Finding yourself hanging 2/3rds of the way up the forestay off the
Antarctic coast with a bitterly cold southerly wind and a three meter
sea needs some explanation, about one sanity, and reason for finding
yourself in such a position.
Well, where do you start, a sailor knows that some things need to be
done, its not a case that certain things can wait, its a case of do it
right, do it now, and do it fast, and this was certainly one of those
situations.
I had been mulling over our weather window to leave Antarctica after a
grand voyage along the white continent coasts line. This trip in February
had dealt us a very mixed selection of weather, which also made it that
much harder topic the perfect time to leave, too early and we miss
precious time in this special white play ground, and too late and the
plans,flights and future of everyone on board becomes a messy chess game.
The day of the 24th presented itself with an opportunity, any later
would be dicey, and the only thing that was a question mark was the
35 knots of wind forecast for the first night out.
We headed up the Gerlach Strait, with sails flying, a following wind
with clear sunny breaks. North of Brabant Island we turned and met
with the ocean swell and the promise of a relatively quick but not too
bumpy re-crossing of the Drake.
Being my 26th time of crossing the drake I am certainly used to its
peculiarities and its temperament, something that no sailor here in
the south would ever, ever take for granted, drop your guard for a
moment and it will kick your ass so hard you will have nightmares
about it for years.
We knew we were expecting wind, a good direction, but as February days
are so much shorter now one has to take the lack of visibility and light
into account carefully. Audrey and I were on the first of the night
watches and we had already reefed down the main sail to 4 tucks, the
head sails were virtually non existent as we saw the tell tail signs
of a fast changing low pressure system sliding directly over the top of
Xplore.
The barometer had been dropping all day and now was 20 millibars
lower than what we started, at 958, we knew that it was going to change,
probably fast and from a totally different direction, and that it did !
Within minutes of the wind grinding to a holt, as if someone had closed
the front door of the house, the back door swung open, and a right feral
monster was waiting out the back. 20 30 then 40 knots the winds started
blowing, 50 and then 60, shit this is wild !
The winds were not from the West / South West as proposed but from the
direct SOUTH, and in Antarctica every one learns very fast that anything
from the south is COLD, very cold.
The decision to stop and hove too didn't take long to make, from a
skippers perspective I am sure you can see what I mean, boat speed is 9
to 10 knots, visibility doesn't exist as its pitch black, and even
if there was some light, the strength of the wind mixed with ice and snow
means you cant look at anything anyway. Couple that with the fact that
you have a boat which is your life line to the world with 12 people on
board and there is a great potential that there are ice bergs around.
Stop and stop fast !
Having too is a traditional mariners way of virtually stopping the boat
whilst at sea, it brings calm to the boat if positioned correctly to the
seas, not often able to be used on modern fast and fancy plastic boats
these days, but here in the south this is something that we regularly use
when the going gets just a tad too tough........ like now!
Instead of being a comforting smooth stopped motion by hoving too,
Xplore and my fine bunch of feather friends (as I quite often call
them) had been whacked onto spin mode in the washing machine. For myself,
Audrey and Julie the key crew we are all quite used to this, but the
stomachs started to turn pretty fast for the fathered bunch.
But situations like these need concentration and as boss I wasn't
concerned about what was happening in the boat, but what was happening
outside of the boat !
Southerly strong blows in Antarctic if they are fed with a moist air
stream from the ocean means lots of snow and ice in the winds, and this
is exactly what we were getting, and for a mariner we call this "Icing"
yep a bit like a cake top.
Icing looks really pretty, but on a boat if it happens, and has a lot of
snow, then the weight of the snow can if this continues for longer periods dramatically effect the stability of the boat, so you can understand that
from my perspective, I didn't really care if anyone was sea sick at
the moment, whether their pillows weren't fluffed up, but I certainly
was very conscious ad cautious about what and where we were, and what was
likely to happen ?
We knew that this Low pressure cell was going to move over us fast,
and the barometer was already moving up fast, but a fast rise is a
bad as a fast drop, and the 65 knots that we were currently experiencing
I was hoping that we weren't going to see any stronger.
We all know the saying that "Every day is a different one" and for
sailor we definitely agree with this, it just that for sailors we measure a
day by each of the watches that we do, one 4 hour period can be horrendous,
and then after a sleep the next can be like a bed of roses, calm sunny and tranquil.
I was woken by the ON watch to be told that the winds had dropped,
I had already felt it in my snug bunk that I refer to as the "Cave" positioned back aft on the boat we really feel the swell and the movement
when things change. I slipped up on deck and confirmed that our hove too
position needed to be change, we had to get under sail, and stop playing
around like a cork in the ocean.
We beared away and flopped the head sail over to the correct side so
that we could gain boat speed, the winds were still 30 to 35 knots,
but gusting 40, really quite calm compared to what we had during the
bleak hours of darkness !
As we started to make speed the ice and snow that had built up in
the mast,spreaders and rigging began clanging down on the deck and
our heads,luckily most of it had already turned soft from the
wintry sunny morning.
We settled the boat onto a beam reach (winds 90 degrees to our heading)
and I decided to put out just a small amount of the second larger head
sail called the yankee to give us a little more speed and stability.
Crew at the ready on deck we slowly eased the lines and winched in the
sheets to control it, but at that moment we were hit with another 40
knots or so of wind. Within seconds the lazy sheet that sits idle on
the opposite side of the boat started snaking in the air, and with
enough slack in it, it started whipping like a demon, crack crack at
everything in its way. Seconds can seem like hours, but seconds it
took and the proud and strong No 2 yankee was torn completely in half.
With team speed and reaction we turned off the pilot and headed down wind to
reduce the pressure on the sail, to furl it there and then was the only
option. I was gob smacked and shocked, speechless and angry
$%#%#&&^%(^&*()&%& came from my mouth like someone
had used me as some type of a ventriloquist act on TV.
We gathered our self's and not a lot was said, we were only just off
the Antarctic coast and had a long way back to South America and one of
our most important sails was in tatters.
There's not a lot you can do with a blown head sail in 35 plus knots of
wind, I hadn't slept for nearly 24 hours but the show had to go on. We
turned on the main engine to give us the extra speed needed to controllably
move through the large 4 meter swells that had built during the night,
nothing much else I could really do.
Exhausted and devastated I asked the watch to wake me in a couple
of hours, maybe my soft pillow would give me comfort and some idea's.
My pillow was comfortable but my dreams weren't, a few hours
can make a big difference though and I climbed up on deck with a hot cup
of tea and consumed at least 3 cigarettes before the plan unfolded,
we had 600 nautical miles (about 1,100 Kms) to get to Ushuaia an we
need to do it pretty quickly. The Drake doesn't let people or boats
sit around for long in one place before reminding them who's boss.
The head sail had to come down so we at first turned down wind, to unfurl
it and then ease the halyard which holds it up, slowly slowly doe it
weeased the lines and watched to ripped remains flap and wiggle in the
winds, bit by bit it unwound until................ shit !
Where the tear from leech to luff horizontally across the sail 2/3rds
up our towering mast the internal rope call the leech line had broken
and wrapped it self around the forestay and the top section of the sail
##^%$%^%(*^(&)&(& God this language seems to be the basis
of my day !
We refurled the sail again, and I once again sat and smoked another
3 cigarettes. The dread of what I knew needed to be done was all too
apparent, before we could do anything to salvage this sail we had to
get it down, and that was impossible here in deck. I also knew that
if we motor sailed all the way back to Ushuaia that what remained of
the sail up the mast would most likely look nothing like a sail after
4 or 5 more days at sea. The other factor that had to be taken was if
we didn't get this sail down then we couldn't hoist another
sail to replace it, and then that would mean a very slow trip back
with everyone on board missing their flights back to the other
corners of the world.
Dread and a healthy dose of Dutch Courage, I sat down and explained to
Audrey and the team what needed to be done and our options, well there
wasn't really any option, it had to come down, and the forecast was
for increasing winds later in the day, this moment was probably going to
be the only chance to get the sail down and replaced if there ever was
going to be
one.
So there we are, swinging around like a koala bear clutching to a gum
tree in a storm 2/3rds the way up the forestay, knowing that if I let
go at any moment then my brains would be cracked in pieces by the
forestay or the inner forestay, well at least if I passed out I wouldn't
feel too much pain.
The long side of the story is good, I did get up to the cut point of
the sail and cut away the leech line that was stopping us from
unfurling the sail so it could be lowered. I am not ashamed to say that
I screamed a bit towards the end of being up there, as the blood streams
in my brain were about to explode.
I am so proud of Audrey, Nigel and Justin who worked side by side
with me on deck and made sure that I did get down in one piece, along
with the sail.
I lay on my back still in my climbing harness for at least 10 minutes, I
couldn't move. With a bit of time I found some energy and lifted
myself from the deck, I didn't smoke 3 cigarettes at once
(that's how bad I was feeling ) but we tidied the deck and put the
sad and twisted No 2 yankee to bed.
But the job wasn't finished, we had won the first part of the battle
and the confidence to win again was strong, the replacement sail had to go
up. We woke the rest of the sailing team on board Julie, Assaf and Sami
and within a hour we were sailing again.
I write this for you all, so that you know some of the different sides
of being a sailor, its not always easy or a champagne cursing that we
do down here, but also for myself, because I have found that every time
that I have a tough, difficult or traumatic experience writing it down
is some what therapeutic.
Now we are 100 nautical miles exactly from our eastern way point to
enter the Beagle Channel, 26 crossings of the Drake meant that this
was my 13 expedition to Antarctica............... God I am lucky.
