Whales, gales and throwups
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Wed 23 Jul 2014 23:25
Off we went, we knew it was going to be a hard sailing across the very big Hauraki Gulf. But we were prepared, at least Salsa was prepared. She behaved very well in nasty seas with sprays of 10 degrees water. The wind was from 18 gusting 24 on the nose.
Ellinor had her hardest day since ever. I have never seen her so out, throwing up til she had absolutely nothing left. So I had to sail on my own and it was hard, beacuse the gusts sometimes veered up to 40 degrees. We sailed bottom reefed on the genua and main down to 1/3 of the area, still we made an average of 6,5.
As we got closer to the other side of the gulf we could ease and sail closehauled, the wind got down to 8 and it all became a dream sailing all the way til we got in to Whangarei. We sailed all the way up the channel!
It was dark as we approached the Whangarei harbour but it is well marked and we have been here before. We dropped anchor in a bay were we have been before.
The low light in the last hours together with the cold air, revealed wales very easily. We could see their steem from far away! On a day like yesterday the kids played a lot on their Ipads, in a way this is good, the violent movement is no problem if you are sitting still.
It is amazing that short waves close to shore can be so much more uncomfortable than larger softer waves further out.
In all it was a good shake down sailing trip for the boat. Today I had to adjust the babystay since I could see it gave way to easy when the boat was pumping in the sea.