A Rough Ride
A Rough Ride
I know there are sailors reading this and I also know there are non sailors reading it too. Normally I try to not use sailing lingo so you land lubbers can follow along. Not today. Sorry. If you can't follow some of the terminology, give Google a try to help you out. Today I don't have the time or patience to explain everything because I've got myself wedged in a corner of our dinette attempting to write this bit of nonsense as the boat is thrashing around. To say that the seas are angry today is a bit of an understatement.
We left Abreojos this morning with a forecast of 18-22 knots of breeze and 9-12 foot seas and a destination of Bahia Santa Maria. It's a roughly 36 hour run for us under normal conditions. Unfortunately, these aren't normal conditions and the forecast is a bit off.
It's currently blowing 34 knots directly on our stern with gusts going higher. There is a steep and lumpy 15-18 foot swell with occasional sets of waves that tower even greater. We've been in bigger winds and larger seas, but for the life of me, I can't remember ever being in rougher conditions. It could be because we are sitting here right now, braced in while being tossed around, so the agony of worse conditions in times past have faded from our memory.
We've sailed through 50 plus knots of breeze before and we've been in 25 foot plus seas, but they didn't seem as bad as this. Those waves were spread out so the boat had some time to adjust to the up and down and side to side, and the motion was almost gentle comparatively (I use the word gentle loosely).
The current sea state is the problem. It's steep and packed tightly together, and even though the wind is directly on our stern, the waves are hitting us on our stern quarter which is like having a freight train shove us sideways just as we get to the top of the crest. And then, just as we are coming to the bottom of the trough of one wave, the next wave is already picking up our stern while the freight train is shoving us sideways. It makes a violent motion of up, down, left, and right all at once. It's like we are in a blender.
On more that just a few occasions, a larger and near vertical wall of breaking water slams into the back of the boat, sending buckets and buckets full of water sloshing down the decks and into the cockpit. It hits with a vengeance sending shudders throughout the boat while pitching us sideways. The only upside to having a wall of Mexican seawater sent your way is that the water is a lot warmer than the water back home in Seattle. Instead of the 52 degree cold shower we got off of the Washington coast, this shower is around 74.
Then of course there is the odd wave which comes from way out in left field, leaving all rhyme or reason behind, to hit us forward of the beam on the opposite side of the boat. My guess is that those odd waves are coming from the hurricane that just hit Costa Rica. They have traveled all this way just to knock us silly. They are large and powerful and have laid us over a few times now. I don't want to call these incidents knock downs, but we've definitely been knocked over. So much so, that dishes have jumped out of the sink and smashed on the floor, and things that have been strapped down for the last 2,000 miles without moving are now residing on the opposite side of the boat. One of the waves launched me out of my seat on one side of the cockpit, flew me through the air, and landed me on the other side of the cockpit in a heap. And another swung our vegetable hammock so hard that a tomato exploded through the mesh and sprayed all over the inside of our boat.
I've prided myself in the fact that I don't get seasick. In my 20 year sailing career, I can only remember being slightly queezy on one occasion roughly 15 years ago while we were making our way up the outside of Vancouver Island in some steep seas. Brenda tells me that's called being seasick, but since I didn't blow chunks over the rail, I didn't buy it. Today, that queezy feeling is back. The violent motion has me not feeling the greatest. The only remedy seems to be to lay down and close my eyes, but since it's Brenda's turn to try to get some sleep, the remedy is going to have to wait for 3 more hours.
Currently, we've got the boat reefed down with just a stitch of head sail poled out to port and are running along at about 6 ½ knots with bursts of speed hovering around 8 knots as we surf down the face of a wave. We've been steadily shrinking the head sail as the wind builds to attempt to keep our speed down and manageable. Slowing the boat down not only get's us to our next port in the daylight hours but also keeps the auto pilot from burning up. In the bursts of higher speeds, it's been struggling to keep us under control.
Our autopilot generally has a quiet and dull hum when it's working. Our boat is easily balanced with her moderate sail plan, so the autopilot doesn't have a whole lot of work to do. It just makes minor corrections every so often to keep us on course. With the waves knocking us around, it's working overtime. Today, the quiet and dull hum is a constant scream as it swings the rudder from side to side, doing it's best to keep the boat pointed in the right direction.
You might think that we may be scared out here. That's not the case. We know our boat can take this kind of abuse and we are somewhat sure that we can too (hopefully). More than anything, we are annoyed. I'm annoyed that I'm queezy and may blow chunks over the rail. Brenda is annoyed that our weather forecast was so far off (we would have waited this madness out at anchor). I'm annoyed that the best spot to be on the boat is the settee in the salon and Brenda has it occupied (it's the lowest spot on the boat to sleep and it has a great lee cloth to wedge you in place). She's annoyed that even though she has the best spot right now, sleeping is impossible when levitation is happening every couple of minutes.
Yeah, the seas are definitely angry today. They are so angry that they look like a rabid dog foaming at the mouth with the frothy breaking seas all around us. But the good news is that we only have about 24 more hours of this madness to go before we make landfall in Bahia Santa
Maria. Only 24 more hours to go...ugh.
I know there are sailors reading this and I also know there are non sailors reading it too. Normally I try to not use sailing lingo so you land lubbers can follow along. Not today. Sorry. If you can't follow some of the terminology, give Google a try to help you out. Today I don't have the time or patience to explain everything because I've got myself wedged in a corner of our dinette attempting to write this bit of nonsense as the boat is thrashing around. To say that the seas are angry today is a bit of an understatement.
We left Abreojos this morning with a forecast of 18-22 knots of breeze and 9-12 foot seas and a destination of Bahia Santa Maria. It's a roughly 36 hour run for us under normal conditions. Unfortunately, these aren't normal conditions and the forecast is a bit off.
It's currently blowing 34 knots directly on our stern with gusts going higher. There is a steep and lumpy 15-18 foot swell with occasional sets of waves that tower even greater. We've been in bigger winds and larger seas, but for the life of me, I can't remember ever being in rougher conditions. It could be because we are sitting here right now, braced in while being tossed around, so the agony of worse conditions in times past have faded from our memory.
We've sailed through 50 plus knots of breeze before and we've been in 25 foot plus seas, but they didn't seem as bad as this. Those waves were spread out so the boat had some time to adjust to the up and down and side to side, and the motion was almost gentle comparatively (I use the word gentle loosely).
The current sea state is the problem. It's steep and packed tightly together, and even though the wind is directly on our stern, the waves are hitting us on our stern quarter which is like having a freight train shove us sideways just as we get to the top of the crest. And then, just as we are coming to the bottom of the trough of one wave, the next wave is already picking up our stern while the freight train is shoving us sideways. It makes a violent motion of up, down, left, and right all at once. It's like we are in a blender.
On more that just a few occasions, a larger and near vertical wall of breaking water slams into the back of the boat, sending buckets and buckets full of water sloshing down the decks and into the cockpit. It hits with a vengeance sending shudders throughout the boat while pitching us sideways. The only upside to having a wall of Mexican seawater sent your way is that the water is a lot warmer than the water back home in Seattle. Instead of the 52 degree cold shower we got off of the Washington coast, this shower is around 74.
Then of course there is the odd wave which comes from way out in left field, leaving all rhyme or reason behind, to hit us forward of the beam on the opposite side of the boat. My guess is that those odd waves are coming from the hurricane that just hit Costa Rica. They have traveled all this way just to knock us silly. They are large and powerful and have laid us over a few times now. I don't want to call these incidents knock downs, but we've definitely been knocked over. So much so, that dishes have jumped out of the sink and smashed on the floor, and things that have been strapped down for the last 2,000 miles without moving are now residing on the opposite side of the boat. One of the waves launched me out of my seat on one side of the cockpit, flew me through the air, and landed me on the other side of the cockpit in a heap. And another swung our vegetable hammock so hard that a tomato exploded through the mesh and sprayed all over the inside of our boat.
I've prided myself in the fact that I don't get seasick. In my 20 year sailing career, I can only remember being slightly queezy on one occasion roughly 15 years ago while we were making our way up the outside of Vancouver Island in some steep seas. Brenda tells me that's called being seasick, but since I didn't blow chunks over the rail, I didn't buy it. Today, that queezy feeling is back. The violent motion has me not feeling the greatest. The only remedy seems to be to lay down and close my eyes, but since it's Brenda's turn to try to get some sleep, the remedy is going to have to wait for 3 more hours.
Currently, we've got the boat reefed down with just a stitch of head sail poled out to port and are running along at about 6 ½ knots with bursts of speed hovering around 8 knots as we surf down the face of a wave. We've been steadily shrinking the head sail as the wind builds to attempt to keep our speed down and manageable. Slowing the boat down not only get's us to our next port in the daylight hours but also keeps the auto pilot from burning up. In the bursts of higher speeds, it's been struggling to keep us under control.
Our autopilot generally has a quiet and dull hum when it's working. Our boat is easily balanced with her moderate sail plan, so the autopilot doesn't have a whole lot of work to do. It just makes minor corrections every so often to keep us on course. With the waves knocking us around, it's working overtime. Today, the quiet and dull hum is a constant scream as it swings the rudder from side to side, doing it's best to keep the boat pointed in the right direction.
You might think that we may be scared out here. That's not the case. We know our boat can take this kind of abuse and we are somewhat sure that we can too (hopefully). More than anything, we are annoyed. I'm annoyed that I'm queezy and may blow chunks over the rail. Brenda is annoyed that our weather forecast was so far off (we would have waited this madness out at anchor). I'm annoyed that the best spot to be on the boat is the settee in the salon and Brenda has it occupied (it's the lowest spot on the boat to sleep and it has a great lee cloth to wedge you in place). She's annoyed that even though she has the best spot right now, sleeping is impossible when levitation is happening every couple of minutes.
Yeah, the seas are definitely angry today. They are so angry that they look like a rabid dog foaming at the mouth with the frothy breaking seas all around us. But the good news is that we only have about 24 more hours of this madness to go before we make landfall in Bahia Santa
Maria. Only 24 more hours to go...ugh.
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| Landfall after a rough night at sea. Trust me, it's a lot rougher than it looks. |
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