over. I want to sit right here, on the starboard cockpit seat, with the boat gently rocking and the sun warming my back, forever. I wish once again that life was more like plums and you could somehow bottle up the best parts and save them to take back out to enjoy again later. Instead I'll just have to try and remember: what the rocky Norwegian coast looks like, the joy of being warm, how much Drew makes me laugh... (And just when I didn't think the day could possibly get better I did the first night shift - still sailing blissfully along wing on wing - and stars came out as the sky darkened and a bright orange moon roze lazily from the sea and then pink and green northern lights danced for hours as if in celebration...).
Man, it's been a great season!
