We have finally hit the start of the trade winds, goose winging it with the wind right up our chuff, averaging about 7 knots boat speed. Not the type of speed we would have been completely satisfied with at the beginning of the trip but it’s some welcome progress compared to what we have encountered since the last post. For anyone who has been tracking our progress, you will have seen our almighty detour. Our track over ground looked like a new design for a rollercoaster.
Weather predictions stated we would hit about 20-25 knots with a high chance of squalls. What a massive understatement. A few hours into the evening we found ourselves in a brewing storm, initially hitting 35 knots and steadily building. This was not on anyones forecast! We were all up on deck with our oil skins on, lifejackets and clipped on. Sails reefed in and getting absolutely soaked. Waves were smashing over the side of the boat flooding the cockpit. We all thought it would blow over or at least thought we had encountered the worst. At one point Stu registered 60 knots of wind on the screen, which is a force 11 on the beaufort scale. The meaning, according to my Day Skipper handbook: Violent Storm. 56-63 knots. Exceptionally high seas with continuous breaking waves seriously affecting visibility. Jason and Stu were both double clipped on at the helm, sitting in the middle of the 2 wheels, staying low and looked like the Beaconsfield bobsleigh team, all that was missing was the matching lycra, helmets and goggles. Anytime someone opened their mouth to speak or more realistically shout out above the noise of the storm, a wave would end up down your throat. I ended up in the salon making sure Ted was secured and safe from any flying objects and keeping track of things at the chart table when a gigantic wave threw me across the salon and into the corner of the table, bashing my head. I felt like a TV that someone had switched off. Within a few seconds I realised what had happened and felt a golf ball sized bump above my left eyebrow. I’ve never known anything to appear so quickly in just a few seconds. I immediately checked for blood, nothing. I was surrounded by Karla and Jason, they had heard me cry out with pain and came rushing down. I could tell by the look on their faces that this wasn’t good. They both worked amazingly considering the conditions we were in and got ice and strong inflammatories. I was now out of the game and unable to help up on deck. Sitting in the salon with a pulsating eye, I felt helpless. Overhearing the situation outside,it turns out Ted’s astro turf toilet, which is usually positioned up by the bow, had blown into the cockpit. Not that Ted’s toilet was even the least of our worries at this point as we have replacement astro turf but it ended up being something positive to come out of the evening. We were tracking North, called out to another ARC boat further South and they were only in 20 knots of wind. We were heading further into the eye of the storm so looped round and headed south. Continuously reefing in the sails, engine was on to give us more momentum through the waves and help us fight our way out of this unexpected disaster. Jason ordered everyone below deck and we shut up the hatches, it was just too dangerous for anyone to be up on deck. We were forced to pull an all nighter and by early hours of the morning, we were absolutely shattered.
After a few hours of rest, we opened up the companion way hatch and hesitantly stepped outside. The sky was covered in a thick orange cloud, the sun shining obliviously behind the remanence of the storm. During the night Stu’s door had slammed shut and locked itself, so we dug around the drenched cockpit lockers for our allen key set to unscrew the handle and get Stu back into his cabin for some dry clothing. The wind started dropping and we were continuing to motor / jet ski over the top of the swell away from the storm then the engine cut out. Luckily we managed to get south enough to be firmly out of the bad weather and heading in the opposite direction from the storm that was tracking North East towards Europe.
Tracking south as best we could with hardly any wind and now no engine. This was seriously becoming a Christopher Columbus adventure, crossing the Atlantic solely using the wind.