Chart of all the Division D boats for the first 6 days.
Chart of all the Division D boats for the first 6 days.
Since I was trimming while Darren drove, then trimming while Mike drove, their different driving styles became very apparent. Darren liked the spinnaker trimmed in pretty tight as a wave approached from behind. He'd head up more into the wind, more parallel to the approaching wave to build some speed with the sail. The boat would start surfing at an angle to the wave, then he'd turn perpendicular to the wave and surf down it, and I'd have to ease the kite back out or we would be overpowered. After the wave passed, I'd trim back in as he turned up into the wind again. When Mike was driving he usually kept the boatspeed more constant, so as a wave approached from behind, he'd turn downwind, putting us more perpendicular to the wave so it raised the stern up. As the stern raised up, the boat sped up and I'd have to trim hard to keep the spinnaker full, then as the boat speed stabilized I'd ease it back out. After we surfed the wave and the wave passed under us, Mike would return to his previous course, more perpendicular to the waves to get more sideways to the wind and maintain boatspeed. As he did that, I'd have to trim back in.
Both methods of surfing were effective. Darren's method was marginally more risky in that we were more sideways to the wind when trying to build speed, so a sudden puff would be more likely to cause us to broach. For the non-sailors a simplified explanation: a broach occurs when the spinnaker is up, and a sudden increase in the wind causes the boat to be overpowered and "round up" or turn up towards the wind. The boat basically gets blown over on it's side. It's not overly dangerous - the boat isn't going to sink - but it's very uncomfortable hanging from the lifelines while the sails are raising hell flapping violently in the wind. It can be difficult to get the boat back upright and moving again, so we tried hard not to broach. A broach can be avoided by letting the spinnaker out so it traps less wind. When the wind was gusty, we weren't always quick enough to do that in time, so we broached. We had to surf to go fast, and in order to surf we had to have lots of power. That power came from keeping the spinnaker trimmed in to where there was very little allowance for wind gusts, so we had to run the risk of broaching in order to go fast. You can drive conservatively and greatly reduce the odds of broaching, but you'll go too slow to win a race.
This is a boat (Amer Sport 1) that has broached. This is from the Volvo Ocean Race in 2001, but I wanted to show an example, and for obvious reasons we don't have any pictures of our broaches :-) (This picture is used without permission, but everyone should go to BlueGreen's Website. They have great marine pictures there, so maybe with that plug they won't be mad at me for borrowing this one.)
At 2 am Saturday morning my shift was over and I headed below for 3 hours' sleep. Off came the PFD, tether, boots and foulies, and I curled up on the settee with my sleeping bag. At 3 am I was awoken by a broach. The boat was over on its port side, so I was laying mostly on the back of the settee. The sails were flapping noisily, and some of the unsecured gear in the cabin had flown around. I crawled to the high side so my weight would help in righting the boat. It took several minutes for Darren and Braden to get the boat upright, and then we were back on our way. I slept until 4am, when again the boat went over! After I peeled myself up off the back of the settee, I crawled to the starboard side settee and gathered my gear in case I was needed topsides. They got out of the broach pretty quickly, and I went back to my settee and dozed off. I woke up at 4:45, and started doing the balancing act getting dressed. Just as I as heading for the hatchway, a tired Darren got surprised by a gust of wind and we broached for the third time. I hit the back of my head on the hatchway, and said some bad words. I knew I'd have a knot from that one. It was no time to mourn the injury, so I climbed up, clipped in, and crawled to the starboard rail. The sails were snapping and popping, and the boom was bouncing around. Darren got the boat moving slightly forward so we had steerage, yanked on the tiller, and got the bow pointed back downwind. Braden trimmed the spinnaker and we were off and flying. He turned the spinnaker sheet over to me and headed below.
When Mike came on shift at 6:30am Saturday the winds were shifting around and we had to keep adjusting our heading to follow along. Mike and I talked about how the shifting winds might be indicative of our approaching the ridge. We were getting close to our target - the "gate" we had defined at 130W 30N - where we planned to turn and go more west and less south. After 3 days of fairly constant winds, it was exciting to feel the change in the air - we were getting somewhere! We were officially 1/4 of the way to Hawaii! This was a pretty big deal to me, especially after how I felt on night 2 when I was somewhat overwhelmed by the idea of having 8 more days of sailing ahead of me. To reach our first goal, to know that the worst, coldest weather was over, it really raised my spirits. As the sun came up, it looked like it would be a nice day - mostly sunny with reasonable winds. I headed below at 8am and had some breakfast, then it was time to get ready for roll call. I manned the radio, Darren managed engine cooling, and Mike and Braden kept the boat moving. The report was good news - we'd had a good 24 hours - 226 miles, 197 towards Hawaii. We were still in 4th place in our division, and 11th overall!
 |
Chart of all the Division D boats showing the progress from the first three days.
Weather Chart from Saturday, July 8th. The white dot shows Synge's approximate position. The high was really close to us (or we were close to it?) near 130W 30N. It was forecast to head west, which was where we were going!
As you can see from the end of the position report, some of the boats were starting to have fun and cook some good meals in the better weather. That wasn't going to happen for us - we were on day 4 of the Synge all Freeze-Dried diet. We were able to take some comfort in the fact that while our meals weren't glamorous, they were very light weight! While everyone was up and active we talked about our rough night. I gave Darren a nickname - "Old Faithful" - to commemorate his broaches at 3,4, and 5 am! Another topic of discussion - the porta-pottie. It had seen some use in the last 3 days, and it was in need of being emptied. No one was excited by the task, and we were pretty sure it wasn't going to be the Captain's job! So we thought we could pick a victim by the rule of "whomever used it the most should empty it". But that deteriorated into a discussion of how to measure usage: should it be by number of uses, weight, or volume? In the end (no pun intended) we decided it could wait another day. It was around 10 am and Braden was on shift until noon, so I took off my PFD, foulies and boots, and since it was pretty sunny and getting warm, I took off my middle layer too. Then I got some sleep.
When I woke up at 11:30 am, I was really hungry. I looked in the food bin, and saw I had a chicken and rice left but wasn't in the mood for it. Instead I ate a lasagna meal from Mike's day 1 pouch. He had yet to eat any of his freeze dried meals so it wasn't like he was going to miss one. It was getting hot, around 75, so I put on my shorts and my long sleeved wicking shirt. Since it was going to stay warmer now that were we across the ridge, I packed up my base and middle layers in a space-saver bag. When I headed up for my shift I took my foulie jacket in case clouds blocked the sun and it got chilly.
Trimming in the Sunshine!
I was on shift from noon until 4pm. We were under spinnaker, but still reaching quite a bit. We wanted to sail a course of 230 (southwest), but had to be content with 210-220 since wind was still too northerly. It was a nice shift, with good windspeed and sunshine. We saw quite a bit of "junk" in the water including a yellow plastic dishwashing liquid container and a couple of tangled fishing nets. At one point we spied a soccer ball, and Mike cried out "Wilson!", which was pretty funny. For those of you that don't get it, it was a reference to the movie "Castaway", where Tom Hanks plays a plane wreck survivor who has among his meager possessions a Wilson volleyball, which he paints a face on and talks to since he's all alone on an island. I also saw my first flying fish! It was tiny, about 2-3 inches long. I saw it flitter across the surface of the water for a few feet then it disappeared back into the ocean. Some time later, a second 2 inch long flying fish landed in the cockpit and Mike tossed it overboard.
Here is a picture of a flying fish I stole from http://echeng.com/journal/2002/02/
When Darren and I were on shift, he asked if I wanted to take a turn driving. I was up to trying it, and conditions weren't too crazy, so we swapped places. At first I was pretty tentative, trying to get used to it and not doing anything aggressive. After 10-15 minutes I was pretty comfortable and was ready to try to get on a wave. I decided to try Mike's method of turning downwind and getting the stern up on the wave, then heading up to maintain the speed needed to surf. After a few failed attempts, I got on a wave and surfed the boat! This small accomplishment felt really good, especially after the stressful and confidence-shredding experience in San Francisco the day before the race. I continued driving and the wind got a bit stronger, so it was easier to surf. I quickly developed a good feel for the boat and could surf regularly. For one glorious 20-minute stretch, I was able to go from one wave to the next, continually surfing, and keeping our speed in the 10-12 knot range. My top speed was 14.6! I also had zero broaches, but I did have Darren helping, coaching and trimming!
Two more minor events defined the day. Up until this point, Mike had subsisted on saltines and a couple granola bars. On this day he ate some oatmeal that Darren fixed for him. According to Darren and Braden, Mike was doing much better staying hydrated on this race as compared to the 2004 race, and while he was still not feeling very well at least he was able to function and get some food down. The second event was when Darren crawled to the back of the boat under the cockpit and retrieved food box #2, with our food for days 4-6 in it. It was another tiny indication of progress on our voyage, and it felt good to reach it. We now had a fresh batch of food choices and 2 more containers of powdered Gatorade, but the same flavors we'd had so far - Fruit Punch and Cherry. I finished off this day with the 8-11 pm shift, and the 2-5 am shift. It was a nice night for sailing - partly cloudy, a full moon, good winds. We made pretty good progress and it was a mostly dry ride!
Mike driving and me trimming. Mike's got some Gatorade, and the tall white cylinder behind him is our iBoat transponder which reported our position hourly. Notice our blue tethers hooked to our PFD's, and the blue webbing between us which was one of our jack lines - lines that ran bow to stern to hook tethers onto.
Sunday, July 9 6:30am. After an hour and a half of deep sleep, I was awakened by the crew. We were going to have an "all hands" moment and I was needed on deck. I quickly got my deck shoes on, and my PFD and tether. In his last shift Mike had noticed that the tiller was vibrating a little, which was likely caused by having something caught on the keel and disturbing the water flow. The winds were very light, so we were going to take down the spinnaker, stop the boat, and use the mainsail to go backwards in hopes that whatever was stuck on the keel would come off. As I came up on deck, Braden said "Happy Birthday!". It was nice of him to remember. After a couple false starts, we finally got Synge to go backwards. We didn't see anything floating, so if we managed to dislodge something it must have sunk.
We got the spinnaker back up and started sailing again, but it was very slow going with the light winds. We were still struggling with the engine cooling issue, and Mike had an idea. He told me to take one of our empty 5 gallon water jugs and cut a hole in the bottom. Then modify the cap of the jug so we could put the garden hose through the cap and secure it using some sealant. The idea was to mount the water jug upside down on the stern rail, fill it with water via a bucket, and let the water gravity-feed through the hose and into the suction cup engine intake. It was a good plan, and I got to work on it. We had a cordless drill on board, and a hole saw attachment for it. I used that to make several big holes in the bottom of the jug. I got the cap modified and the hose inserted, and fastened the jug to the rail with some webbing. We were ready to test our creation.
We had a 5-gallon bucket on board that we used to empty water from the bilge. The plan was to dip that bucket in the water and pour it into the converted water jug. The boat was heeling, so one side was closer to the water than the other. The engine cooling jug was on the high side, the same side as our emergency rudder mounting, so it made sense to dip the bucket on the low side. Darren hung off the back of the boat and filled the bucket, which was pretty tricky - the boat was moving and as the bucket filled it pulled hard, threatening to pull him into the water. He got it filled and on board, and passed it to me. I poured it into the jug, and we started the motor. After a few seconds cooling water came shooting out of the back of the motor! We had a workable system. The downside was we needed 2 guys to make it work, and for every gallon of water we put in the jug, only about half a gallon reached the motor due to leakage around the garden hose and leakage at the suction cups. Darren expended enormous effort to keep filling the bucket, and after 45 minutes we had charged the batteries and were ready for roll call.
|
|
Website © 2005/2006 Doug Vann, Lisa Niemczura, Walt Niemczura |
||
| 07/09/06 |
Chart of all the Division D boats showing the progress from the first four days. We all turned the corner. Not dramatically, but we are going more west than south now.
Weather Chart from Sunday, July 9th. The white dot shows Synge's approximate position. We're still right by the high, but it has gone slightly west while we've gone further south.
Roll call showed we were doing okay and had had a pretty fast day at 223 miles. Unfortunately most of our fleet had a good 24 hours as well. Sapphire, in second place, covered 10 more miles than we did, and that was a concern. Were they sailing better than us or did they have better winds? We weren't sure which it was. They weren't far away, but they were heavier and shouldn't have been covering more miles than we were. It is very telling that Riva, who covered the fewest miles, was the northernmost boat. They were closest to the high and had the lightest winds.
Mike driving - you can see from the wake we're making pretty good time. On the cockpit floor is our solar panel, which on a sunny day would charge both batteries to capacity.
After roll call I ate Chicken and Rice and fixed a round of Gatorade. Since we'd all been working throughout the morning, our shifts were off. It was about 9:30 am, and Braden had been trimming since 5am, so we decided I'd trim until 1:30 pm. A few minutes after I took over, Braden gave me a terrific birthday present, he emptied the porta-pottie! That was a rough, nasty, very smelly job. The shift was pretty busy, with active trimming and decent winds. Mike and Darren both worked hard to keep the boat surfing and moving fast. We felt like we were making the most of the available wind, and we were on a good course, so hopefully we were gaining on our competition. We saw quite a few flying fish and they were larger than what we'd seen so far. Some of these were 6 inches long. They flew much further than I would have expected. They could fly for hundreds of feet, zipping across the wavetops.
Our progress was a lot of west and very little south. Darren and I swapped positions for a while so I could drive. I did okay, and really got the feel of the boat on the waves. I was able to surf some, but the winds were light and the waves were getting smaller so it didn't last long. While Mike was off-shift he pulled down the weather data, and the news was not good. We were right on top of the high, and the winds looked much better just a little to our south, where much of the fleet was.
The wind kept getting lighter as the day went on, and at 1:30 pm Braden relieved me and I headed below. Darren was asleep in his bunk. I heated some water and rehydrated some lasagna. It was tasty, but it was hard to clean the cheese off my spoon and the roof of my mouth! The noise of the spinnaker line on the winch was incredibly loud. The winch, which was on the roof of the cabin, made a lot of noise when it was being used to crank in the line. The line also popped and groaned as it slid around the winch when it was being let out. It was quieter when it was wet, since it would slide around the winch better. But dry, it slid in fits and starts, and every time it grabbed onto the winch and stopped it would shake the whole boat. Braden joked that he was intentionally causing the line to pop a lot so that Darren couldn't sleep!
I noticed that my right ankle was very swollen, and it hurt to bend it. it also had a greenish tinge to it. I asked Mike his opinion, and he thought the green was bruising from having hit my ankle on something. I said "I guess I'll elevate it, and he said "Elevation is always a good thing for swelling". I positioned a spare spinnaker at the end of my bunk and propped my foot on it and fell asleep.
I woke up at 4:10 pm. It was hot and hard to sleep. I was grateful for my earplugs! My ankle seemed a little better, so I got back to work on the engine cooling jug. I resealed the joint between the cap and the garden hose so it would have time to dry by morning. I also tried to use one of our hand pumps to pump sea water up into the cooling jug, but it was nearly impossible to hold the pump down into the moving water behind the boat and operate the handle with the other hand, so I gave up. I ate some dinner and got ready for my shift. With our non-standard shifts I was on from 6:30 to 9:30. It was a gorgeous afternoon and evening. The sunset was picture perfect, with many rays shining out of the clouds over the water. We watched the wind carefully, and took every opportunity to head further south when there was a shift. While the wind wasn't cooperating direction-wise, at least it was blowing stronger. The boat was cruising along nicely but it was still a lot of effort. I was feeling short on sleep, and while the night was nice, it was tough to stay alert. Having the wind back up was a blessing and we were back to good speeds in the mid-teens.
Mike driving, me trimming as night closes in. It's warmer - Mike is barefoot, and you can see the engine cooling jug mounted behind him.
As I got ready for bed, I took stock of the trip so far in my log. I had a raging case of "boat butt", which is like diaper rash only worse. 4 days of sitting in wet clothes, grinding on the winch while grinding my butt on the rough, non-skid deck surface was taking a toll. It hurt just to sit. I was using Gold Bond powder (thank God Sally picked some up for me just before we left!) and that helped dry me out temporarily and made me feel better. I had acquired lots of bruises - my tailbone, the back of my head, a big knot on my right shin, and both arms. My right arm was the worst. I had a large bruise on my forearm from banging it into the top of the winch as I cranked on the winch handle. My hands were tired of gripping the spinnaker sheet, especially my left, which got the most use. In order to get a good grip on the thin line, I would pinch the line between my thumb and forefinger, and then let the line run through my closed fist and out, bending across my little finger. My little finger was starting to tingle from the constant strain. My ankles were both swollen, my right much more so than my left. I attributed the swelling to the heat, humidity and high sodium content of the freeze-dried food. I vowed to eat the less salty meals for a few days.
At 9:48 pm I wrote in my log "Love this / Hate this :) Gorgeous day and sunset, but Lord the work, sailing, sleep cycles and struggle of living below decks, going from scary 1st night to nice nights I look forward too". I was very tired, but I was enjoying this fantastic adventure, in particular being nearly 1000 miles from land in any direction on my birthday.
Below is an email Sally sent out to family and friends on the evening of the day five. After seeing us off in San Fran, she went to L.A. to visit a friend for a few days. She was carrying all of her own luggage plus most of mine!From: Sally Ernst [mailto:sallyernst@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, July 09, 2006 2:57 PM Subject: Weekend Pac Cup Update Hi everyone! Make sure you all sing really loud today so Joe can hear his Happy Birthday song! :-) As of Saturday's rollcall, Synge covered 226 miles (197 towards their goal), and Sunday's rollcall showed they covered 223 miles (218 towards their goal). Looks like they've "made good" 730 miles, so they're doing really well (this time in '04, they had only covered 661 miles). As of the 11am update, Synge was running at 18.5 knots, so they've got their spinnaker up, and we should continue to see good speed and lots of miles fly by! (For those of you who saw the 9am update with a speed of 5.4 knots, my best guess is they were busy changing sails getting ready to fly the spinny - that's why they were "putting" along). Current estimated time to finish for Synge is now 10 days 20 hours - 2 days ago that estimate was 11 days 23 hours, so they continue to speed along! It's hot here in southern california, but I'm trying to get used to it so I'll be prepped for Hawaii. Been busy shopping - trying to help my friend pick out furniture, paint colors, flooring....I don't think I've ever done this much shopping in my life!!!! Hope everyone is well - will keep you posted! Love to all - Sally
My sleep came to an abrupt halt around 7:30 am. It was time to get up, do boat maintenance and get organized for battery charging and roll call. The worst part was having my dream interrupted. In my dream, Jennifer Aniston was just telling me that she was leaving Brad Pitt so she could date me! Winds were very light, and there was vibration in the tiller again, so we dropped the spinnaker and backed the main. Just like yesterday we didn't see anything float off the keel, and we wanted to be sure we were okay, so Mike got out the video camera. We had an underwater enclosure for the video camera (remember the underwater pictures of the keel from Chapter 1?), so Mike hung over the sides and back of the boat and took some footage, which we then rewound and reviewed. We could see the rudder was clear, but the keel was hard to see, the rudder was blocking the view. Having done what we could for the keel, the next job was cutting off the worn end of the spinnaker halyard. The line holding the spinnaker up to the top of the mast ran through the mast, then over a block (pulley), then through an opening in the mast. Since the spinnaker was up and pulling for days on end in the same position, the line would wear where it rounded the pulley and exited the mast. The fix was simple, just cut off a foot of worn line and reattach the shackle.
It was time to try out the improved engine cooling plumbing. Darren hauled water on board with the bucket and I filled the cooling jug. There was very little leakage by the cap now, so we were much more efficient. When I would dump water into the top of the jug I was spilling some of it down the sides, so I grabbed the hand pump I had tried the day before, but stuck it into the 5 gallon bucket instead of directly into the ocean. I could now get water from the bucket to the jug with zero loss. Darren then pointed out that with the pump working fine, he could cool the engine single handedly. Version 2.0, single-handed cooling, was born! With the batteries topped off, I manned the radio while Darren adjusted the battery selector switch, checked the antenna connections and ran the motor. We needed the motor running while transmitting in order to broadcast a decent signal.
The news was much better than we expected, we were in first place in our division! We had covered 225 miles, 224 of them towards Hawaii! We covered more distance than anyone else in our division, so it looked like we had made the most of the lighter winds. I again raided Mike's food looking for something with less sodium and found a Beef Strogranoff, and then trimmed from 10-11 am. Our shifts were pretty messed up with all the boat work that morning, but all we could do was adjust and keep going. The winds were 6-9, which was good news for lightweight boats like Synge and bad news for the heavy boats. (see below).
 |
Website © 2005/2006 Doug Vann, Lisa Niemczura, Walt Niemczura |
||
| 07/10/06 |
Division D boats after the first five days. Seeing this sheds some light on why we were the highest mileage boat that day. Riva had obviously gybed and headed south to get away from the high, trading distance to Hawaii for hopefully better winds. Orizaba, Sapphire and Vanessa went further south than we did, which may have been another trade of boatspeed for southern latitude. Perhaps the winds to our south aren't much better, since Recidivist hasn't crushed everyone else?
Weather Chart from Monday, July 10th. The white dot shows Synge's approximate position. The high is in 2 parts. One half is moving west, the other half is coming back south! The good news was that it looked like all of our fleet was between the 1024 and 1020 isobars, so hopefully the difference in our winds was not huge. Then again, if it was, we were in trouble!
By the time my short shift was done at 11 am the winds had fallen off a lot. I headed below and got about an hour and a half of sleep. It was hot and humid - mid 80's on deck and even hotter in the cabin. It was mostly cloudy which helped keep the temps bearable. I stank, and my clothes full of drying saltwater smelled even worse. We took turns laying wet clothes on the deck to dry them out. I washed off with baby wipes and ate part of a meal. Eating a hot meal in a hot cabin and drinking tepid Gatorade wasn't very appetizing and I just couldn't eat all of it. We were barely moving when I headed up for my 3-7 pm shift.
During the afternoon the winds dropped to almost nothing. When we scanned the horizon we saw flat water everywhere. There were clouds all around us, but far away. Above us was just huge circle of blue sky. It truly felt like we had spun out into the middle of the high and we were going to be stuck there awhile. With the threat of having a long slow race ahaead of us, we took stock of our fresh water situation. Out of 12 jugs, one jug was set aside for emergencies, and we had to arrive in Kaneohe with it full unless we declared an emergency. Of the remaining 11, we had consumed almost 5, in part because we spilled about 3 gallons from a jug which had fallen over and leaked during that first rough day. We weren't halfway to Hawaii yet, but we were approaching halfway through the water. We talked and decided we didn't need to ration yet, but we would only use water for food and drink - no toothbrushing, laundry, shaving etc.
Braden operating the new and improved one-man engine cooling system. The operator (Darren or Braden, since I was on the radio) had to scoop up a 5 gallon bucket of water, get it on deck, then pump the water up to the water jug.
It was a tough time for the crew. We weren't moving much, and when we were it was too much west and not enough south. Darren and I had many "dicussions" about sail trim, surfing tactics etc. We were getting on each other's nerves, and it was just because we were pretty helpless to change our situation. We gybed the boat, trying to get the little puffs of wind to take us south instead of west. That approach didn't work, as we had to point just east of south to catch the wind, and that was like giving up ground, so we gybed back onto starboard and ghosted our way west. As evening arrived, some squalls formed to our east. If they would come our way, the downdraft from the rain would give us some wind and we could get moving. As I headed off-shift, we were starting to get some pressure from the squall, 7-10 knots. It was blessed relief to be sailing again, and it instantly relieved the crew's dissatisfaction with each other! Even more encouraging was the formation of some additional squalls to the north and east of us - it looked like it was going to be a rainy, wet, squall-filled night, but at least we'd have wind!
I slept fitfully. The crew was gybing back and forth to try and stay in front of each squall for as long as possible, so it was a noisy night, and we alternated heeling to port and starboard as we gybed. That continued through my 10pm to 1am shift. Periodically we would see a boat behind us. Sometimes we'd see their green bow light, sometimes the red. They were doing the same thing we were - gybing back and forth across the face of the squalls. They weren't catching up with us, which was good. It became a very ugly night. On one gybe we somehow managed to get the spinnaker sheet over the boom (normally it runs from a block near the back of the boat straight out to the spinnaker going under the boom). It was under a lot of pressure, and was cutting into the back edge of the mainsail. It turned into an all-hands moment. The boom was out off the side of the boat of course, so reaching the problem was difficult. We had to sail dangerously deep downwind to get the boom in close to the boat. I was pulling the main and boom in, while Braden and Darren tried to get the spinnaker sheet off the back of the main. Mike was keeping the boat precariously balanced on the wind, trying not to accidentally gybe.
With a mighty tug and much groaning, the twins finally got the line freed. We let the main back out and turned back up to our normal course. Then we noticed that in the midst of the wrestling, we had managed to loosen the strap that holds the back of the main down onto the boom! With that being loose, the outhaul (for the non-sailors, this is a line that pulls backwards on the back end of the mainsail and is used to adjust tension along the bottom of the sail) was taking on additional strain by having to hold the main both back and down. We tied a scrap of line around to help take the load off the loosened strap, but again we were working on the nearly out-of-reach boom and it wasn't a great job. We then went to tighten the outhaul (which runs through the boom and is tightened from up by the mast), but we couldn't find the end of the line. We feared the worst, that the additional pressure on the outhaul had pulled the line into the boom, from where it would be just about impossible to retrieve. Given the darkness and the need to concentrate on the winds, we decided to leave it until morning.
This is the boom and the back of the mainsail. This was taken sometime after the events of July 10, but in it you can see the white strap which is a little loose, and behind that the temporary thin white line that is "helping" the strap. This also shows an altogether different and much larger, more embarrasing problem that happened later. We managed to get the main sheet (the green lines) wrapped around the boom! The thin green and white line running under the boom is the spinnaker sheet, in its normal position.
I came off shift at 1 am, tired from all the gybing and problems, and damp from the rain. I headed below, peeled off my wet foulies, and tried to get some sleep. I didn't get much. Around 2:30 am I bolted awake after hearing Darren and Braden yell "FLARE!! FLARE!!" Mike and I scrambled to the hatch, threw it open and looked around, but the flare was gone. Darren recounted that they had seen an amber/yellow flare to the northeast of us. They figured it was quite a ways distant, maybe 10 miles.
Mike had me turn on the VHF and SSB radios to see what I could hear. There was no traffic on the Emergency frequency, but on the the normal channel there was a repeating message that had all the characteristics of an automated distress call. It sounded like Italian, and I could just barely make out words that sounded like numbers, which was probably their position. An English voice could also be heard, but only occassionally and very faintly. I could only discern a few words and phrases, such as "contact with vessel" and "divert". Hearing that voice sent shivers down my spine. Obviously someone was in trouble, but we weren't sure what to do to help. Mike had me try to reach someone on both the VHF and SSB, but I received no replies. We were hoping to talk to either whomever was in trouble, or the Coast Guard. We kept at it for over an hour, but to no avail. We discussed dropping the spinnaker, putting up the jib and heading in the direction of the flare, but given that we only had a rough bearing, it was dark, and we were probaby 10 miles away it seemed a futile mission for a needle in a haystack. We continued monitoring the radio for a while longer, but never got any more information. It did seem that whomever was in trouble had managed to contact someone, which would explain the "divert" and "contact with vessel" phrases. Perhaps the flare was to help the approaching rescuers find the troubled boat?
(After the race, Mike reported the flare sighting to the coast Guard. They were grateful for the information, but had no knowledge of any incidents that night.)
Tune in for our next episode!
Back to Chapter 2 On to Chapter 4
