You know it's a challenging ocean passage when... - Tombeau Bay, Mauritius
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 5 May 2012 18:30
| 20:06.247S 57:30.624E May 5, 2012 You know it's a challenging ocean passage when: After 36 hours you realize you forgot to comb your hair that day. Four days go by and you still can't think of anything that might taste good. You stare up at the two wires sticking out of the main mast where the steaming light used to be. You have no recollection whatsoever of the steaming light flying off into the sea. Mid-dinnertime, you find yourself ankle deep in seawater on the starboard deck while wrestling with the swim ladder to put it back in its holder after an abnormally large wave pushes the boat over nearly 80 degrees to starboard. The communications officer on a passing cargo ship asks, "What's a sailboat doing out in these conditions?" Your fast sailing boat is nearly overtaking the freighter in front, which is doing only 11 knots in the big seas. The waves are so tall you can't see the 900 foot freighter three miles to starboard in broad daylight. Your boater friend utters a post-trauma giggle on the SSB radio while describing the huge wave that pooped their cockpit sending gallons of seawater into the cabin and engine compartment, causing the starter motor electricals to short and the engine to start repeatedly despite their attempts to shut it down. Your weatherman writes, "Glad to hear you're handling the windy conditions ok" when in previous emails he euphemistically referred to the higher winds as "firming, but manageable". Your normally very congenial and accommodating weatherman writes, "You'd be much better off by passing Rodrigues due to a new low forming in that area" when you ask if a stop at that island might be possible for a bit of a rest. You eat warmed up chicken casseroles and meatloaf for seven days in a row with nary a vegetable to be seen, and you don't care. The pile of seawater soaked laundry slowly starting to mildew on the forward head floor grows to astronomical proportions, and you don't care. For the first time in your life, you survive 5 of 7 days without your morning coffee. You sit for 3 hours on night watch without moving once from the helm, and time simultaneously moves faster and more slowly than ever before. You vow to write a thank you note filled with lavish praise to the inventor of bungee cords - as soon as you step foot on firm, solid, unmoving ground. You don't notice the collection of dead flying fish strewn all over the deck. You use more fresh water to rinse the salt off the cockpit floor than you use for all showers and dish washing combined. Showers become optional. Cooking is not optional - it just doesn't happen. You surf down a giant wave at 11.1 knots and think, "Wow." The wind blows at 25 knots and you think, "Ahhh...it's so calm!" You neglect to update the hourly ship's log seven times during one particularly windy day. You spend three hours crouched in a wildly rolling engine room with the lid closed overhead to keep saltwater from pouring in, and more of that time is devoted to searching for dropped tools and parts than swapping out generator cooling water pumps. You dream of sleep. As you might have already guessed, we arrived safely in Mauritius at about 9:30pm local time and are currently anchored in a very calm and quiet bay. We've regained our sense of humor - partly because a few glasses of wine and some scotch were drunk, and partly because the last 24 hours of our passage were glorious (truly). The wind calmed to a more reasonable 20-25 knots last night and remained that way until we dropped anchor a few hours ago. We had a beautiful sail under sunny skies followed by full moon, which definitely helped make up for the pain and suffering endured throughout the previous six days. The quiet feels very strange to us. The boat isn't moving or tilted, the rigging isn't humming, the wind isn't howling and the sails aren't whistling. We're finding it difficult to walk from one end of the cabin to the other without losing our balance in these flat conditions. Strange, but true. There's a blank emptiness where the roar of the wind used to be. We feel this more acutely than we've ever felt it before. We've come to the conclusion that this was the most challenging ocean passage we've ever done. And now? We're going to sleep. More in the next few days: Sri Lanka to Chagos Pictures Chagos Pictures Chagos to Mauritius Passage Summary Anne |