SHTP Stories - June 29 and June 30

When the sun rises, I can see no other boats around me and I am in a giant washing machine. Fortunately, it is a bright sunny day and the warmth from the sun is welcome. I am completely drenched but I am wearing synthetic underneath my foul weather gear so it is just mostly uncomfortable. synthetics will take body temperature even wet so I am not feeling cold at all. I didn't sleep very well, mainly because I was afraid that the autopilot wouldn't take the load. I am feeling better and decide to have a few nuts and a light breakfast since my food intake has been really light since the start of the race and I started with pretty much nothing in my stomach. This worked well but I decided to not go down below and drive (which is also good for seasickness) most of the day. The conditions are still very rough and the waves are coming from all over the place, no matter where I look I see a wall in front of me so performance might be better with hand steering. The wind is still pretty far forward and it is a very very tight reach. My current sail plan seems to be working fine. The helm feels light. The dodger is doing a great job but I can't benefit from it as I am sitting at the helm. I steer as best I can to limit spray.

Ice-cold water covers the deck and the cockpit at regular intervals. I have closed the hatch and put in both hatchboards. I didn't sleep in the bunk yesterday to keep it dry and I kept my foul weather gear on so I could get up on deck and be ready for action in no time. My tether extends down into the cabin so I can safely go up and down. I am still wearing my lifejacket. 

I used the hospital pee bottle that I had tried during my qualifier to pee. I can look outside when that happens which is good for seasickness but I am feeling better and better. I drink a lot. The sun feels good. My ears are full of the sound of wind howling. After a bit of fiddling around, I seem to have found a groove and the boat speed reaches 7.8/8 knots (up from 7 knots). She starts moving really nicely.  The other thing that bothers me are the waves.

I think of Skip's writeup: peeing in the bottle (check), balanced helm (check) and settle for roughness (check). So far whatever he has written has proven to be amazingly accurate.

I keep a close eye on them as there are a couple of near breaking waves that can throw me off my helming position. I sit down on the cockpit bench as opposed to up on the deck, despite the need for weight. It is a bit drying and I am more stable with my feet against the other bench or the main sheet post.

The day feels like a long upwind to the Farallon but the seas are like a giant potato patch.

Later in the day I hear RedSky (Brian) on the radio calling Mouton Noir and Scaramouche. I reply, give my position. When asked how the conditions are, I can only find a word 'rough'.

I tell myself that it was rough during my qualifier (with a reach and upwind in 25-30 knot winds) and that I am well prepared for these conditions. I tested them with the autopilot, the boat and even this sail plan. I note that I could go below and speak on the VHF without feeling seasick so my state seems to be improving. I am only eating light stuff though. An apple. Nuts. Candies. Things that don't seem like food. 

I have no idea where the others are. Strangely enough I don't seem to care. This is very odd for me. I would live by the daily report. In any long race, you can only survive and do well by giving yourselves shorter term goals that will add up to your big goal. So every day, I would want to know how I am doing and if my day's efforts were good or bad. But today I just don't care. I am just happy to be out. I am even happy that it is rough. That way, I must concentrate on the boat and the waves. I trust her and there is no doubt in my mind that she will take me through this little bout of weather just fine. She is just really wet and uncomfortable in this weather. I wonder what my experience would be like on one of the bigger boats like Scaramouche, or Grace or Mouton Noir. Would I be sitting down with a glass of brandy and a book? Would I even be wet behind a dodger?
I kind of like and embrace the roughness - it shakes off all my 'toxins' from reality, makes me bare. I remember thinking when I climbed up a 22,000 ft glacier in Ecuador years ago (the hardest thing I ever did as I am not a high altitude person) 'and I am paying for this!!! How dumb can I be'. This time, I am just concentrating on what I am feeling. A wave. The wind. The heel. The helm.

The sun is shining and it is a beautiful day on the ocean, just gale conditions :)

Returning does not occur to me. Elise and I are bound to Hawaii and to Hawaii we shall go unless one of us is in grave danger.

I had felt relieved at the start - I was leaving reality behind and taking a pause. Now that reality is creeping back up in my mind. I push her out as much as I can, but I still can't focus on the idea of a race. I can only focus on the idea of a voyage, of sailing away from something, of some private time with my beloved 'Elise'.

Waves keep crashing against the hull. I stay outside to feel the wind against my face. Around noon, I walk around the deck to check for signs of damage. Everything looks tight. I go back to the cockpit and keep hand steering. Too rough to cook anything and I am not cold so I don't feel the need for hot tea or anything like that. The boat is very wet inside mostly because I have gone below and super wet outside.

I change into my 'day clothes' which means that I remove my hat, change my gloves to regular sailing gloves and remove a fleece. I soon remove my gloves as they are wet and I am mostly using the fine tuner for the main and the efforts on the #4 are super small so it is super easy to trim it in or out from the high side with bare hands.  Everything else I keep on. I put some sunscreen on my face. Sunglasses on Vs haedlamp which I didn't have to use. 

Nice stars last night. I love sailing at night under the stars. One of my favorite things to do in life.

I was hoping to see marine wildlife but there is nothing on the water. All I hear is the roaring of the wind and the water flowing along the hull with occasional explosions that leave me even more wet.

I am still over a hundred miles from the waypoint Commanders gave me and holding steady.

I eat a little bit more as the evening comes and go down below to get dressed up in my evening gear. For the next few days, I will have the day mode and the night mode. I turn the boat into night mode as well, lighting up the mast head light and the compass. All systems seem to be a go at this point which is a relief.

While I am below I let Doomsday drive, in adaptive mode. Does a good job. I wonder what the others are thinking. Are they enjoying themselves? Are they hating the roughness of the conditions? I think that these starting conditions are pretty standard and there is a lot of repeat offenders for the race so I guess that some must like it.

I know it will get calmer, sunnier and better - just a matter of taking the race one day at a time.

Wind still from Northwest so it is really more a loose beat/tight reach than a reach and the AP is struggling a little. It will have veered toward a reach later the following day. I could head down but that would make me go away from my waypoint and the routing knew about these conditions so I decided to stay on course.

Plus I couldn't go below and mess around w/ instruments, charts, plotters, etc...best to stay up - hanging on (quite literally!).

I checked my position on the hand held GPS but when I next look at it, it just gives me a blank screen. Hmm..After the inexplicable failure of the hand held VHF, here's another one. We just put in new batteries. I go down below super fast and swap those for new batteries. Don't want to mess around with voltmeter to check battery. Nope. No result. Great. I have another hand held without map capabilities and the boat GPs which I turn on and seems to be working fine but that means that all nav will have to be done below deck.

The night is cooler and the conditions don't change. The boat is moving fast though. At night, the sounds change somehow and I just feel the boat plough forward. From time to time a big wave pushes the stern and causes a near round up. Elise recovers and keeps going. I try to calculate the wave pattern to anticipate but I can't and at night, I can't see these waves coming so tougher than during the day.

At some points my eyes start closing and I decided to just go to sleep down below. I turn on Doomsday and settle on my cushions. I put on one of the survival blankets over me (so I don't have to wet anything else) and I notice that my hands are burning. I look at them and I got a serious sunburn on my steering hand. Darn, I should have kept these gloves on.

Also, whatever I was doing on the boat, pulling lines, cleating things seems to have caused blood and most of my fingers have some kind of bloody ending by the nail. Great and strange.

In the heavy stuff, I didn't use my bunk. After I took the #4 down, I put it at the stern out of the way.

I set the timer for 45 minutes the first time and 60 minutes afterwards as conditions don't seem to be changing. Doomsday can adjust its gain dynamically so I don't worry about that. I have 3 other spare APs so my mind is quite at ease. If it were to fail, the boat would just round up and stall. No real danger. There is noise everywhere in the cabin and things are bouncing around. Yet I have no trouble finding sleep as I am exhausting. 

I get up before dawn feeling rested and check the conditions outside. All looking good. I decide to eat a little something and I am starting to feel hungry which is another good sign that things are on the mend seasickness wise. The conditions really unchanged and we keep going. I try shaking a reef off (easier than changing jib) but the boat is definitely overpowered when I do that, so I go back to the original double reef configuration.

Boat is doing 7.5/8 knots toward Hawaii. 

I use the bucket and I thank Serge for the nice seat. Great idea. Unfortunately that doesn't make me feel very good as I was down below so I spend the next two hours driving to recover. Disaster averted.

I check the batteries and horror! they don't seem to be charging at all. I double check current in, etc... but no doubt, there doesn't seem to be a charge coming in from the solar panel. Mister Fusion (eFoy) is working so I decided to force it to charge one of the batteries to get an idea of how much power I can get from it.

I feel down now - if I don't have enough power to run the AP very much, it will be a very tiring race - and if I lose power altogether (well Mister Fusion can always power the most basic safety items such as AIS and masthead fly lights, as well as compass/instruments) - then I might have to heave to in order to sleep...and just drift for a few hours. Not a race winning move. That's because I am not sure that twin sails only will provide enough stability to work as a natural AP on the way to Hawaii. Downwind, it is hard to balance the boat with sails enough that you don't need an active autopilot.

I settle for a long day of driving and call Nathan to see if he can get in touch w/ the specialist who helped w/ Elise's electrical system and see if he has any suggestions. Everything is too wet right now for me to do anything on deck and everything is too rough for me to do anything below. So whatever I do will have to wait.

The batteries seem to be charging with Mr Fusion but I plan on 4-5 hours sleep and mostly helming for the next few days before I figure out if I have a power problem or if my 40W backup system can replace my 200W primary solar system.

Day mode: the foulies are in the hammock

Before the night, I change into a dry set of clothes. I took a spare set of foulies, a spare set of boots, spare set of gloves, etc...It feels great to have warm and dry clothes. My elbows and butts were starting to hurt from the salt. I unsalt my body with baby wipes. That was the best idea ever. I had done it during the qualifier and really enjoyed it.

I can eat normally that evening and the food has a wonderful effect on me. Thoughts from my personal crisis assault me back at night when all I have to think about is steering straight ahead. I really can't get my mind in the race but I feel very happy to be on the ocean.

I think back to the weather briefing that Jim gave us at the skipper's meeting. '20 knots on a reach, you will be 'launched' to Hawaii'. I kind of had over 30 knots on a loose beat the first couple of days...The weather is unpredictable..

I should reach my waypoint the following day so I will have a decision to make - where do I go next...