Bermuda Bound: Day 4

Journal of November 7th, 2019 (written on November 8th, 2019)

A few weeks ago I posted something about the “real shakedown” which spoke of living at anchor for a week.

Guuurl puhlease!

So Day 4 was….ummm….basically the most scared I’ve ever been on a boat and had all 5 adults on board trying very hard to not literally sh*t our pants. It started right at midnight just as Greg and I were coming off our watch at the end of Day 3…Andrew and Heidi were maybe an hour into their shift and I popped up to check on things. They said they were tracking a few squalls that had past by us; however, more kept popping up on the radar. I woke Greg to discuss strategy to avoid these squalls if possible.

Now we’ve been in squalls before…25-40knots of brief, hectic chaos, engine on and bow to the wind or heave to and hunker down for maybe 20-30 minutes. So first thinking the radar was showing some squalls we prepared to ride out as usual.

 Turns out these were not squalls. These were lines of storms that were on the edge of a weak front. Not the massive cold front we were outrunning that was expected Friday night….just a weak one. Weak. Sure.

5 hours later, no rest, hand steering, 35-40knot winds sustained, easily 3 meter swells and the odd 4 meter swells, half of which were breaking, in the pitch black without reference as to which direction they were coming from. I was nauseous for the first time in 20 years (held in the puke though, even when down below with Grace and her bucket, but she also held it in – trooper). We moved the girls from the aft cabin where they were getting tossed around to the bunks in mid-ship where the motion was less but the noise was insane. All five adults were up all night, trying to figure out how to get out of this storm. All of us were extremely concerned.

At several points, usually when we took a wave more broadside that we would like, all of the emergency scenarios were running through my head. I was imagining PAN PAN calls, MAYDAY calls, what to do if we hit something (not too likely given that we were several hundred miles offshore in the North Atlantic), what to do if we lost our steering, what to do if we were struck by lightning, how to launch the liftraft, where the ditchbags were, and so on. And each time those thoughts entered my mind I said to myself (because if I opened my mouth I was going to puke) – the boat is fine, the situation was serious but the boat was sound, everyone was tethered and protected, we were tired but we were communicating well and trying to problem solve as best possible. We had food at hand to keep our energy up and we were making sure we stayed warm. The kids were safe (2 actually slept through most of this if you can believe it). This was just a test of endurance. We had to endure this crazy sh*t storm and try not to make any mistakes and ultimately trust the boat. Thank goodness we make such a sound choice on our boat. Solid, strong, ocean worthy with dozens of places to hand over hand walk down below when heeled at 40 degrees and pounding into swell.

When dawn broke we had the wonderful advantage of SEEING the swell and could steer much more effectively down them. We all have our strengths and one of my is that I am pretty good at the helm…a “steady hand” as Andrew put it. We still struggled with wind too far forward and swells much too big to let “Jeff” (our autohelm name) steer.  So I hand steered that day for 10 hours. I feel that made up for my somewhat lack of utility during the night as I fought down puke.

Even though that night was awful and the day was another whole phase of intense physical work, we had beautiful deep blue seas, foamy white breakers, bright blue skies and were even visited by a sea bird and 2 very playful dolphins who clearly thought the swell was the best fun a dolphin could have!

By evening the winds started to come down to a luxurious 20-25 knots on the nose (apparent) and the swell started to track closer to 2 meters than 3 meters. We were all feeling thankful that we made it through the night and day without anything breaking or anyone getting hurt. Well except for a smashed iPad, broken kettle that jumped out of the pot holders on the stove (empty thank goodness), broken shelf in my spice cabinet and a big dent in the galley cabin sole where one of my heavy cutting boards jumped off the counter to join the party with the tea pot.

Day 4 was the real shakedown.

Much love,

M