Slipped Lines and Wild Winds
The fleet is off again! Cape Town, here we come. As per normal, we have the leaving format, slipping lines with military procession in an orderly and controlled fashion, the parade of sail, MOB drills and then getting ready to sail. This time, Marcus and I are down for mother watch. Luck of the draw I guess, but a bit of a bugger as we’re down in the galley for most of the proceedings preparing lunch. So, with a new crew and new course, we line up for the start, and we’re off again. We get a good start, and we’re heading away from Punta in the exact opposite direction we had arrived only a few days previously. All was quiet calm, jostling for position and trying to decide our next sail change, the Code 1 was brought up, our biggest sail. “HOLD” was the call, then we brought up our code 3. What was happening? I stuck my head up out of the galley to get a peak and Washington DC were metres from us, Qingdao was just in front, but in front of the fleet, GOSH had suddenly heeled over, another boat was already flying their kite and cutting through the field. Then we got it, as we came out of the shelter of Punta, the wind had veered strongly and increased in strength to the point that the boat with the spinnaker up was having problems, and we’re now trying to pull our kite down. So there it was, from thinking we’ve got a pleasant down wind sail, we were now faced with strong headwinds.
Another big learning. You think you’ve prepared, and then you hit strong winds and confused seas.
We’ve got plenty of tea bags, coffee, hot chocolate etc, but nobody has thought to fill up the galley stock. It’s on the boat somewhere, but when it’s blowing a bloody gale, and you’re below decks, it’s a bit of a challenge.
You’ve packed and organised your bags/clothes, and now you can’t find a bloody thing. You’ve started the race with shorts and Crocs, and now you’re hunting for your southern-ocean gear. And of course, sea sickness is back on the agenda, with several people having to go to their bunks.
Me, I’ve been down below whilst all this is happening, just cooked lunch and now preparing dinner. A chicken and pesto dish, and it’s not pleasant in the galley. Doesn’t help with half the crew throwing up and nobody wants to eat. As I’ve mentioned before, I get to a point, throw up, retch a few times and carry on. For me, it’s a mental thing and every time it gets rough I get better. I carry a sick bag in my pocket, I don’t need to use it, but it gives me peace of mind.
Gav’s Great Ascent
We’re beating out into the southern Atlantic chasing down GOSH and Seattle, but with a much smaller crew on deck due to illness. We also have a number of new crew who haven’t experienced racing like this and so don’t have the experience yet to helm in these conditions (to be fair, most of the new crew are sick anyway). So we have 7 people in our new watch, with 1 as mother that gives us 6 on deck, 3 of which are down below with sickness so we’re rotating the helm every 30 minutes. We’re being very conservative with our sail plan, as being aggressive in the 1st couple of days and being short-handed, wouldn’t pay in the long run.
We’ve noticed our flag rope attached to the starboard spreader has become untied from the starboard stanchion and as is always the bloody case it’s wrap itself around both the 1st and 2nd reef lines high up on the main sail. Make a small error, and it escalates into a major issue and smacks you where it hurts. So, we have to get it sorted sooner rather than later as it would be likely to escalate further. So, Gavin gets his climbing suit on (just needs a cape for his superhero alter ego). We bring the port Spinnaker & Yankee halyard aft and tie onto Gavin. We then grind him up onto the boom, he still can’t reach the back of the main, so we bring him back down and tie a pull line to his harness, grind him back onto the boom then grind him up the outside of the main sail, whilst grinding the pull line from the back of the boat to get him out to the end of the main. It did have a bit of a Spider-Man vibe. An hour later, the job was done and Gavin was successfully dropped back on deck. But yet again, a job as simple as taking a flag down and not making that line good had escalated into a significant issue. To be fair, Nigel, a fellow Irishman, stuck his hand up to causing the problem, which says a lot about Nigel and the team ethos. We are all amateurs, and nobody wants to make a mistake. But we all need to own those mistakes, learn from them and move on.
Helming into Dawn, Sleeping in a Sponge
The guys with sea sickness are starting to feel better each day. It normally takes about 3 to 4 days for those who are really bad.
We are flying along, hitting 18 knots which is great fun in a 50-ton sailing boat, and we haven’t got a code (Spinnaker) up yet.
Every day on this race gives a new 1st, be it miles sailed, days at sea, etc. but there is nothing like sailing through the night, heading East towards a new day, with nothing but the horizon in front of you.
For the 1st leg, the majority of our sailing was South, now we’re heading East and today was my 1st, of many I hope, helming into a sunrise. It was stunning and also made helming so much easier, giving you a focal point rather than checking the compass every few seconds.
I think I’ve mentioned before that we hot bunk on the boat, meaning that you share a bunk with someone from the other watch, and you also share duties together. My bunk buddy on this leg is Marcus, from South Africa. We have three cubbyholes to share to store our clothes etc. and, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, many of the through fixings leak, hence the prolific use of dry bags for everything. We’ve now got a leak in the middle cubbyhole where I store my rather expensive, Gortex sleeping bag, a real pain as we clear the bunks for your bunk buddy at the beginning of every watch. I’m now getting into a wet sleeping bag. I’m also in a Port high side bunk and as we’ve been on a Port tack for this whole leg, it’s like climbing Everest every time you’re trying to get into your bunk. The Port primary winch is attached just inches from my head. On a port tack, we run the working spinnaker sheet around this winch, and it is constantly being trimmed. We constantly trim or adjust all our sails to get the best efficiency/speed from them. The wind is constantly changing its direction, so we need to constantly change the angle of the sail to get the best speed. The process varies from sail to sail, but in essence we let out the rope we control the sail with, called the sheet, to failure (starts to flap), then grind it back in again. With the spinnaker, if you’re not careful, this can cause the spinnaker to collapse and with a following sea, it can collapse a lot. When the spinnaker fills again, the forces coming through the sheets and through the winches are immense (it’s already melted the outside of some of our spinnaker sheets) causing them to make a cracking sound like a whip. So, you’re trying to sleep and this is happening every few minutes. It takes time to get used to, but ear plugs are the only real answer.
Code 2 chaos
Our watch has been struggling, with both sea sickness and inexperience the most, so Gavin has moved Andy, a fellow northern Irishman across onto our watch giving us 8. He’s great crack and an experienced sailor, and we bounce off each other, which makes the watches go quickly.
We’ve decided not to go for the initial scoring gate as with potential wind holes it would probably put us too far back in the fleet to challenge for a podium, so heads down and crack on with what’s already shaping up as a 3-horse race.
With the crew now settling down and the wind backing, we’re going for the Code 2. You might remember, this is the sail we shredded off the Canary Islands, so this will be its 1st outing since repair. It’s on deck, we’ve rigged it like we would any other time and go for the hoist. Disaster! The wool which holds the sail closed has failed, the spinnaker opens before it’s been pulled high enough, goes into the water and starts filling with water. We’ve immediately blown the tack line and are now in spinnaker recovery mode. My mind goes back to the recovery of the same sail at night in the Canaries. Are we going to shred it again? Unbelievably, we’ve managed to get it back on board without any damage! The 1st piece of luck we’ve had. We get it back down into the boat and start re-wooling it, whilst checking for damage. It all looks good, get it back on deck after taking a lot more attention to wooling this time and go for the 2nd hoist. You can feel the tension on board, up it goes, the halyard is made, the sheets are pulled, and it opens, the sheets crack into life and you can feel LBS surge. There’s a loud cheer from everybody on board, more probably out of relief. Our workhorse was back, with its very own battle scars, it looked like somebody had stuck a 2-metre rocket in the middle of the sail. God knows what our sails will look like by the end of the race.
It’s been a good week on the water and as the Sun drops on Sunday Sundown, we’ve blooded a new crew, flown our repaired code 2 and in the mix again, everybody is in good spirits and up for the fight into Cape Town.