Heavy Weather Sailing for Sailboat Voyage Planners - Part 2

Well, I promised to follow up with the rest of the storm experienced on the final leg of my voyage to New Zealand. The passage between Nuku Alofa, Tonga to Opua in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand is 1037 nautical miles. The course is pretty much due south and this stretch of the Pacific is notorious for producing violent storms which have claimed the lives of many yachtsmen over the years. In good conditions the passage should take 5 -7 days, which is plenty of time as we were to discover, for some heavy weather to build and hand out a good pasting. Our serving hit us two days out from landfall and was a stern test for boat and crew.

Here is the extract from my ebook 'Voyage of the Little Ship Tere Moana':

'The watch system has been changed to two hours on and four off, and they will run it through the night.

As the wind is coming over her port bow, they have backed the staysail, and our little ship is now riding in the ‘hove to’ position. All being well, she will ride out the night like this, without losing too much ground, and a decision will be made in the morning whether to go back into sailing mode.

Another wind reading shows it has risen to almost fifty knots and howling around them. The storm surge has arrived and the waves are five metres plus, with some even higher. The motion is still reasonably comfortable because the fetch in between the waves is so long that our little ship has time to rise up the face of the oncoming wave, over the top, and down its back into the trough, just in time to prepare to do it all over again with the next wave.

If the seas stay like this, they will have no trouble. The danger though, is two fold. If one of the larger waves roaring along rises up before them and its crest breaks exactly onto our little ship, there is the danger of being swamped by the tonnes of water suddenly dumped on to her. This weight can roll a boat, inundate her and possibly cause her to founder. The more worrying aspect though is that these storms, being circular in their motion, have a habit of the wind changing direction and subsequently pushing up murderous cross seas. These can then come at a boat from any direction, causing extreme havoc. So far, the wind has been constant and her captain hopes fervently that this does not change.

Dripping wetly down the companionway he hands over the watch to WK who starts upward with a mile wide grin and gleam in his eyes – he loves these conditions! The hatch slides closed with a click and the cacophony of noise topsides is replaced with an eerie stillness below. The roaring wind is replaced with a dull moaning sound, belying the ferocity of the extreme conditions outside. Happy to wash down a biscuit with tea, our captain falls into his bunk.

Seconds later, or it seems, sibling crew is waking him. In reality he has been asleep for almost four hours, but cannot believe it. Grabbing handholds out in to the saloon, he looks around in the dull red glow from the nav area. The noise from outside sounds as though it has gone up a notch or two, with the pitch and yaw of our little ship also more violent. A wind reading shows that it is coming in now at more than fifty knots. Some waves have been breaking over the boat, so it is decided to call off the watch, seal the hatch, and everyone below until daylight. Her captain goes up for a few minutes to look out and make sure in his mind everything is safe and secure.

‘Don’t worry’, she assures him. ‘I am quite comfortable in this mode, I will ride out the storm all night’.

Crouching under the spray hood he looks out in wonder. Dark as it is, and it is pitch black with no stars to inject any light into the raging scene, he can see surprisingly well. Walls of water march continuously toward them. Some huge and black as they rise up and look to break, but don’t, others breaking with the roar of an express train and passing by with a loud hiss of troubled, turbid, boiling foam.

On the point of turning to go below, out of the corner of his eye, something makes his heart stop. Far off in the blackness, rearing above all the other waves in between, is a solid white wall which looks to be a hundred metres wide. He has heard and read about rogue waves, but never seen one. This looks like one coming now. It is massive and dwarfs everything else around it. Higher and higher it rises and is coming directly at our little ship. The front wall is just a mass of boiling white froth tumbling and crashing down its own face. No boat could survive being caught up in that.

Looking down the tunnel of his life, her captain decides he will be better off below and vaults down the hatch, crashing, in his haste, to the cabin floor. Scrambling to his feet, he slams and bolts the hatch shut, managing a strangled cry for the others to hang on. Watching from the cabin strip windowlight and gripping the overhead handhold he sees it close on them, looming to an impossible height in front of her. Ever higher it rears, up and over them, till it seems it is going to crash onto her with all of its terrible weight. At the final moment, as once again her captain is peering down that tunnel with a range of life events parading before his eyes, the monster subsides a little at their end, and will largely pass to starboard.

Even though out of the main path of this freakish brute, and therefore not going to take the main force, it hits our little ship amidships with a huge crash, and she shudders convulsively in her tracks. The view through the glass is obliterated with innocent bubbling water as it gushes over her deck from stem to stern. Then, it is gone, hissing into the distance. Our little ship, amazingly staying mostly upright, kicks herself over the top, rights, and readies herself for the next wave.

An eerie silence succeeds, and on looking around, a small trickle of water from the hatch track rail and the kettle leaping from its holder on the stove, is the only evidence down here of the behemoths’ passing. Our three stalwarts, now all in the cabin, gaze at one another speechless, but with a glow in their faces, happy that they, and our little ship, are still in one piece. Having witnessed and felt the terrible power of nature, and survived who knows what might have been, they all look heavenward, nodding their thanks – no atheists here tonight!

Several more of these ‘freight trains’ of waves pummel them during the rest of this long night. The approaching nerve taughtening roar, wide eyed breath holding of her crew, until it either slides harmlessly, hissing by, or slams her amidships with the subsequent wait to see how far she will heel, and how long she will take to right herself with water streaming off her decks back into the black turbulence all around. Lightning has not been a feature of this storm and her cabin has been lit only a few times during the night.

With the tired dawn approaching, the wind frees and abates. Sunrise sees an almost clear rain washed cobalt sky all around, containing a few straggling wisps of cloud, chasing the storm down, somewhere over the southern horizon. Now the storm has blown itself out, and the breeze dropping below twenty knots, mildly ruffling the surface, the staysail comes down. The furling genoa rolls out, snapping tight as it fills. Mid morning, the wind has virtually died, but a considerable swell is running still. Around noon, the southern breeze is back, billowing in over her port beam. Within minutes she is bowling along, white wake creaming, as if nothing had ever happened, and last night was just a faraway fantasy.'

Images courtesy Jessica Watson, Sail World and Centreboard Yachts

You can read more about heavy weather sailing and planning for your sailing ' adventure of a lifetime' in my ebook 'Voyage of the Little Ship Tere Moana' downloadable from my website http://www.sailboat2adventure.com

Jessica Watson Role Model for all Sailboat Voyage Planners

At 13:53:28 AEST, 15 May 2010 Jessica Watson made landfall and 'crossed the line' at latitude 33 degrees 50 minute south latitude and 151 degrees 18 minutes East longitude, otherwise known as Sydney Harbour Heads (Port Jackson).

After 210 days at sea this gifted and determined sixteen year old completed her 'voyage of discovery' and arrived home to a tumultuous welcome of wellwishers both on the water and on land. Seeing Sydney Harbour and surrounds one would have been excused in thinking it was the start of the Sydney Hobart classic yacht race.

Jessica had been planning to complete a solo non-stop and unassisted circumnavigation of the globe since at least early 2008. Officially announced in May 2009, the journey was expected to take eight months with an approximate distance of 23,000 nautical miles. As the plan was to sail non-stop and unassisted, during the journey no other person would be allowed to give her anything and she must not moor to any port or other boat, although advice over radio communication was allowed.

Watson's circumnavigation route planned to start and end at Sydney and passed near New Zealand on her way to Cape Horn, Cape of Good hope, Cape Leeuwin and South East Cape. In accordance with the definitions set out by the WSSRC for circumnavigations, the equator must be crossed; this was done near Kiritimati. However there is still disagreement amongst commentators whether the voyage complied with the definition of a circumnavigation.

Her boat is a 10.23-metre S&S 34, the same design as used by Jon Sanders, David Dicks and Jesse Martin in their circumnavigations. It was obtained and refitted with new equipment under the supervision of Don McIntyre and Bruce Arms, both skilled and experienced sailors. The refitting included a new galley, reconditioned diesel and water tanks, and a complete rebuild of the electrical system. Jessica Watson was also deeply involved in the preparation of the boat, which she named Ella's Pink Lady. Most of the time the boat is steered by a self-steering windvane system. She has named the system Parker after the driver of the pink Rolls-Royce in the TV series Thunderbirds.

During her 'shake down' cruise, sailing from Brisbane to Sydney, on her first night out she collided with the Silver Yang, a 63,000-tonne bulk carrier at about 02.00 am on 9 September, 2009 near Point Lookout. Watson's sloop, the 10.4 metre Ella's Pink Lady, was dismasted in the collision. She was able to retain control and motor in to Southport. The full report is yet to be released on this incident.

Bringing the boat to Sydney for repairs and additional equipment (upgraded AIS system for one) put back her departure date to 18 October 2009.

The following seven months alone at sea tested her abilities and capabilities to the max and she has come through as a shining light and inspiration to all who have followed her, stepping ashore finally on Saturday at the Opera House, a different young woman from the one that left these shores in 2009.

She stepped off her boat reluctantly, shed some emotional tears with her family, composed herself and then graciously went about her business of acknowledging the gathered crowds, accepting gifts and delivering a wonderfully humble, thankful and concise few words that would put most politicians to shame.

Cited as a hero by one and all including the Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd, she immediately and quite firmly refuted this by saying that she was just an ordinary girl with a dream and the determination to follow it through. It is easy to see this just from the set of her face and her clear and steady gaze. Jessica will become a role model for youngsters everywhere.

Tuesday she achieves the tender age of seventeen and one wonders what she will do now. With most of her life in front of her Jessica can go forward and in her own words achieve anything that she puts her mind to - and I am sure she will. Happy birthday to Jessica and like the mighty Wandering Albatross when at sea, rarely lands on water, keep on flying!

You can read more about voyaging and passagemaking in my ebook 'Voyage of the Little Ship Tere Moana' downloadable from my website http://www.sailboat2adventure.com

Sailing ebooks for Sailboat Voyage Planners

For those of you who expected the second episode of my heavy weather sailing experience extract, I'm sorry but you will just have to wait a little longer!

I am posting this short blog now to give you a list of websites where you can dowload sailing ebooks. Books, many of them and especially boating books on board your sailboat can weigh an awful lot. One benefit to cruising sailors in this rapidly advancing technological age, is that so many of your necessary boating books and manuals can now be downloaded and stored on your computer. this is a huge benefit in the weight department. Compare the weight of your laptop to what could easily be up to 100kg of hardcover books! Unnecessary weight you do not need!

Only last year we had one of our own members set sail in his sailboat for some coastal cruising and he had so many books he developed quite a list and had to get rid of some and re-distribute the weight to get back on an even keel! So, having as many manuals, technical and seafaring books loaded into your computer is a definite benefit.

The other item which I would recommend to the modern passagemaking planner would be to consider purchasing an ebook reader. The leader in this field of course is the Kindle from Amazon. There are others on the market now and several more to come including one from Sony, the Barnes and Noble Nook and now Apple with their iPad.

The Kindle2 has been updated recently so the pages actually look like paper and turn as a page would in a book. Also, it can be read easily in direct light (on deck of your yacht), at which most of the others are not so good. With their competitive pricing now, the Kindle is a good unit. This means that in addition to your sailing books you would be able to download any title (up to 1500) from their bookstore (450,000 titles and growing) from any port or anchorage you happen to be in anywhere in the world. Apple plan to have 300,00 titles in their iBookstore and the rate Google are going, their library will be huge for when they introduce their ebook reader. Another important weight gain as opposed to lugging all those paperbacks around the world!

The only possible downside to this is that the time honoured seafaring custom of getting together socially with other crews and swapping paperbacks may disappear in the future. However, I am sure it won't stop us socialising and you will still be able to discuss the various books you have read.

Here is a list to get you started:

Number One of course is the Kindle bookstore at www.amazon.com/Kindle They have 200 plus sailing titles to choose from. You can purchase Joshua Slocums' classic 'Sailing Alone Around the World' for a mere $4.00

Then there is Starpath at http://www.starpath.com/ who have an interesting range of seafaring ebooks under the 'Elibra' category, including Bowditch. You need the Elibra book reader for this range of titles.

Another site is http://www.ebooks.com/ who have seventy something boating titles. Diesel ebooks at http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/ have fifty and more sailing titles on offer including 'The Blue Book of Sailing' and 'Sailing for Dummies'.

Some ebooks come on a CD, some downloaded as PDF's or similar readers and then there are the stores that also market an ebook reader.

Purchasing a reader has got to be the way to go in my book because you can store so many titles in them, but more importantly when you are going ashore an ebook reader can be slipped into your backpack, weighs virtually nothing and compared to a laptop which in all probability you would be be reluctant to take off the boat anyway, is so much more compact and portable.

Just visualise yourself lounging in a sunny cafe in some tropical paradise, sipping on a Maitai cocktail or rum punch and reading your current novel or catching up on some technical issue and you will understand what I am saying.

As we move forward and more of these ebook readers come on the market, prices will become more competitive and the range of titles wider still, so there will always be an ever growing selection for you to choose from - a very good investment indeed for your 'adventure of a lifetime' voyage planning.

You can always begin your ebook reading by downloading my ebook 'Voyage of the Little Ship Tere Moana' including '101 Dollar Saving Tips' from my website for sailors http://www.sailboat2adventure.com

Heavy Weather Sailing for Sailboat Voyage Planners

Heavy weather sailing in your own sailboat is something all voyage planners think about - and so you should, because at some point in your 'adventure of a lifetime' passagemaking you will encounter some. It can range from a tropical storm to a full blown hurricane and can be exciting, challenging and sometimes downright scary. The full power of Mother Nature in these situations is a wonder to be seen and brings us to appreciate that no matter what heights we reach as humans, she will always have the last say and must be respected.

The following extract is from my ebook 'Voyage of the Little Ship Tere Moana' and is my experience of some severe weather on passage home from Tonga to New Zealand. As it is quite lengthy I have broken it into two parts and will post the second in my next blog:

‘Bang!’, the wind hits, the first mighty gust, and within seconds the initial roar rises to a shriek as it screams through her rigging. Our little ship heels alarmingly as the two scraps of canvas take the full brunt of impact of this first strike. With the wind spilling out from the top of her sails, she rights herself easily and, as predicted, the wind settles to a steady roar. From no wind at all a few moments before, it is now blasting in at thirty five to forty knots. Everything is flapping furiously, and hairstyles have definitely gone overboard for now!

Wave height building rapidly, and already maxing out at two metres, they will increase when the storm surge arrives. The companionway duck boards are in their slots, protecting below from any rogue wave swamping (pooping) them from behind, filling the cockpit and pouring down the companionway into the cabin. A wave like that can pour a tonne or more of grey water down the hatch in a moment, with disastrous results. The ‘watch keeper’ in the cockpit is cut off from the rest of the boat by these boards and, if feeling lonely, can perch under the spray hood and slide the hatch back far enough to communicate with those below.

Adrenalin is running high which injects its own level of excitement into our crew. Senses are sharpened and any task is approached with a heightened sense of clarity and purpose not normally present. Out here on the edges, there is not much rain, but a few squalls dotted around the horizon. The lowering clouds, pressing down on them, resemble giants of bulging mercury globs, shoving and heaving their heaviness, handing it to them in the dim murk.

A pair of beautiful great Albatross’ skim by at speeds approaching mach 2, or so it would appear. Hugely graceful normally, this is heightened in these boisterous conditions. Travelling downwind, wing feathers minutely altering the flight path, and their wing tips following every little contour in the wave, they are impressive. Just grazing the surface of the waves, up and over, and down the other side, they are moving at an incredible speed. Tracking right to left and back left to right, they disappear rapidly, weaving into the gloom – no backing up and circling the ship in these conditions!

Wave crests are breaking now and tumbling down the face. Even at this height, one of those rising up and breaking at precisely the right moment – wrong moment for our little ship! – could crash over her, stopping her in her tracks.

White spume flinging off the tops of the waves, is spattering against the spray hood, and darkly spotting the teak of the deck. The moaning roar of the wind, as all engulfing as it is, is a constant. Under this continual hacking of the senses, other normal sounds begin to penetrate the brain again. Whilst at the beginning, when the noise of the wind first hit, it completely dominated, now, it is pushed into the background, so that the brain can function and concentrate on other matters. No doubt this is our way of helping to keep calm in extreme situations.

White streamers with creamy froth sitting on top, and individual wavelets in between the
troughs are beginning to appear, and our captain calls down for the wind meter. Poking it over the top of the spray hood it gives a reading of forty five knots, gusting higher. The first waves begin crashing over the foredeck as our little ship dips deeply into the oncoming seas. Some plunges, she digs her bow, scoop like, into the face of a bigger sea, rising again with water streaming over her foredeck and racing all the way aft, to disappear in a bubbly stream over her stern – her captain opens the sliding hatch a notch or two, calling down for the forward hatch to be double checked that it is clamped down hard and not leaking – it is tight and dry.

Our little ship is revelling in these conditions and is quite excited, her trembling transferring from the sails, all the way down to the foot of her mast and into the very fibres of her glass hull. How she is handling them! With her miniscule amount of sail, she is still making five knots through the water. Her motion, whilst at first appearing waywardly alarming, has in fact a rhythmic repeating pattern. As a wave approaches, she steadies herself, her bow rising up the face, momentarily sitting on the crest, then as the full force of the wind tries to turn her beam on, she checks. The wind streaming between her sails powers her bow back into it again, the water mountain passes along her length, and she dips her nose, sliding safely down the long back of the passing wave. Over and over she does this, minute after minute, hour after hour, she will carry on in this manner, and she turns her head to the task with relish – this is what she was built for!

Understandably, it is quite uncomfortable below in the cabin and our crew are sitting with their feet braced against the opposite bunk. There is no break, no rest from this motion, on and on it goes, maybe even for the next twenty four hours, or longer, or whatever it takes until the storm blows through, drained, eviscerated. Her crew settle in for the long haul. Sibling crew keeps a constant stream of hot drinks and nibbles coming. All food is served in deep bowls, passed gingerly up through the sliding hatch to the ‘watch keeper’ cowering under the spray hood. She is running quite comfortably on auto pilot, and will probably continue to do so. Driving into heavy oncoming seas places far less strain on this gear than continually sailing downwind in fine weather.

The remote control unit comes into its own in these conditions. It is plugged into a socket in the wall of the companionway. Whoever is on watch can look forward and study the wave pattern. If the wind shifts some degrees either way, it can be compensated for by punching in the equivalent plus or minus pads on the remote. The cockpit by this time, with the amount of flying spray, is a very wet place, so the ‘keeper’ can make the adjustments from safety without venturing out from under the hood. All crew are hooked on at all times in the cockpit in these conditions!

It is late afternoon now; low scudding cloud along with the constant spray makes visibility very poor, so a sharp lookout is kept for other vessels. An unseen merchantman is not something they want looming out of the gloom, coming straight at them in these conditions! Suddenly there is a glimmer low in the west and several shafts of sunlight burst through the angry clouds. The whole scene is lit with a dirty, flat, brassy light. White tumbling crests approaching, retreating leaden backs of waves passed, and the darker troughs in between are all washed by this surreal light. Her captain is just beginning to appreciate all the differences when, like the flick of a switch, the beams are cut, and the near darkness glowers on them again. This night is going to be long.............

Final of this episode will be posted in my next blog. Meanwhile start thinking about how to convert your dream yacht into the best 'well found' vessel you can.

You can read more about heavy weather sailing in my ebook 'Voyage of the Little Ship Tere Moana' which you can download from my website http://www.sailboat2adventure.com