Ambushed in the North Atlantic
ULA
John & Jackie Richards
Fri 12 Dec 2008 14:34
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Position 014:49.505N 056:58.068W
Good morning Ula fans. Here is the 6th mate again,
blogging from a sunny, warm but very 'rolly-poly' Atlantic.
We reckon we are now just under 2 days of sailing
from our destination of Rodney Bay in St. Lucia. Who will be the first to
shout 'Land Ahoy' !
Just like running the marathon, the crew have all
now reached the stage of feeling quite knackered but we are sustained by knowing
the finishing line is not far off. We just need to keep the show on the road for
a little longer.
Weather conditions do not always make this easy for
us. We are sailing through the tropical latitudes of the N. Atlantic ocean which
are the spawning grounds for tropical revolving storms, or hurricanes as they
are better known. Sailboats only use this Trade Wind corridor during the
northern winter season when sea and air temperatures are insufficient to
incubate fully fledged hurricanes. However, there are still plenty of hurricane
precursors, or squalls, to watch out for. Squalls are fast moving intense
disturbances carrying high wind and torrential rain and they can easily overtake
a boat. Fortunately they are contained within a field of just a few miles and
are visible both to the eye and they show up on the radar which is very useful
at night.
Yesterday, our ARC weather forecast of 'occasional
squalls' gave us no clue that by early evening we would find ourselved
ambushed by about six squalls which blew up in the space of less than an
hour out of a benign looking sky. In reality the tremendous heat
energy of the sun, built up through the day is being released over a small area
of the ocean. The first to hit us hardly gave enough time to roll away the
headsail and gybe out of its path. In the ensuing turmoil as the windspeed
doubled and we motorsailed away from the center quite a few of
the items stored below decks were rearranged!
After this we did a better job of tracking the
path of the next ones and taking early avoiding action. This had all the
crew in the cockpit for a couple of hours which disturbs the normal watch
pattern.
Our downwind rig of the last few days, poled out
genoa and mainsail has also taken a hammering in the big following seas we
are now experiencing as we sail further west. This morning John noticed that an
upper batten in the mailsail had broken, rendering the main all but unuseable.
Now we are sailing on twin boomed out headsails. A much more forgiving rig which
we will carry up to the last few miles into St Lucia.
So the main focus for the crew is to ensure
sufficient rest in the off watch periods and keep the boat sailing efficiently
and safely for the last 240 miles.
Our skipper, John has done a great job bringing his
boat and crew close to the finishing line of this marathon event. Barring any
unforeseen problems we can look forward to the rum punch which is waiting after
we cross the finishing line, most likely sometime on Sunday.
Howard
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