Day 7 at sea - a very action packed 24 hours
Day seven at sea.
Distance to Opua 315 miles.
Position 31 02S, 170 00E
Wind SSW 14 knots, speed 6 knots, full sails, course 135T, swell 2m
Well, the last couple of days on Victoria have been absolutely action packed. The half way cake ended up rather solid due to the arrival of dolphins while I was in the middle of softening some butter on the hob. We all rushed up on deck to see some very small and beautiful creatures a few boat lengths from us. They were very shy - maybe because Victoria was pootling along so slowly that we didn't look any fun to swim with - and they didn't come close at all. We thought the show was over and then they started playing 100m or so from us, leaping clean out of the water at the top of the waves, in a sort of twisting flip, one after the other. We watched, enthralled, for the few minutes that the show lasted, and then as quickly as they had arrived, they were gone. The butter, meanwhile, had become a boiling liquid, so the cake turned out a little strange and stodgy, but everyone ate it without complaint.
Our night watches that night were very relaxed, until the wind started picking up in the early hours. With 25 knots of breeze and still a pretty flat sea, we couldn't hold Victoria back. She was doing 6 knots in a southerly direction with minimal sails, when our aim was to try to sail slowly to keep north and avoid the worst of the weather. At 0230, with conditions suddenly picking up, I closed all our hatches and put in the washboards, moved a sleeping Eloise to below decks, cleared the cockpit of anything that might get washed away - our lifejacket and harness bag, cushions, pillows, blankets etc. At 0500, now with 25-30 knots of breeze and a 3-4m swell, it was time for watch change, and Angus and I decided to heave-to*. This basically means stopping the boat, and holding it in position with the nose pointing in to the wind and waves, just off the wind. We stayed like that for the next nine hours, watching the seas build as the wind continued to blow.
George's eyes almost popped out of his head as he clung on to the high side, peering out of the port hole at the enormous waves. "Whooooaa! It looks just like Antarctica!" he declared excitedly. He and Eloise then consulted the beaufort scale in our log book to assess the conditions. They judged it to be a force 7 based on the appearance of the waves, which was accurate. "Force 7; near gale; 4 metre waves; Sea heaps up and white foam from breaking waves begins to be blown in streaks along the direction of the wind." It sounds bad, but we were snug and safe down below, if a little rolly, and as the scale goes up to force 14, it didn't seem too bad to the crew because we were only half way there.. "Force 14; hurricane, 14 metre waves, the air is filled with foam and spray. The sea is completely white with driving spray. Visibility if seriously affected."
After nine hours hove-to, with a couple more weather forecasts downloaded, and having listened to weather info via the SSB radio, we decided we were OK to start sailing slowly again. The wind was pretty steady at 25 knots, with nothing stronger forecast, and the waves were predicted to increase by just 1m over the next 6 hours and then go down again. With our double-reefed main and staysail back up again, we were much more comfortable sailing through the conditions than rolling about in them, and by keeping north we had avoided the worst of it. One of our fleet was in the thick of it, much further south, and they had 35-40 knots and waves breaking continuously over the boat - not fun.
Since all that wind and excitement, things have settled down to glorious sailing conditions, and we are finally on a close reach in kind seas heading straight for Opua. We probably still have two and a half days to go - it's looking touch-and-go whether we will make it there in time for the rugby. If we do, we almost certainly will not have cleared customs, and I don't know how we will manage to watch it on the quarantine dock...
In other news, Eloise, George and Jack have been replaced by three ninjas ever since we dug out the cold weather kit. With snoods pulled up to their woolly hats, and only their eyes showing, they are rushing around the boat wielding cricket stumps and doing kung-fu / karate type of moves. Their chosen activity this morning was Ninja School, and they are planning to dress all in black with their trademark headgear for Hallowe'en. It's all inspired by the Lego Ninjago movie - I'm not sure we necessarily needed it in our lives, but there we go. They seem to love it. We also had a long game of wink murder, aka tongue-out murder this morning. Eloise suggested the tongue thing as Jack can't wink, and George's wink is not exactly subtle. It was fraught with problems because people kept licking their lips by accident when they weren't the murderer, and whenever Jack was the murderer he kept his tongue firmly in, preferring not to commit any crimes, so the detective had a tough job on their hands...
Angus made some delicious cheesy bread for our lunch today, and as I type he is just about to get his head into the engine for some maintenance - topping up the gear box oil (it has a slow leak..), tightening the stern gland a little (it lets a bit of seawater in), and sponging out water from parts of the bilge which don't drain very well to the bilge pump. Lovely messy jobs - I have got off quite lightly writing the blog.
It's thursday today; our seventh day at sea. If we can keep the speed on then we will be tied up on saturday night, but if not then we'll be in on sunday. All in all it's been quite a long passage, considering it was only 930 miles. Still, it's been a lot of fun so far - much better than our passage from NZ to Tonga - and we've become massive weather-fax nerds and learnt a huge amount about reading the weather and planning where to place ourselves. The continuous low pressures which sweep past New Zealand make it a difficult place to leave, and timing a safe arrival there is not much easier.
That's all from us for today, we'll let you know when we arrive. Love to all back at home and Happy Half Term.
team Victoria Xx
*For those interested in the technicalities of heaving-to: as we are a ketch (with two masts), we can heave-to using just our mizzen (the small sail at the back). This was the first time we had done it. We dropped the staysail, hoisted the mizzen, dropped the main, used the engine to help us settle the boat with her bow to the wind and waves, then lashed the wheel, so that both the rudder and the mizzen were working together to push the bow up to the wind, and turned the engine off. It worked well - we were pretty steady at about 30 degrees to the wind for much of the time. Every now and again, however, a big wave would sweep our bow down, and the mizzen and rudder weren't able to begin to get the bow up again until we were down at about 60-70 degrees to the wind. When we were further off the wind, we were almost beam-on to the waves, so the next wave would catch us sideways and cause a huge roll of up to 30 degrees each way. We had to hold on tight when this happened! We closed all the hatches to keep the water out, but fortunately none of the waves were big enough to be breaking over the boat. Actually, nothing scary happened at all. It was a great experience for all of us - Angus and I had never hove-to before - last time we were sailing around the world, it was a race, so we just kept going whatever the conditions!
Distance to Opua 315 miles.
Position 31 02S, 170 00E
Wind SSW 14 knots, speed 6 knots, full sails, course 135T, swell 2m
Well, the last couple of days on Victoria have been absolutely action packed. The half way cake ended up rather solid due to the arrival of dolphins while I was in the middle of softening some butter on the hob. We all rushed up on deck to see some very small and beautiful creatures a few boat lengths from us. They were very shy - maybe because Victoria was pootling along so slowly that we didn't look any fun to swim with - and they didn't come close at all. We thought the show was over and then they started playing 100m or so from us, leaping clean out of the water at the top of the waves, in a sort of twisting flip, one after the other. We watched, enthralled, for the few minutes that the show lasted, and then as quickly as they had arrived, they were gone. The butter, meanwhile, had become a boiling liquid, so the cake turned out a little strange and stodgy, but everyone ate it without complaint.
Our night watches that night were very relaxed, until the wind started picking up in the early hours. With 25 knots of breeze and still a pretty flat sea, we couldn't hold Victoria back. She was doing 6 knots in a southerly direction with minimal sails, when our aim was to try to sail slowly to keep north and avoid the worst of the weather. At 0230, with conditions suddenly picking up, I closed all our hatches and put in the washboards, moved a sleeping Eloise to below decks, cleared the cockpit of anything that might get washed away - our lifejacket and harness bag, cushions, pillows, blankets etc. At 0500, now with 25-30 knots of breeze and a 3-4m swell, it was time for watch change, and Angus and I decided to heave-to*. This basically means stopping the boat, and holding it in position with the nose pointing in to the wind and waves, just off the wind. We stayed like that for the next nine hours, watching the seas build as the wind continued to blow.
George's eyes almost popped out of his head as he clung on to the high side, peering out of the port hole at the enormous waves. "Whooooaa! It looks just like Antarctica!" he declared excitedly. He and Eloise then consulted the beaufort scale in our log book to assess the conditions. They judged it to be a force 7 based on the appearance of the waves, which was accurate. "Force 7; near gale; 4 metre waves; Sea heaps up and white foam from breaking waves begins to be blown in streaks along the direction of the wind." It sounds bad, but we were snug and safe down below, if a little rolly, and as the scale goes up to force 14, it didn't seem too bad to the crew because we were only half way there.. "Force 14; hurricane, 14 metre waves, the air is filled with foam and spray. The sea is completely white with driving spray. Visibility if seriously affected."
After nine hours hove-to, with a couple more weather forecasts downloaded, and having listened to weather info via the SSB radio, we decided we were OK to start sailing slowly again. The wind was pretty steady at 25 knots, with nothing stronger forecast, and the waves were predicted to increase by just 1m over the next 6 hours and then go down again. With our double-reefed main and staysail back up again, we were much more comfortable sailing through the conditions than rolling about in them, and by keeping north we had avoided the worst of it. One of our fleet was in the thick of it, much further south, and they had 35-40 knots and waves breaking continuously over the boat - not fun.
Since all that wind and excitement, things have settled down to glorious sailing conditions, and we are finally on a close reach in kind seas heading straight for Opua. We probably still have two and a half days to go - it's looking touch-and-go whether we will make it there in time for the rugby. If we do, we almost certainly will not have cleared customs, and I don't know how we will manage to watch it on the quarantine dock...
In other news, Eloise, George and Jack have been replaced by three ninjas ever since we dug out the cold weather kit. With snoods pulled up to their woolly hats, and only their eyes showing, they are rushing around the boat wielding cricket stumps and doing kung-fu / karate type of moves. Their chosen activity this morning was Ninja School, and they are planning to dress all in black with their trademark headgear for Hallowe'en. It's all inspired by the Lego Ninjago movie - I'm not sure we necessarily needed it in our lives, but there we go. They seem to love it. We also had a long game of wink murder, aka tongue-out murder this morning. Eloise suggested the tongue thing as Jack can't wink, and George's wink is not exactly subtle. It was fraught with problems because people kept licking their lips by accident when they weren't the murderer, and whenever Jack was the murderer he kept his tongue firmly in, preferring not to commit any crimes, so the detective had a tough job on their hands...
Angus made some delicious cheesy bread for our lunch today, and as I type he is just about to get his head into the engine for some maintenance - topping up the gear box oil (it has a slow leak..), tightening the stern gland a little (it lets a bit of seawater in), and sponging out water from parts of the bilge which don't drain very well to the bilge pump. Lovely messy jobs - I have got off quite lightly writing the blog.
It's thursday today; our seventh day at sea. If we can keep the speed on then we will be tied up on saturday night, but if not then we'll be in on sunday. All in all it's been quite a long passage, considering it was only 930 miles. Still, it's been a lot of fun so far - much better than our passage from NZ to Tonga - and we've become massive weather-fax nerds and learnt a huge amount about reading the weather and planning where to place ourselves. The continuous low pressures which sweep past New Zealand make it a difficult place to leave, and timing a safe arrival there is not much easier.
That's all from us for today, we'll let you know when we arrive. Love to all back at home and Happy Half Term.
team Victoria Xx
*For those interested in the technicalities of heaving-to: as we are a ketch (with two masts), we can heave-to using just our mizzen (the small sail at the back). This was the first time we had done it. We dropped the staysail, hoisted the mizzen, dropped the main, used the engine to help us settle the boat with her bow to the wind and waves, then lashed the wheel, so that both the rudder and the mizzen were working together to push the bow up to the wind, and turned the engine off. It worked well - we were pretty steady at about 30 degrees to the wind for much of the time. Every now and again, however, a big wave would sweep our bow down, and the mizzen and rudder weren't able to begin to get the bow up again until we were down at about 60-70 degrees to the wind. When we were further off the wind, we were almost beam-on to the waves, so the next wave would catch us sideways and cause a huge roll of up to 30 degrees each way. We had to hold on tight when this happened! We closed all the hatches to keep the water out, but fortunately none of the waves were big enough to be breaking over the boat. Actually, nothing scary happened at all. It was a great experience for all of us - Angus and I had never hove-to before - last time we were sailing around the world, it was a race, so we just kept going whatever the conditions!
Comments
Post a Comment