Big waves and ripped mizzen
Well, I’ve just been as close to the eye of a hurricane as I ever want to, thank you, and have survived to tell the tale. Yesterday afernoon I was feeling apprehensive but a little bit smug at the same time as I was managing to keep up about 7 knots, nearly as fast as Hurricane Irene who was hot on my tail.
Little did I know that she suddenly caught scent of me (fragrant as ever, of course) and started galloping towards me at 30 knots. The first I suspected was at dusk when the sky was a very odd colour indeed, all golden and pale and shimmering with strange cloud patterns. I’m not too hot on clouds, rather like birds and fish, and really only know the nice fluffy white ones that drift lazily overhead on pleasant summer afternoons or those ominous dark ones that make me think “Hmm, that doesn’t look good” seconds before being hit by a blinding squall.
The only time I’ve seen a sky like that was back in July in Fort Lauderdale when a hurricane swept up past the tip of Florida into the Gulf Of Mexico, so I was a little nervous. Putting a reef in the main and winding in some of the genoa seemed prudent, and it was none too soon as within an hour of nightfall the wind was up from 20 to 30 knots and still rising, with large swells coming from the south.
By midnight it was blowing a near gale and was very rough indeed, so I resigned myself to a night of no sleep and tried at least to rest in the aft cabin where I was tossed hither and thither all night. (Quiet at the back, please, Nigel…)
Around 6am I heard a rather horrid combination of sounds which was a kind of demented howling and whip-cracking. Rushing up on deck half expecting to see some kind of demonic dominatrix brandishing a cat-o-nine-tails I instead saw a scene of utter mayhem. The sea was a mess of enormous crashing breakers and horizontal spray, the sky was leaden grey, and the sails were flogging themselves to bits with the wind gusting over 45 knots, which is well into gale territory.
I hauled myself along the deck to the mast and managed to get a second reef in the main, noticing to my horror that the block holding the first reef had given way and was about to let go completely. Lucky I got there in time. I also saw that the rigging on the leeward side was all loose so immediately rigged the inner forestay and grabbed a couple of wrenches to tighten all the bottle-screws.
By now waves were breaking over the foredeck so I really didn’t want to go up there again to rig the storm jib, and besides I couldn’t furl up the whole genoa as the wind was too strong, so I left out the remaing 25% or so. Next on the list was the mizzen sail which had suddenly started to shred itself below the first reef point. I tried to reef it but the torn bits just flapped around, threatening to rip all the way up the sail, so I dropped it completely.
Finally getting back to the cockpit for a breakfast of Red Bull and cookies I realised that all this had taken nearly 3 hours, but we were more or less under control again, surfing down the 15-foot swells at 8 knots with the wind on our starboard quarter. Once inside I fired up the laptop and managed to download the latest hurricane update from NOAA and was relieved to find that Irene was now safely veering up to the north-east, exactly as I had hoped and predicted. However due to her sudden spurt in speed she came a lot closer than I would have liked, getting to within about 150 miles at around 8am this morning by my reckoning.
Reasonably satisfied that all I had to do now was ride out the storm till it passed I tried to find a dry spot to lie down. Waves kept breaking over the deck with solid blue water crashing over all the hatches, which promptly let most of it in. At one stage the cabin was ankle-deep in water sloshing around, and twice I had to pump the bilges dry. Of course the electric pump never works when you need it so once again my right arm got plenty of exercise.
I finally crawled into my nest in the crew cabin and got a couple of hours rest before lunch, then came back up to survey the damage as the wind was starting to subside a little. There’s nothing too serious but lots of chafed ropes, torn sails, twisted blocks, and of course far too many leaks. Things are calming down a lot now as the afternoon wears on and we’re down to about a F6, coming round to the SW, although the swells are still huge with the occasional unwanted deluge of water over the decks and into the cockpit.
One good thing to come out of all this is that I have made excellent progress over the last couple of days and am delighted to announce that I’m now just over halfway through my voyage with 1,900 miles to go. I can’t believe I’ve come 2,000 miles but certainly hope I don’t get any more hurricanes!
Right, it’s definitely belated siesta time now, so I’m going to ignore the mess and crawl back into my hole. Night all!