Tuesday 25th November 2014
Day 10
496nm to go.
Well they say you should be careful what you wish for, we wished for more wind and man did we get it.
The night before we had no wind at all, it was dead calm, the ocean was like a mill pond, that soon changed.
I woke to the wind picking up and The Captain buzzing around changing this and that with the sails.
Then it hit with full force, we watched the wind go from about 12knts to pushing 30 knts, and waves like you would not believe, these mothers had to be 5mts plus, man they were huge and hitting us thick and fast.
It was horrible everything was flying all over the place the cabins looked like disaster Zones, water pouring up the drains toilets overflowing just total chaos.
And these waves were crashing all over us we had water pouring into the cockpit at an alarming rate.
It seemed like we had no control at all, we were getting pushed all over the place.
All we could do was hold on tight and hope for the best, and talk about seasick oh man I was bad.
At around 7pm after such an exhausting day, we decided to try and heave too, this is suppose to stop you dead in the water, and basically it causes a slick down the side of your boat and stops the waves from hitting you.
We have done it once before, although we did not stop dead we got our speed down to 1 knt.
Not this time, it was just way too rough, we could not get her to slow down at all.
The next option and really the only option left was to run before the wind, what had been happening all day was we had to beat into the wind which is why we were getting thrown all over the place, running before the wind means you have the wind behind you pushing you along but your also going the same way as the waves, instead of against them.
The only problem was we were heading in the wrong direction, heading straight for the Mozambique Channel, where you really don't want to be as it can get really nasty there.
Although we were still heading South, so that was something, and we really had no other choice.
So that's what we did. It did settle the boat down a bit, but it meant we were surfing these mothers of all mother waves.
I tell you it was a scary feeling perched on top of these guys and looking down into a very deep trough.
And the speeds we were going was crazy it was nothing to be doing 8-9knts. That's really fast for our old girl.
I was on watch when the wind starting picking up even more I looked up and we had reached gale force, yeap it hit 46knts I Could do nothing but hold on tight, and did this boat of ours falter, no way she just buried her butt into the water and took off like a rocket.
Oh man we were flying and I was crying. But it settled down to the mid thirties after that, The Captain woke up not long after and I gladly swapped places with him, it had to be one of the worst watches I have been on.
Well tomorrow is another day.