sailing across the gulf stream

Sailing Across the Gulf Stream – Yahoo!

Everytime we make an over night or two or threee nighter I get excited to sail at night.  The noises sound more pronounced when you don’t have your eyes to deceive your ears.  The rigging has more squeaks, the wind-sound has more variations, there is a funny feeling as you go off into the day and even more strange as the sun goes down. This of course is all on a good wind and sailing night.  But on the days where the night is longggg, other thoughts pass through my mind, such as:

            Where is all the glamour of sailing off into the sunset cuz I am cold! I’m super tired! The wind is going right through my clothing.

At times The waves have an eeriness to them, you don’t see them but you hear them.  It can be like ghosts making noise on the starboard and when you turn to look you hear a splash on the port… each time I miss seeing what I am hearing. 

Sometimes the waves roar near your boat. It is dark out if there are no clouds - - - total blackness.  Totally aloneness… Then a wave splashes in the cockpit and I’m soaked – unless I was smart enough to wear my fowl weather gear. Normally it takes a good splash to get me to dry off and be smarter.

Then there is the constant Up-and-Down… upppp the wave…. Down the wave… upp the wave and downnnn the wave – over and over and over again. It’s like a ride at the fair but one you can’t get off even if you wanted to. This however does not seem to bother me the uppppp and downnn. During the day it is like sitting in a ride seat at valleyfair, you can see over your side and look down the wave and watch the next one bring you what seems like straight up in the air. At that point I let out a yahoo!!! Yippy!!!

The winds are strong and I want to stop steering for a while. I hang on the wheel – literally Hang.  I have become quite good at wedging my knee in between the wheel spokes. I am good with lighter winds to steer with my feet. (I sit at the helm and my feet reach the bottom of the wheel.) sometimes I lean on the wheel and lock it inplace with my shoulder.  Good thing I like exercise.  The one thing in this is that you need to constantly be moving the wheel a quarter turn to the left, then straight up , then back to the left, then half way around to the right.  Usually this happens every 1-3 seconds. It’s not like driving a car. The wheel is in constant motion. So, I get a 2 second break to rest my muscles each wave that goes by. If you over correct, you know it right away. The sail will make a loud – very loud luffing sound and correction is due immediately or you might be in fear of the dreaded Jib.

Humm what else goes through my mind at the night time. Oh, I’m hungry… my hands have been in motion for 4 straight hours and I am starving.  I try to gather all my things in the cockpit on my shift… crackers, a granola bar, bottle of water, candy or anything easy to grab-open-n-eat.

This last passage I was way into an ipod full of music and radio labs to listen too.  Normally, I sing, think, steer, dream, chat in my head etc… But it is so fun to sing along with the songs.  I finally got “praise” songs.  I love praise songs.  I try not to sing too loud cuz Ben is sleeping just below in the stern berth.

If the cape horn is working then I can do more fun projects… I can knit… I can read… last night I was reading – it goes like this: read two pages, turn off my head lamp, wait for my eyes to adjust to night time, look 360 around, look on the chart plotter, I might spin up the radar… it is slow reading but I have no where I need to be. On my luxurious shift last night the cape horn broke.  Darn-it-all back to hand steering all night and then back to only ipod and my dreams. In the day I went under the seat and put new lines on. (Ben put the first line on and then felt a little queasy, so it was good for us to share in this task so we both can do it when we need to.)

We started out at Turtle Cay then stopped at Grand Cay to wait for the winds to turn to the East.  Everyone says don’t go up or down on the gulf stream on a North wind. And Sid from CT would say with his one-liner, “Never leave on a Northeaster” That went through my mind. Ben was the one with finding a good place to tuck in.

This place at Grand Cay was all sea grass!  Eeeek! I love the anchor watch. But truly this time it must have been all your-guy’s prayers cuz the winds piped up and we did not drag anchor all night! A miracle! When we woke up the winds kept blowing and we started to drag! But it was time to leave so no harm done. How did we hold anchor during the night? One answer, “Divine help”!

So the first night was the big waves!  One was Really big! The cape horn was working. I love the break  a cap horn gives you! I can eat my baggie full of goodies. Ben and I might have to admit that the cape horn steers better than us. She veers 5-20 degrees or so but stays on course and knows how to glide through the waves and keeps better speed.

The second day the winds were East and Sid from CT would say, “East winds are puffy.”  Yup they can go from 12k to 20 k in two seconds. The winds all day were getting lighter and more puffy. We were in the gulf stream most of the night, with light winds behind us and only our jib we were still sailing at a gps of 7k and a water speed of 3.5k that means the gulf was pushing us at 3.5 knots! Yahoo! That is double what we would normally be making and 7 knots is a good clip! But then around  7am or so we popped out the other end of the gulf stream and down to 3 knots we went. We went at 330 degrees all the time. But now in hind sight I would have stayed in the stream and headed straight north and then taken a 90 degree angle into land.

 Here we were light wind 10k behind us. We tried the main but it only shaded the jib which is a bigger sail. We have a spinnaker but that we don’t know how to use yet. We were trying to get into shore before a bigger blow. So the last 10 hours we motored so as to make land fall before the waves got bigger and the wind picked up.

Tired from not much sleep over the last 4 days Ben and I made it to a marina next to the boat yard and rested. No nap though cuz I wanted to stay awake so as to sleep soundly all night long… which I did!

Lila on our trip was not very happy with us.  She sometimes decides she does not need to eat or drink. When we are swaying back and forth and the waves hit our beam sideways she does not know where to go. She looks up at us like, “why are you doing this to me?” once we hit shore and she can see land – she has already forgiven us.  She pokes her head out in the air when we are close to shore to see if there is land – a – ho!  You can see her get excited to explore a new place! She is just like us that way.  And with that I will end this little tale.

Pam