You'll notice two bits of information. The needle points to 120. It means we were sailing with the wind at 120 degrees on our port side. Very nice angle. Lovely angle. The digital figure reads 44.4 knots. It refers to wind strength - not "true" but "apparent" wind strength. To get true wind strength when you're sailing with the wind behind you, you add your boat speed. In this instance, we were travelling at 6 to 7 knots, so the wind was over 50 knots. Not so nice. Not so lovely. But the very fact that Alex was able to take a picture a few minutes later (the clever electronics system archives maximum wind strength for a limited period) means something too. I had gone down below to get the camera from its secure spot. It was possible to move around the boat. He had balanced in the companionway for long enough to retrieve the figure and push the shutter button. That means we were sailing in a comparatively controlled fashion, in big winds and over walls of water. It's almost impossible to take a good picture of waves - they always flatten out - but here's our best attempt to capture the size of the swell. We'd been warned it would be over 5 metres. It was.
We took five days and 20 hours to sail from Noumea to Coffs Harbour. That's quick. However what we felt so proud of on that first night in port, when we toasted our achievement with fine Tasmanian champagne, was not our speed but our boat and the trust we have developed in her. For about 36 hours (on days 4 and 5) the easterly winds flicking off the edge of that fiendish high pressure system kept up their howling assault. I could tell how hard the wind was blowing from its sound just as soon as by looking at the instruments. A sustained gust of 35 to 40 knots batters your senses. "Shut up," I shouted at the bully wind, more than once. By contrast, I didn't need to look at the dial to know when there was a "lull". Yes, only 25 knots. Blessed silence.
For her part, Kukka kept her course, on a reasonably even keel, taking the awesome swells in her stride and allowing us to sleep, to eat and to maintain our sense of humour and make considered decisions. Sure, she slipped up a few times, the technological prowess of the autopilot overwhelmed by the volume and motion of liquid mountains. The confusion, rather than the height of the seas were her main problem. Very strong winds whip up waves on top of the swell, and they also set up cross currents which catch a boat broadside and throw her - and her personnel - about. It's quite something to be sitting behind the wheel eying off a wall of water which is foaming level with the lifelines (the stainless steel wire around the edge of the deck) and feel its impact as it slams into the hull and sends the boat spinning. The worst of these side-kickers lifted me off my bottom and tossed me into the bimini - not far, because almost immediately I disabled the auto-pilot, stopped Kukka from rounding up further and hand-steered her back onto course before re-engaging the autopilot. That wave threw Alex out of bed (we had no lee cloth up, the angle of the boat being so constant that there was no danger of rolling out). Thankfully, with one exception when the cockpit was awash, these troublemakers didn't wet our feet.
9
Alex has never sailed his own boat in seas like that before. He'd never had to make the kinds of decisions he made on this passage. From my perspective, he didn't put a foot wrong. He trimmed the sails so that the boat had enough momentum to keep going forward and yet not so much speed that she lost control. We carried a main and a jib, both very heavily reefed. There were a few times when she rode down the face of a big swell and the speedo spiked, but mostly it was steady as she goes.
Night time was more difficult because there was no moon, and in the total blackness all you could pick were lines of white foam. When the gale first blew in on Sunday, Alex contemplated sleeping in the cockpit during my night watch. But after we'd been going a few hours, after 35 to 40 knots had become the norm, he saw how well Kukka was keeping her course, and he put his trust in her and in me. He went below to sleep, and I decided not to wake him when my watch was due to end. He'd hardly slept in the previous 16 hours. "I'm too wired", he said when I suggested he go below during the day. I, surprisingly, have overcome a life time of sleeping incompetence, and have become a reliable cat-napper. He slept for five hours at a stretch that stormy night, and I jollied myself through my extended watch much as I imagine a long distance runner does, giving myself a goal, then pushing it out. I was bundled up in wet weather gear, boots, beanie and harness, and tethered and alarmed and god knows what else. We're very particular about our safety on Kukka. There really wasn't much to do except keep concentrating. Kukka was doing all the work, but if she slipped up, I had to be ready to take the helm and/or let out the main.
What Alex feared most was breaking gear (the picture above is Alex contemplating the size of a wave with definite damage potential). He told me later that he really began enjoying himself when he realised that while breakage was possible it was not as likely as he'd feared, given how well Kukka was coping. As for me, I was mesmerised by the sea. You cannot imagine how beautiful such huge swells are, especially when they begin to split open at the crest and for a second or two the light shines through and exposes a blue as breathtaking as that of lagoon water. But while lagoon water laps soft, and warm, this open water crackles like ice, cool and hard blue, like Bombay Sapphire gin. Above the swell, tireless seabirds swooped and circled on the wind eddies. I don't know anything much about birds, but they were quiet company, our only company out there. We saw no other boats until we reached the shipping lane off the Australian coast, and it wasn't until we were coming into Coffs that we met dolphins again.
The most dangerous place on the boat was down below if you were on your feet. We don't have a return bench in the galley, and on port tack, it was very hard to keep your footing. There's not enough to hang onto. I have bruises in many soft places. Alex however took the biggest beating. He was standing braced against the galley bench when one of those evil cross-waves struck, and threw him hard against the nav station,dislodging some fine joinery in the process. Ouch!
We took enormous amounts of water over the boat. Alex has just today discovered deepish water in the stern lazarette (storage area). Water had entered through the lazarette cowl ventilator which he had left open and angled, as it transpired, to our weather side. But inside we stayed dry. Only a few drops through the centre hatch above the saloon when a monster wave dumped on top of us - and Alex blames himself for not changing a seal he knew wasn't quite right. Otherwise, nothing. No buckets, no damp bedding, no soggy books. Got to love those Swedish boat builders. "It's like a nursery down here," Alex told me, as he peeled off his layers in preparation for sleep. Toasty warm it was, and best of all, quiet. "Has the wind stopped?" he asked. I checked the dial, just to be accurate. 30 knots. Not really stopped, per se.
By Monday afternoon, as Bob McDavitt had predicted, we began to notice that the "lulls" were lasting longer, and we were picking up some great current which pushed us south. Here we are very early on Tuesday morning (below) and, yes, there it is, ahead and to starboard, the coast of NSW.
Fast forward. As I mentioned in the previous post, the entrance to Coffs Harbour was running a big swell for our arrival. Volunteer Marine Rescue advised us that waves were breaking across the entire entrance and that we should look for a pattern in the sets before we attempted to enter. Alex was a surfer before he became a sailor. He surfed up and down the east coast for about 15 years. He knows about patterns and sets. As he lined up Kukka between the breakwater and Muttonbird Island, I admit I was anxious. The surge around Muttonbird was fierce. The waves were crashing ugly against the breakwater too. The entrance suddenly loomed, very narrow and very immediate. I looked behind, calling the breaking waves like a sports commentator. He chose his moment, and we were through. Then there was a big wave breaking behind us and we were off, riding its white water - Alex saw 14 knots on the clock.
Agnes and Bertil from Panacea were on the marina courtesy wharf (pictured above), waving madly, as we came into the inner harbour. It was so good to have friends who'd been tracking our voyage there to take our lines. Agnes brought us bread and ham, knowing that we'd have our fresh food impounded under quarantine regulations. Last night, they joined us for dinner on board Kukka, and we opened the bottle of Veuve Cliquot we'd kept chilled since Noumea. We celebrated friendship, and Swedish boats (their Najad 39 is pictured below in an anchorage we shared on Pentecost, Vanuatu), and life on the water, for better and for worse.
We're out of the worst of the weather, but Coffs isn't a big harbour, and even today there's spray billowing over the breakwater. We're waiting for weather - again. Monday and Tuesday look good at this stage for continuing south to our second home, Broken Bay (or Pittwater, as we call it, though technically we don't go into Pittwater proper but into the Hawkesbury River). Our plan is to stop there for a few days, to let ourselves down gently before we go through the heads of Sydney harbour and in doing so, return to our other life, our city life. There are big changes afoot for Kukka once we get home, but more of that another time.
1 comment:
GREAT story! That picture of Alex staring at the wave is priceless. Sounds like you guys acquitted yourselves well...
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