South from Majuro Part 1: At Peace
edited out for now... :(
South from Majuro Part 2: At Peace
It's always nice to have one stormy night at sea, as long, of course, as you, personally, have no responsibility. Sailing south from Mili Atoll, our last stop in the Marshalls, we had one. We had a tiny jib up and both the main and mizzen had one reef in as usual and so the captain said that we'd be fine, come what may. Well. Famous last words those.
The storm started just as dusk fell to darkness and it fooled us all because it began with a few familiar fast and furious squalls that sped through under low dark clouds bringing strong winds and beating rain and then disappearing again as suddenly as they'd come. For each of these we held our course if we could, or, alternatively, bore away till the stronger winds had passed, but we didn't consider reducing sail. And so, when one of these squalls turned out, instead, to be an actual storm, no one, not the person on the helm nor the captain himself recognized it as such right off. By the time it became obvious that the weather wasn't going to just pass us by it was WAY beyond when we should have started reefing and so reducing sail was done in nasty conditions; deep darkness, heavy rain, very strong gusty winds, huge swells and hence heavy rolling, the boat racing along at her hull speed of 14 knots juddering as she tried to go even faster, and many great splashes of salt water regularily dousing everyone and everything... The captain was yelling orders but no one could hear a word he said over the sound of the wind and water to say nothing of the loose flapping sails or whipping ropes... and the hand signals we are all supposed to know and use, frankly, work better during the day when it's not dark and stormy and everyone is either holding on for dear life or desperately trying to contain huge amounts of heavy wet slippery flapping sails with escape-artist ropes. Sage was on the wheel alternatively trying to keep course and trying to keep the boat faced into the wind as sails were lowered as Clem and the rest of us put a second reef in the mizzen, and then in the main, and then took the mizzen down completely, and, finally, put yet another reef in the main. Reefing on a boat like this requires a lot of work far foreward on the deck, losening halyards (easyish in daylight in calm waters), setting the reefing lines (easyish in daylight in calm waters), collecting up and tying down the extra bottom bit of sail (fiendishly difficult even in daylight and calm waters), and then retightening everything. The whole process took about three hours, which seemed an eternity, especially since the drowned out communication lead to more than one fuckup along the way. And, by the end, both the mizzen and foresail had huge new rips in their cloth which distressed the captain more than anything else. Everyone was exhausted at that point and we'd lost track of who ought to have been on shift so I offered to take the wheel for a couple of hours. It was marvellous. I wish I could better explain. The sky was black and the water blacker yet. With only two very little sails left up the boat was still flying at 10 knots, riding up and over incredibly tall waves that appeared out of nowhere and then racing down their backsides only to charge upwards again as the next wave swept by. With the whole world sound asleep the boat and I were alone in the universe and the music played by the wind and waves was a song that Mother Nature was singing just for us and I was utterly at peace, with myself, with everything.
And then (how does this happen?) 24 hours later the wind had dropped and we'd let out all the sails again, swapped the tiny jib for a huge genoa, and then pulled them all down yet again and turned on the engine to motor across calm flat waters. Unbelievable.
And 24 hours after that the wind was a light delightful 15 steady knots and we were once again sailing beautifully.
Everyday is an adventure.
