day 161: return of the swamp
Miriam: Now I understand the difference between a downwind and an upwind passage. Downwind might be fast paced, a little wet, big wind, some exhilarating moments, but upwind feels so much more intense and so far it seems there is no such thing as a little wet. Being at the helm today in the big disorganised swell with plenty of wind felt like a high stakes choose your own adventure water park: huge lurching drops from wave crest to trough, slamming boat and bone rattling thuds of hull against water, narrowly avoiding some waves with a growing false assurance about my stellar steering only to watch helpless as huge walls of water randomly break over the bow and rush full velocity to drench me completely more times than I can count. To which all I could do was laugh, every time. What a lesson in surrender.
I’m glad I cooked up the ferns before we got underway because they were delicious! That was a wild whirlwind of transition, going from an emergent cruising around enjoying ourselves sort of pace to a serious provisioning and preparation and up at first light to get fueled and checked out and on our way. I foolishly made some more food yesterday including a massive pot of duck fat mashed cassava and, while Jamie and I have done our best to eat it, tomorrow will be the day we feed some pelagic fish an exotic meal. Good thing I didn’t notice that fish he caught yesterday…
Naomi here Well it was a good meal of ferns beetroot n beans before we left which is good cuz I’ve had nothing since apart from a couple cuppas. The conditions out here aren’t nearly as bad as I thought they would be which is good, it’s relatively quiet down below and not too hectic motion wise. Don’t get me wrong it’s still nearly impossible to make a cuppa, pee off the back (clipped in of course) or if you’re me, eat anything at all. Below decks have reverted to more of a marshy bog than a swampy one, and we are running out of places to hang all our wet gear. Wendy the windvane works some of the time, at the moment we have the jib and triple reefed main up and discovered it’s a bit too much canvas for her. But we are going 8 or 9 knots so it’s pretty fun. We have mostly been having between 20 and 28 knots from south east ish, often in the 22-24 knot range which is very doable for us. The dodger has not held up, not that it was providing that much protection anyways. On watch I wonder, is it best to face the waves washing across the boat head on, thus getting soaking wet inside and out, or is it best to dodge the worst of it, thus getting a fine salt spray on your face, progressively coating it until you end up with a thick layer of salt all over your face, and when you try wipe your eyes the salt grinds into your eyelids , slicing and dehydrating them?
Jamie : Today I was steering through the waves listening to Harry Potter and the goblet of fire (chapter 34) when who should pop up and yell something at me but my sweet captain. She scurried to the front of the boat, crouching and grasping as she went and yelled over her shoulder “THE ANCHORS GOING OUT!”. Shit. Here we were cutting through the water at 8 or 9 knots with the anchor come loose and hooning out into 1000m+ of water. A truly terrible rattling noise greeted my ears as I came up to the bow to see the anchor gone and the slithering anchor rope replacing it. As I got closer I blinked once and somehow old salty Naomi has stopped it with her hands and was now holding onto the anchor rope taking the full force of over 100m of anchor, anchor chain and rope dragging through water at 8 knots? We do not speak of it. I ran down below to grab the winch handle to take the pressure off the windlass while she steered the boat upwind to loose momentum. All we could then do was haul up our wayward anchor as a team of 4 furrow browed sailors. We could cleat it off as we went for breaks. Once we got it up we took the anchor inside and stuffed it under the sail bags in the middle of the boat so it cant escape again. Thank you all for your correspondence regarding WOD. My team are working their hardest to reply to all of you. Todays WOD comes all the way from our Tasmanian father mark sweet, biological father of the fabled Tristan sweet who used to crew on the boat and dress up as a caveman and cook delicious meals in atrocious conditions. Thanks mark it’s an absolute cracker. WOD: Armageddon. Armageddon, the last battle between good and evil before the day of judgment. U.I.A.S: it’s a long way to Opua and it’s going to get colder every day, Armageddon off this boat in Fiji.