And on and on and on...
Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Fri 15 Nov 2013 15:33
Friday 15th Nov, day 11 and 1,424 miles run.
Well the thing about weather forecasts is that they are just forecasts.
Carefully presented by skilled professionals from data fed into various
computer models, plus the viewing of tea leaves, seances and slightly wild
eyed women staring into inverted goldfish bowls. They assume that what is
happening has happened before and probably rather more than once or twice!
So we should put less faith into these and do what we have to do anyway and
play the cards we are dealt. In our case these are a good deal better at the
moment possibly than those boats behind us.
Yesterday did not quite pan out as advertised and we actually made very good
time, eating up the miles southwards, heavily reefed in mounting and very
unpleasant seas. The rain continued on and off and it seemed that we were
trapped in some huge walk-in shower room with all the taps jammed open. The
underlying wind strength remorsesly increased as did the waves as a direct
result as they were being driven along in front of the slow moving squalls.
By late afternoon we were back in the situation we dreaded with montrous
towering walls of water marching steadily up behind us and it seemed
impossible that these would all do anything other than simply sweep straight
over the top of us, but as ever, just at the last minute we would bob up and
over the breaking crests and with our bow pointing skywards, we would find
ourselves dropping down into the deep canyons behind each peak which only
served to exaggerate the precipitous sheer face of the next wave as it swept
implacably to loom over us.
The wind was blowing a sustained 30 knots and gusting up to the 40 knot mark
and we were corkscrewing along at 8 knots with only a scrap of heavily
reefed storm jib and virtually no mainsail at all. 'One Two' came on the VHF
to give us the latest weather situation. It seems that they and ourselves
were caught under the trough and could expect this all to continue until we
got south of 23 degrees North. Not such bad news as this was just some 40
miles away and meant that we only had another 5 hours of this. Once there we
could reasonably expect the wind to drop by 5 knots and again another 5
knots by dawn. The lowering of the wind speed would also bring with it,
calmer seas with luck. Sadly One Two are now 15 miles ahead of us and we
will probably not be able to hear them on the VHF from now on - so once
again we feel a bit alone out here!
So we prepared ourselves for another night short on sleep and hoped for
better things in the morning. The rain storms continued to assault us and
certainly for the first 5 hours the huge waves kept us well battened down in
fear of another swamping, but as had been forecast, the wind did indeed
start to ease and seas became less horrendous and by morning we were faced
with a completely different set of issues. Now the wind suddenly dropped
away altogether, barely managing 10 knots from astern and although the seas
had moderated, we now were left running with the residue swell of huge
Atlatic rollers. The rolling action is slower and more stately than the past
few days but sleep has been in very short supply over the past few days.
So the dilemma now is mostly about our arrival at Virgin Gourda Sound which
involves passing through the reef guarding the entrance which is not
something you would want to undertake at night generally as the vital buoys
are not lit (yes we are back in the Caribbean). As things stand we are
likely to arrive around early evening, after dark so what we need to do is
speed up a bit....
What is one of the most dangerous things you can have on board a cruising
yacht? (apart from a pirate or the Mother-in-law) Well any cruiser will tell
you that it is a 'schedule'. (they pronounce it kind of funny here, but it
means the same!) Schedules are what get people into trouble and they are to
avoided at all costs. But
if we can fly some more sail, fly Flossie or even manage to get our cutter
rig pulling well, we could just get that extra knot.
Well, I mean what could possibly go wrong?