Trucial Coast, Day 13 - taxing conditions
Andrew Hunt December 7th, 2007
First of all, apologies for not posting a log yesterday. We had a bit of a rubbish day and anything written would certainly not have been suitable for a pre-watershed audience! At about 5 a.m. we sailed into a low trough moving westwards at approximately the same speed as us. My lack of meteorological knowledge has been established before, so I can’t tell you too much about low troughs except what we experienced. Which was about 6 hours of very heavy rain followed by a further 12 hours of showers, many of which were heavy. Wind speeds picked up considerably and the swell grew too. So on deck you were sodden, miserable and hanging on to anything and everything you could, whilst below decks you were seasick, clouded in dampness from wet gear, and miserable. The less said about the day the better.
The waves really are something else now. Whilst we’re not quite in Southern Ocean territory, it’s still something to behold. There is an underlying swell of up to 15ft, with a huge wavelength of 20+ metres, local conditions then pile a further 10-12ft on top of this, in smaller wavelengths. If you get one directly on top of the other, you find yourself staring at a wall of water that comes some way above your head as you sit at the helm, and when on top of it, it’s like looking out from a second story window at the surrounding water.
It also means the boat now surfs from time to time. Normally she will get a bit of a surge from a wave passing beneath her and pick up speed as she sluices down the back of the wave (laying right over to leeward as she does so). But occasionally she drops in like a pro-surfer, powering down the front of the wave and picking up a lot of speed.
We’ve had pretty constant Force 7 winds, with sustained periods of Force 8 since yesterday morning, and frequent gusts over 40 knots. This means with the brief exception of a few hours yesterday we’ve also been sailing under the staysail only, and still making very good progress of 6.5-7 knots. To give you some idea of the conditions, our previous highest speed of the trip so far was 11.1 knots, obtained with the parasailor up, just before she blew. Ann topped that with 11.5 knots this morning under staysail only: the parasailor has a sail area in excess of 150 square metres, the staysail has a sail area of 32 square metres - that should tell you all you need to know about the wind and surf in our corner of the world right now.
To go back a couple of days to halfway day, I’ll give you an idea of what we actually did to mark the occasion. We didn’t actually have that fondue you’ll be surprised to hear. Well a pot of boiling oil on a boat that’s heeling up to 30 degrees? It’d be madness! So for lunch Ann made us smoked salmon sandwiches, which went down a treat. And as promised I accompanied it with my first beer of the crossing. That can of San Miguel tasted absolutely fantastic! (To the marketing people at San Miguel: if in exchange for this shameless promotion of your excellent beverage, you want to arrange for a few free cases to await us in St Lucia, that’d be just fantastic! Just address them to S/Y Trucial Coast, Rodney Bay Marina. Thanks!)
In the evening, despite increasing sea state and winds, Ann excelled herself and actually made us a roast dinner! I was hugely impressed even if the weather did mean we had to eat it out of bowls. We rounded off the meal with the novelty liqueurs from Vicky - my elderflower and port made for a good end to the day. Just as well considering what was to come!
Conditions on board are a little taxing now - this is the rolling motion that everyone talks about on Atlantic crossings. You have to hang on for dear life, moving around the cabin is like an exercise in mountaineering, and you can’t leave anything lying on a table or surface because it will end up on the ceiling! But progress is good - Rob and I have both independently come up with an arrival time of late morning on 14th December in St Lucia, although if we keep having days like the last couple, it could be sooner still. That makes it one week, pretty much to the hour, as I write this!
- General , Sail Race ARC , Staff Travels
- Comments(0)