May 7, 2016
Position: 24 51.76 S, 170 0.34 E
May 7, 2016
The gales & squalls intensified throughout the night and the gray dawn found us beam-to-broad reaching in sustained 35 knots, gusting higher. Privateer surfed beautifully down the 4-meter waves, and the highest boat speed I observed on GPS was 13.4 knots. These are the conditions that Privateer’s hull is built for—there’s magic in the shape of her lines that makes her slip through extremely rough waves with an easy motion. Without a single pounding on her hull she opened up the ragged waves and threw them aside in a wake of foam 100 feet wide. Down below Taz was giggling and enjoying his leisurely Saturday morning breakfast and you could (almost) hardly tell we were at sea, while above-decks looked like something out of the Bering Sea. Gobs of seawater were lifted off the bow before the wind ripped them away over the leeward rail. I sat under the dodger watching the scene unfold, wave after wave. Soon we passed through what I can only describe as the “eye” of the low, a broad horizon with towering clouds all around and sunny blue skies above. But then the squalls came in from the west, about two dozen of them over the course of the morning and afternoon. The squalls gave us a fantastic lift and we pointed our bow right at Tanna Island throughout! It was fantastic sailing. There’s something I enjoyed about this gale. It was good to get knocked around a bit to get our sea legs back. And every speck of dust and grit we’d accumulated on deck in NZ went straight out the scuppers! The teak decks got a good seawater polish. And finally, the wind shifted and the skies turned a yellow-gray and dumped the most torrential downpour I’ve ever experienced at sea. Cresting along at 7 knots under full sail it rained so heavily that the whitecaps got hammered back into the waves. The sea took on the same aspect as a snow-swept highway in North Dakota. I lathered up in Dr. Bronners and stood under the mainsail as sheets of water poured over me. The scuppers were running full-bore and still the decks flooded—you could almose watch the ocean level rising! I became alarmed and wondered if I should shorten sail… but then the sky opened up and we sailed out the other side. Suddenly we found ourselves in an oceanic tide-rip. It was as if the ocean didn’t have a place to go. In zero knots of wind we were carried along at 5 knots in one direction for a few minutes, then 5 knots in a completely other direction. Wave-tops jumped vertically off the swells which were smashing into eachoter from 3 or 4 different directions. But the wave faces themselves were the weirdest thing. I can only guess that there was so much water dumped from the sky that the fresh water formed a solid layer on top of the swells, pushing outward against the ocean seawater. We sheeted the sails flat to stabilize the motion as best we could, fired up the engine, and got the hell out of there! We are 299 miles from Tanna now, with a little contrary wind in the forecast. We’ve got enough fuel to motor the remaining 2-3 days, but are hoping for some light trades to develop after this low moves south. It was a great 600 mile tack from NZ out the backside of a high-pressure system, and we are just a day away from the Tropics now!
