Author: Scott
As I am writing this journal, I am positioned sitting on the high side of the boat with my legs stretched out on the opposite settee bracing me rigidly so I don’t fly across the cabin. Pam is sitting on the low side of the boat reading and I am looking down on her as if I am hanging over her in mid air. Outside we are being pounded with waves repeatedly, with the big ones sounding like cannon balls smashing the ocean’s surface (and we are the cannon balls). With each wave strike Tournesol gets thrashed from side to side causing the autopilot (our hero) to compensate and turn the boat up into the wind, giving the rigging a good shaking that makes you picture all the stress points hoping everything holds together. The water rushing by sounds like we must be traveling fast enough to peel the paint off the bottom, yet we are making just six knots. We have already gone through the boat to find all the hidden objects that randomly launch themselves from port to starboard, earlier all of the contents of the dish drainer became missiles hurling themselves into space, as we experienced one of at least three near knockdowns.
When did this all happen you may ask? Weren’t they just complaining about bobbing on flat seas a few hundred miles from New Zealand? Yes indeed when last we posted to the journal we were frustrated from days of variable winds and this was how life continued until last night at 0200. Yesterday, another calm day with warmer weather due to the lack of wind, we made almost no progress. We were both a little lethargic but we managed to go through the routine working on the website, playing cards (Pam came back to tie the match at six all), and we treated ourselves to a big spaghetti dinner. The weather was so calm we were able to feed a small flock of birds from the cockpit that swam by for a visit. We were truly in a wind hole.
This all changed as Pam was on watch and I was sleeping like the dead. The night before I had been kept up by the rig shuddering due to light winds, requiring constant attention, so I was surprised when Pam woke me and I felt the boat tearing along, close hulled, at almost seven knots. Even more disturbing were the flashes of lightening off in the distance. We had just sat on anchor through an unbelievable thunder storm in Tonga and now we both were leery of experiencing similar conditions at sea. We weren’t expected to have strong winds and we already had a reef in the main and jib so I jokingly said the best way to get through a thunderstorm is to sleep through it and I promptly fell back to sleep. An hour later Pam woke me up, it was raining, and the wind had picked up. “I think we are getting in the thick of it”, she said, and just then we were slammed down with a huge gust of wind. I was out of bed in a second checking on the self steering that was forcing the boat hard into the wind with too much weather helm. We felt like we were barreling down a drag strip in a dragster that was driving on only two wheels. Then came the lightening, huge flashes of light with booming thunder and the boat glowed inside. We were smack dab in the middle of an unforecasted thunderstorm with gusting winds in the forty knot range. Our first order of business was to regain our course and relieve the wind vane steering that was seriously over powered. The idea of standing in the freezing rain, tethered tot the boat, hand steering in a thunderstorm, was not at all appealing and as I was grappling with the metal wheel when Pam suggested using the autopilot. We learned in Mexico we have an exceptionally strong autopilot and later learned it was built out of parts used to control the flaps in commercial aircraft. The next challenge was engaging the autopilot. I managed to slither on deck, drenched in seconds, pull the autopilot clutch, and then return safely back to the cabin. While on deck I had my closest encounter with lightening of my life. Normally I can not see lightening bolts, I can only see the flash, but as I lay across the cockpit a bolt hit the water so near that it looked like a nuclear bomb had hit, leaving the imprint of the strike on my retinas for seconds. It was like the mother of all flashbulbs. We set the course and engaged the pilot and soon Trooper (our autopilot) manhandled the boat back to a more reasonable course, greatly reducing the heel of the boat. Chaos eased leaving me and Tournesol soaking. The boat looked like she had been picked up by a sea monster, shaken and given a good dunking under the surface. Pam and I managed to get things cleaned up and then curled up on the settee wrapped in blankets hoping our mast (the tallest thing for miles) would not tempt a bolt from the sky. We eventually found sleep as the storm eased, but we continued to careen on at a savage speed all night and it has not let up yet. We have since further reefed out sails, providing a little more stability, but as the seas continue to rage it is a strong reminder of the power of the sea and the vulnerability of our little boat. For now, all is well onboard and we are about 150 miles from New Zealand. Over the past 24 hours we have been served up with conditions testing the sailing skills we have been tuning since our departure. What an adventure it has been so far!
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