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November 18, 2007
Sailing is not Always Romantic
3:50am-ish. I was sleeping deeply for the first time since we departed. I cannot explain exactly what sleeping at sea feels like. There is a certain awareness, but not alertness. One ear is always tuned to changes in noise. After four hours of sleep, you feel rested and ready for the watch, you are aware of your dreams (maybe related to being rocked to sleep?), but you feel wacky from sleep deprivation. It takes a few days to get into the new rhythm of sleep patterns, but your body adapts to the pattern very easily. There is also something about the adrenaline of sailing that keeps you awake, and the unflinching responsibility for human lives that weighs heavily on each of us. We are a team, responsible for the health and safety of each other. There is a degree of selflessness and compassion that can only be explained by the sheer gravity of nature’s ability to provide power to those with the courage to harness it, as well as a deep respect for her ability to destroy. It is with all of this that sleep at sea is not typical.
I recall in the fog of this sleep, the sounds of grinding winches. This could mean good things, such as a wind shift. It could also mean bad things.
And so it was that I awoke to “Mike, the jib is on the other side”.
As quickly as I could, I scampered up on deck. The winds had picked up to 30 knots, and Mike and Judy had been reefing the mainsail (making it smaller). None of us is entirely sure how it happened, but the jib, staysail and mainsail were all on the wrong side of the boat, and we were in irons (a condition where the boat is pointing directly into the wind with no ability to steer to gain motion). We turned on the engine, and managed to put the jib and the staysail away. We sailed the rest of the night with the mainsail alone. The jib and staysail sheets were wound up in knots, making them unusable. Erring on the side of safety, we decided not to try to undo the knots until daylight.
With the benefit of daylight, we assessed the chaos. Slowly but surely, we undid the spaghetti by rerunning all the sheets. With the wind picking up, we sailed with the mainsail and staysail alone, and found we were progressing very nicely. The staysail was a new addition to PorFin’s rig, and we all found that it performed exceedingly well in heavy winds.
Posted by dave at November 18, 2007 02:09 PM