Day 6 – It was a rough one today

Wow. It was a tough day today. Such a contrast to yesterday when we had ideal and relaxing sailing weather. Conditions can change so quickly out here. It boggles my mind…

Early this morning we woke up to a confused and jumbled ocean. The waves were not big, but what they lacked in size they made up in quantity. Waves were everywhere going in nearly every direction. It was like having speed bumps going across the road in every direction. As we sailed over a speed bump, we would slam down on the other side with a large CRACK from the hull. Then seconds later, another speed bump, then another. The sound inside the boat was deafening and painful for me to hear. My poor boat! But she is built to take this kind of abuse, fortunately.

Outside the boat, as it would drop off a speedbump wave, the water would spray out from under the hull as it crashed down, causing a jet of water to stream out across the ocean as much as 20 feet away. Watching this gives you a real visual of how hard the boat is impacting the water.

Inside the boat I watched Luke levitate from his bunk by several inches as the boat dropped down a wave. The most amazing part is Luke did not wake up, he just bounced along with it! I can hardly sleep in this stuff with all the noise and jerking movement the boat makes. Mateo said it was like being in a car during a violent crash. Definitely not the worse conditions I have sailed in, but an easy top 10.

But wait, there is more! In addition to the speed bump waves, we had a 1.5 knot current AGAINST us. This increased to a steady 2.5 knot current. So even though we are sailing at 7.5 knots, we are only making 5 through the water. I doubt we will even make it 100 miles over the next 24 hours.

On a good note, the wind is cooperating, staying in the mid to high teens. We put two reefs in the main and in the jib just to help slow the boat down as it drove over the speed bump waves. If we had any more wind than this it would have made things even more difficult.

I am SO GRATEFUL for my crew that take it all in stride without complaint. Both Luke and Mateo are new to this, but they keep smiling and rolling with the bounces. Dean just powers through and gets it done! Although Mateo did say today that he didn’t think long passages were for him. I get it, we have not even been out here a week and we have more than two weeks to go. It is a LONG WAY home.

I didn’t even try to take any photos today. Sorry about that, we were just hanging on. We did pick up about 10 Chinese fishing boats on our AIS system. We were not able to get visual contact, but they are out here in force.

Looking at the weather forecast we should just have another 12 hours or so of this. It is actually much better tonight as I type this. And the current should ease over the next day as well.

Looking forward to a better blog post tomorrow!