Wednesday 8th October 2014
Day 2
1776nm to go
Today has been a day I never want to go through again, it was that bad I would gladly give up sailing for good.
I have been reading a book on bad weather sailing and what to do and what not to do, so you think I would have known what to do, huh that all goes out the window, (if we had windows it would).
Also I had just watched the movie The Perfect Storm, the night before, yeah I know dumb idea, but we were having such fine calm weather and besides it is so so Hollywood that it really did not scare me at all.
Until today, today I did not think it was so Hollywood
The wind had started to pick up through the early hours of the morning, we had been getting a fair amount of rain, I was getting sick of the leaks starting once agiain.
I had just woke up when all hell broke loose, we were watching a storm cloud on the radar, when all of a sudden we heard this wind roaring towards us, I tell you it sounded like a freight train, hurling towards us and man did it hit like one.
Before we knew it we were almost sideways in the water, I had a death grip on the steering wheel to stop getting thrown off the boat, The Captain was leaning on the ceiling punching numbers on the autopilot.
No matter what he did it was not working we were just getting pushed further over, I climbed up to the auto pilot, so I could turn it off when The Captain reached the wheel to take over as the Autopilot just could not cope.
Just as he grabbed the wheel we had a major wind shift and it threw us over on the other side, things got a bit confused here, am not sure what was happening, I actually think it did it twice and we ended up on the other side once again, I know we were stopped dead in the water and just sitting there being pushed closer and closer on our side.
It was not a total knock down, but after The Captain said it was at least a 70% knock down! I really don't care how close it was it was way scarier than anything we have gone through.
While all this was happening up here the rest of the boat was having it's own little party, everything was flying all over the place lockers coming open and dumping all their contents all over the place, things flying everywhere, water was coming up the drain pipes, toilets emptying and water pouring in the port holes, that were not supposed to leak anymore.
Not a cabin was spared once we got all the top sorted we tried to mop up some down below but it's going to take days and days to sort it all out.
And we are now left with really really ugly seas, the waves would make Hollywood proud, well almost, not really as big as the Perfect Storm but way too close for my liking.
I'm sitting here trying to type and hold on at the same time, it's raining, the wind is gusting 40knts the waves are massive and slamming into us constantly and I'm scared and hating every moment of it.
Well tomorrow is another day.