Rhiann Marie - Round the World

Wake Up Squall!

Stewart Graham

Fri 17 Dec 2010 08:28

Friday December 16th 1036 Local 0236UTC

00:48.70N 104:19.68E

Yesterday morning we were greeted at day light with another massive squall. Our morning wake up squall.

These are not the squalls that we experienced in the Atlantic and the Caribean, they have been huge. This one was 16 miles by 14 miles, so over 200 square miles.

They are characterised by an approaching black sky, and you can almost feel the change in air pressure. Then the wind starts to build. At a distance the wind builds by 5 to 10 knots. This is the wind you can use to advantage by tacking in advance across the front of it. The already choppy seas start to build at the front end and then it hits. The wind will jump 15 to 20 knots more and then sustain that and then will build another five knots or so. It will remain thus until half way through the squall, when it will start to decrease. It will then decrease all the way back to the gradient wind and often down to almost nothing, as the squall has sucked all the pressure away in its passing.

As you enter the squall the seas are racked and strewn by the wind and spindrift is everywhere. The waves actually flatten as the rain becomes literally torrential. As that eases the seas become lumpy and confused at the after end of the squall and then it is past. This can be half an hour to two hours depending on its size.

You then lift your head to the undistinguishable horizon and brace yourself for the next one.... "never mind - it's only nine hundred miles, dear".

At 0741 we crossed the equator north bound. This was the second equator crossing of our circumnavigation, but was not the celebratory moment that we had when early this year I jumped off the bow of Rhiann Marie and swam over the equator southbound, but it was a crossing and still caused some excitement and distraction from the conditions.

The prevailing seas have been short choppy waves - this has caused conditions where heavy pitching and slamming has been the norm. We have never seen so much water on the deck. On occasions from below, it felt as if the whole deck saloon was under water as the windows blacked out before light appearing again through the boiling froth washing around them.

At about 10am after the conditions had settled and we were back to twenty knots from dead ahead, I had lain in the cockpit to try and sleep for a little while. Trish who was on watch shouted me urgently. The lifting bar inside the RIB which was used for lifting the RIB up on the davits had snapped all of a sudden and the RIB was hanging at a crazy angle and we were just about to loose it! All hands on deck! Our RIB is suspended on Davits off the back of the yacht. It is lifted at two points on the lifting slings, one from each davit. It is further supported by the main load bearing "belly straps" which come round the bottom and are then cleated off. This takes the weight off the motors and the lifting slings. We then fit two ratchet straps from the centre of the floor of the rib out to the Davits. She has travelled almost 23,000 miles and crossed two oceans securely like this. However the conditions of the last week were obviously too much for her....

We sprung into action getting additional ropes and straps round the rib and just managed to keep it on the davits. It was secured, though not pretty....

During these squalls you are left with conditions in which you cannot sail, though you could heave to. After the squall you are left with lumpy confused seas and little wind for a period during which you cannot really sail. Most of the squalls have been too big to avoid. The smaller ones however are actually very useful if played right and the sea state allows. A pilot book on the area I read said Indonesia had either far too much wind to sail or not enough wind to sail, and if you ever had reasonable wind it would be from the wrong direction. I didn't write it but I could have!

We used the engine extensively together with reefed mainsail, during these squall conditions, trying to take waves at a slight angle to reduce the violent motion. Also we had to maintain some headway though otherwise we would never make it home in time for Christmas.

Judging how much fuel we could use however was impossible, as we have never previously had experience of measuring fuel consumption in these conditions, and the forecast relief in conditions never really materialised until mid day yesterday. Also when we fill our tanks we normally can judge it so that we fill the tanks right up to the "neck" - above "Full" on the guages, but with the set up in Bali with fuel being pumped aboard rapidly by a diesel driven pump with one guy standing by to kill it we just had to get him to shut down when the guages reached "full", lest we would flood the decks with diesel. When we run the guages down to "empty" we know we normally still have some fuel but how much?

So that I knew what I had to work with when we were using the engine, I ran both the Starboard and Mid tanks till the engine told me it was strangling! That way I knew with a smaller margin of error what I had to play with.

What ever it was, it would not be enough and although I have sailed in and out of marinas and on and off marina pontoons before I really did not want to tackle this at Nongsa which has a tricky shallow water entrance and is unknown to me. Also I would have to tackle the busy shipping channel Selat Riau, south of Singapore and it seems with an adverse current and light head winds.

So it was after our head on 35 knot 200 square mile, morning wake up squall that I decided we must get some fuel to stay safe in the approaches. We finally had a day when we could sail - dead upwind in 15 knots. The sea state was now settled down. We made a couple of calls to our contact at Nongsa point marina to see if there was any information about fuel. He gave me a name and phone number of a guy he thought could help. He was based on the island of Abang about 70 miles away and only about 15 miles to the west of the Selat Riau channel up to Nongsa. So we called and in very broken english I thought I had got the message that we could arrange to be at Abang at 1800 and he could supply 100 litres of fuel which would be enough if needed to get us up the channel to Nongsa.

Not long after we were passing a fishing boat which appeared to be hailing us. One guy was waving what looked like a red flag another was waving both arms. When we came along side they appeared very sheepish and could only smile at us. The divers "OK" sign was resorted to and they responded with a thumbs up so we got on our way again.

So we had a long beat up wind to get to what looked like a decent anchorage at Abang and hope that we understood our new best friend "Nanang". We sailed our socks off. Senses honed, to squeeze every last drop of VMG out of Rhiann Marie. We tacked on the shifts, took every lift we could and trimmed constantly. The upwind sailing in reasonable seas was an effortless one finger affair with the self tacking headsail coming into its own. We also played the now much less potent squalls at their own game and we tacked across them and stole every little lift. And it was like that, with Trish cleaning out (I don't mean eating) and defrosting the fridge which gave an additional consideration as to when tacks could be made, that we sailed into Abang at 1830. Relieved but still apprehensive that our communication was well understood.

We sailed in and anchored in front of the fishing village. We contacted Nananga and he, who turned out to be an officer of the Indonesian Navy in uniform, and an old fisherman "Oningan" turned up in the darkness with the fuel. The transfer from gerry cans went well and we had them aboard for tea. Like everyone else we have met in the world they were friendly and pleasant. They were chuffed to be invited aboard I think and we had a few gifts and a million rupiah to give them! The fuel was the extortionate price of 50p per litre! Not bad eh? - for an emergency supply transferred aboard in the middle of nowhere in the dark of night.

We made Rhiann Marie ship shape, Trish cooked a great steak dinner we had a glass of nice Merlot to go with it and within no time I was below and slept the sleep of the innocents for 8 hours. We both woke up on top form. Trish said the scars of the passage were already healing. Even so, being the sensitive type, I didn't think the time was yet right to mention my ideas for a trip to the Antarctic via Cape Horn.....

We got underway and also got stuck into continuing our deep clean of Rhainn Marie. When we are in Singapore nobody will know we just sailed her 23,000 nautical miles in little over a year. Apart from the few small war wounds which only an experienced eye will notice she will look like "showroom" condition above deck and below deck - and below floorboards as the bilges have already been scrubbed!

During this passage I got a Navtex message from much further north in the South China Sea. Three bulk carriers had sunk in the previous few days. All 25 crew were lost on one, 13 on another and all crew rescued on the third one.

I have sailed in and been at sea in much worse conditions than those of the past week but never in any so frustrating, and never with so much pressure. Pressure to get my wife in one peice mentally and physically to the plane in time to get her home to family for Christmas. That time pressure vastly reduced our options of how to deal with the passage. Lesson learnt.