Drifting in the Forties but Gaining Ground
Sailing around the world and these vast oceans is so special as every day is different and here we are in the roaring forties in a bloody wind hole soaking up the rays as if we’re on the equator. I say a wind hole, we’re moving at approx 4 knots which down here is becalmed.
The morale is high and we’re no longer last in the fleet. It would appear that everybody else is in the same wind hole. Trying to establish which way the next front will fill is a bit of experience, a bit of knowledge, some educated guess work and a bit of luck, but it must be our turn! We will see over the next few days who’s made the better call. We’ve got a lot of miles to pull back but are confident we can work our way through the fleet. All we can do as crew is sail straight and trim to the wind conditions and don’t break anything. Our watch is fairly fortunate with some experience – Tony, our watch leader, David and I are all circumnavigators with a lot of helming miles under our belts, Claire who’s completed legs 1 & 2, is back for another leg which is great to have her experience on the boat. She’s a really good helm but lacks a bit of confidence. Mark a new legger has a fair amount of external experience on smaller sailing boats so has all the fundamentals to make a good helm, Petra, another circumnavigator is gaining in confidence, getting herself on the helm at every opportunity and Sarah, another new legger is learning the ropes and is showing great presence on the wheel. The trick for the team is to get all the less experienced guys up to speed as soon as possible and the lighter winds are great to gain that experience. We normally helm for 30 minutes, check helm for 30 minutes and if it’s cold at night (which it currently is) we crew for 30 minutes then head down below to keep warm and carry on rotating during our watch of currently 6 people. We’ve been fairly consistent during the night and in a drag race it’s where we can make our biggest gains and we’ve been moving up through the fleet. Now in 7th spot.
Again not much wildlife about. 1 solitary albatross is with us most days, with the odd gull about, but nothing like the numbers we had on leg 3. Seemingly we’ve spotted some seals! I’m not sure myself as I’ve not seen any and I’d wonder why they’d be out in deep water, something I’ll need to check out later. But today we had a spectacular visit, a large pod of pilot whales. They just appeared of our port bow, typical, I was on check helm so had to stay at the back of the boat whilst those who were up and about headed for the bow. About 20 whales including some babies headed directly towards the bow before diving deep as we passed over them. They popped up on our stern a few minutes later, but that’s my closet encounter with whales so far and a bit special. Allegedly they would hunt and kill an Orca! But you don’t hear much about Pilot whales.
The wind has picked up, veered and with flat seas we are making good progress. We’ve stuck up our wind seeker, only the 2nd time it’s been flown it in anger, the last time, on our arrival to Cape Town (and we wrapped it). It’s helping us with the wind angle and great speed over the ground and we’re now up to 6th and gaining on the rest of the fleet. These flat conditions are also another great opportunity to give the watch plenty of helming experience.
From Mother Duty to Mast Climbs: A New Year’s Eve to Remember
New Year’s Eve and I’m on Mother duty again with Jo. As a special treat and for this leg only, Lucy our victualer, gave all the circumnavigators their own day bag as a Christmas treat, with their favourite meals. I’ve been asking for Weetabix since we left and Lucy, bless her, has found the Aussie equivalent, Wheatbix, probably enough to last me a couple of legs. We had tomato soup for lunch with roasted bagels in olive oil and sea salt. We made two versions, spicy & non spiced. I like to spice up my tomato soup and Mark is unfortunately allergic to chilli. We had the same issue with my favourite dinner, chilli con carne. Proper minced meat, but no chilli flakes! We’re not sure where all our chilli’s had gone, had they been confiscated by Mark, the Australian boarder force inspector, or had Lucy decided to take them off the boat because of our Marks allergy? In any case you can’t make a chilli con carne without chilli, so operation chilli hunt started. Eventually we found some chilli powder lurking at the back of the cupboard. We needed a veggie option for Nicky, who fortunately didn’t want any chilli with her sauce. So, we had three options for the crew. I started early to get ahead of the curve. Now maybe it’s coincidence, but it appears if I’m on Mother duty and we’re flying a kite something goes wrong. The three meal options are all done and we started the rice, so dinner is ready for 17.30 so it was around 16.00 when we were informed the boat was about to gybe. Gybing can be a fairly violent experience and has a tendency to send pots, pans and anything not bolted down, flying, so Jo & I set about battening down the hatches. I couldn’t make dinner again at this late stage! The call came down the hatch as we gybed the boat lurched from a port tack bumped about and settled on a starboard tack and we didn’t lose anything. Phew! Let’s get Dinner ready, but a bit premature, I could hear a bit of commotion on deck so I knew something was wrong, then the call came down “all hands” the kite had wrapped. I woke the off watch, got my life jacket on and got up on to the fore deck to find our code 1, wrapped around the inner forestry in three places! The top, middle and bottom with one of the spinnaker halyards and the stay sail halyard caught up in the middle. A right buggers muddle and this was going to take some time to sort. We tried for an hour or so to untangle the kite from the bottom but the wind just continued to twist the kite harder and harder around the inner fore stay. Oli went up the mast, not the easiest thing to do, to see if we could sort it from the top. After about an hour, with no real progress and the light starting to fade, Gavin called a halt to proceedings for everyone to get fed and a chance to recoup and figure out a plan to get it down. So Jo and I went down below to finish off dinner. Once dinner was completed the decision was made to get the fore stay clear to fly the Yankee 1 whilst we found a way to secure the kite. Luckily, we had a good wind angle and the kite’s tack was disconnected. We rolled the kite from the bottom as tight as we could, then wrapped it as high as we could with rope to stop it from filling again. Jo and I tidied up downstairs and after being awake since 01.30 off to bed and leave the rest of the crew to it. I was up again for 06.00 and not much change. We’re still sailing the boat in roughly the right direction. Greg, our 1st mate, is now up the mast trying to unwind the spinnaker from the top of the inner fore stay. We’ve disconnected both spinnaker halyards and the starboard is now free to hoist Craig up the mast. But the Port halyard is wrapped inside the spinnaker and around the inner forestry. To make matters worse, the downhaul from the Yankee 1 is also twisted inside the spinnaker and the inner forestay. It’s a mess. Greg has come down the mast, time for a tea break and another plan. We need to remove all the ropes trapped inside the spinnaker to help free it up. So, Greg is now winched up the inner fore stay to remove the downhall. A bloody awful job, swinging up and down and around as the boat is still being raced. After 30 minutes, bit by bit the downhall comes down and is cleared from the spinnaker and the inner forestay and 1st objective complete. It’s now Gavin’s turn. He goes up the mast this time to release the entangled halyard. We’ve already cut off the head but there is a lot of halyard flapping around, so this is also cut. With the help of Gavin’s direction from aloft and Craig on the deck, we’re walking the head of the kite around the inner forestay and repeat three times and the 1st wrap is cleared and we have the head of the kite on the deck. 2nd objective complete. We’ve now rolled the spinnaker from the head up to the middle wrap to stop the top half of the kite filling again and walk the rolled kite in the opposite direction around the inner fore stay The trapped spinnaker halyard comes lose and as we pull it down, the spinnaker comes with it. It’s finally down a bit of weary cheers rings out from the crew, but it’s been a long stint getting it down. To make things a tad better, whilst we’ve lost a lot of distance from the leading boats, we’re still in fifth spot. A bloody miracle, the team has worked really hard, but the jobs not over yet. The guys have taken the code 1 down to check it over and we’ve got away with only a few tears and small holes. The team set about fitting a new spinnaker halyard, running the sheets and setting up for another spinnaker hoist, just in time for the sprint gate. Back on the bike, so to speak, and up goes the code 2 about 20 minutes before we hit the start of the sprint gate, a great team achievement.
(As I write this weeks blog, big Tony, a massive fan and supporter of my blog! has just reminded me, whilst on the helm, that it’s not just me that comes to the rescue in the boats hour of need, it is of course a team effort.)
Whilst the watches are racing the boat, Petra, our sail repair expert, yet again is working double shifts to repair the code 1 and in less than 24 hours, we’re back up and running with a full suit of sails.
Back to the sailing and we’ve managed to pick up some current, which is certainly helping our boat speed over the ground. But the wind has become a bit of a challenge, shifting, increasing, decreasing. We’ve decided to drop our kite so we can get a better wind angle to sail north, so with only 6 of us on deck, we’ve dropped the code 2, raised our Yankee 1, then head back down below and start wooling the code 2, preparing it for its next flight. Nearly finished as the next watch is coming on deck and we stay for a few minutes to finish the wooling and pack the code 2 in its bag.
Out of the Forties and Onward to Airlie Beach
We’ve left the roaring forties today and upon reflection it’s another big tick in the box, but I have to admit to being a bit underwhelmed with the seas and wind strength in this leg. Should probably be careful in what I wish for, but I wanted some seat of the pants racing and our speeds on this leg have been so much lower than the previous three, but we have had a bit more variety of wildlife. We’ve been visited by two separate pods of dolphins today. They are such a majestic creature and fascinating to watch. We also had a massive tuna jump out of the water a few metres from the boat, probably some dolphins chasing it, or possibly something bigger. We are in Australian waters after all! And I think it’s the same Albatross that’s been following us has been hanging around again.
After being at sea for a certain length of time, crew members begin to show signs of madness!! Tony was randomly shaking his booty to some 80’s throwback music in the helm cage, obviously re living some important time way back when, I thought I’d caught Gavin having a snooze with his head resting on his mouse mat on the nav table! Turns out he wasn’t asleep at all but was looking through a hole on the control panel, wondering what was behind the hole!
We’re just coming out of the sprint and don’t think we’ll get much out of it as we’ve not had the wind. It’s been a weird leg, with not so helpful wind for the majority of the race as we’ve had upwind sailing for the majority of the race thus far and as we head up the east coast of Australia the wind is on our nose! However, it can make for some exciting headsail changes. Today as the wind jumped to 30 knots, we changed from our code 1 to our code 2. A slightly different process to normal as we tacked halfway way through the evolution. With both watches on deck, Andrew, Jo, Nicky, Dominic and Tony were on the foredeck, we dragged the Yankee 2 up on deck and positioned it on the port side, the Yankee 1 was dropped on the starboard side as we where on a port tack. Then a bit of drama. A large wave caught the head of the Yankee 1, ripping the sail tie holding all the hanks out of Andrews hand and over the side, dragging the sail down the side of the deck and into the water. A frantic exchange of expletives and the crew charging to the starboard stanchions, frantically dragging the sail back on deck. A lucky escape. We quickly tacked before dragging the Yankee 1 back down the deck towards the cockpit. Once secure, the Yankee 2 was then raised to get us racing again. Then, before heading back to the cockpit, flaking the yankee 1 back into its sail bag and down into the sail locker. All this is being done with gallons of sea water washing the decks. A great effort from the other watch as they were on deck for an extra hour. A busy day and we went to bed knackered.
The following day, David, my fellow northern Irish man, had made some soda farls for breakfast. Fantastic, but by his own admission, he’s not too good in the galley whilst the boat is beating into the wind. So reluctantly he had to step down from mother duty with big Tony, a very capable mother, stepped into the fold, supported by Dominic. David has proven to be a great sailor and a great addition to the team. I’ve already learnt a fair bit from him, especially on the helm, such a shame he sometimes suffers from sea sickness.
Dominic and Tony put together some canopies for our Sunday Sundown of Camembert and crackers with salami and of course our bottle of pop. My pop of choice is always a bottle/can of Fanta and another super Sunday done.
The week has been rounded off with an amazing lightning storm followed by rain. In the dark it makes a great light show, but our windex has been switched off as before in case we get struck with lightning. So a very tricky few hours of helming, with David, Mark and myself. Next stop Airlie beach, we hope.