I am exhausted but still cannot sleep. The much awaited gale force winds
have hit us and we have gone through almost our entire sail wardrobe.
From medium weight spinaker yesterday afternoon to heavy weight early
evening, yankee two, one reef and then two reefs then only staysail and
two reefs and yankee 3 up and now poled out: all within 18 hours. The
seas have been building and the wind has reached up to 50 knots which is
force ten.
I have been driving in the darkest night ever: no moon,heavy clouds and
rain. It was like a rollercoaster ride in the dark with just the wheel
and a set of screens to look at. No way of orientating myself except
the compass rose and the windinstruments. No way of anticipating
the waves because I could simply not see them. The instuments started
failing just as we started hitting 40 knots of wind... then the compass
light sarted flickering and then went dark. So we quickly mounted a
headtorch and continued on our way. Very demanding helming and after 2.5
hours I was ready for bed. But...I couldn't sleep: caffeine, adrenaline
and a building storm outside kept me awake in my warm sleeping bag.
After 4 hours of loungeing back on deck for another 6 hours of physical
punishment :-) The seas are enormous and waves up to 10 meters rise up
around us. This morning three knocked us down. Luckily we were all
unhurt and actually managed to laugh about it everytime it happened.
There just isn't much you can do. They rise up very steeply in the coner
of your eye, lightblue thundering crests and they just jump on you,
flooding the cockpit, throwing everybody around and pushing the boat
away like a piece of driftwood. Our spreaders didn't touch the water so
they were not too bad, but our poo teammate down below who was preparing
lunch didn't really appreciate the devastating effect it had on the
contents of her cooking pots. Lunch was great though!
We are all truly enjoying the rough weather and high seas and the
incredible sensation of speed you can even have on our slow 30+ tonnes.
Sometimes the boat humms like a planeing dinghy and she even seems to
take off a bit, judging by the soft thumping as her bottom hits wavelets
underneath her. We are on the hunt for a podium place. We got number
three last night by a mile and are closing in on number two in the
fleet. Our Nemensis has dropped further behind us so if all goes well we
will be leading the overall standings when we arrive in Capetown.
