Wild Blue Yonder

23 aug 2017
the night began with a rapid drop of the wind. from 12 knts to 6 to 3 in a matter of 1/2 hour. at 2045 on tuesday we reluctantly started the motor. we had had some success with the iridium go in that we were able to get a couple phone calls out but the texting part was still completely inoperable…much to my chagrin. in any case i was able to download the offshore gribs for our location and that did help with the frustrated feeling. the night was basically un eventful… we saw the glow from a coastal city which was remarkable as we were 114 nautical miles from the coast. moe said he saw a ship go by on his watch. the radar still unable to display the ships targets. we have determined that it is not working properly and no amount of tweaking seems to help. we have pulled out the manual and have slowly begun to try and troubleshoot the peice of shit. we have set up 2 hour watches on the night shift and this seems to be fairly comfortable for all participants. the crew is well fed and reasonably rested so far. wed morning arrives and i have had a fairly good couple hours of sleep and i feel quite spirited today. lauries watch is done and mine has begun. i make a coffee and start to enjoy the lovely morning sunrise. as it gets lighter i notice a couple of ships on the horizon that are neither showing on a.i.s. or the troublesome radar. it appaears that they are tuna boats. moe comes up and looks around and says right off… “ we should put the fishing gear out” …so we do. within 2 minutes of dropping the gear in the water i say to moe…” do we have a fish on? “ he has a look and says … “fish on” it suddenly turns into mayhem in the cockpit…moe is pulling the fish in and im just staring around in amazement as a he pulls in a wildy thrashing albacore tuna. he figures it weighed 8 lbs. it was the first tuna i have ever seen out of the water and i was amazed at how highly specialized it was. they are completely built for speed. anyway moe asks for a knife and stabs it into the gills and the cockpit quickly becomes a slaughter zone. by the time we have a loop on its tail and hanging over the edge the cockpit is splattered with blood eveywhere. the next few minutes are pretty busy. moe the fisherman soon has the fish bled and is starting to dissect it. he shows me the specialized fins and the eyes and the tail and its really amazing how incredibly evolved these fish are. they have some very amazing little fins on their tail that are like ailerons and can be individually “tuned” for maximum agility yet incredible speed. moe says they can swim up to 60 miles an hour. that to me is amazing. anyway in about a half an hour we have fresh tuna fillets and moe is now turning his attention to making savichy. he is an amazing fellow…he does it all. i cant say enough about how i hit the jackpot when it comes to crew. laurie is the whip that keeps us navigating and attaining weather forecasts. she cooks and cleans and navigates and does regular watches. moe is pretty much the chef onboard. we have been eating gourmet meals since we left and its pretty amazing and tonight we dine on fresh tuna.
so on we motor…12 hours on flat seas and no wind….soon we start to get some wind from the south east and it is almost enough for us to sail but not quite. it is, however, enough to get a wave train going from the south east. within a fairly short period of time the wind starts to veer, south, then south west for a little , then west for a while, and finally sets in from the nw. the wind comes up to around 15kts and we start to sail. the sea is extremely confused from the different wave trains all colliding and it isnt long before we have just a terrible ride. bigs seas from all directions and strong wind from the nw. at one point we take a breaking wave right on the port side house windows. its sounds like a cannon and gave a very hard hit which got our collective attention immediately. i was amazed that the windows did not break but they held. we did decide thought that it was time to heave to and get defensive. we hove to and sat in just terrible seas for an hour or so and suddenly from the starboard side we took another giant wave breaking right on the side of the house and on the windows and it suddenly got pretty scary. i went outside and realized that the wind had increased substantially. the boat was still sailing even hove to and we had sailed out of the protection of our slick. i finally had to furl all sails and heave to under bare poles. this did the trick and shala finally settled in the shadow of her slick. we sat in this configuration for some time while i carefully watched the slick and various wave trains. every so often we would take a breaking wave that would smash on the stern and send a horrible thump reverberating through the hull. this was annoying and scary but not as dangerous as taking the waves on the beam. after a couple hours of watching waves and fretting i noticed on the chartplotter that we were drifting very close to a sea mount and that this would likely cause the already horrible waves to stand up even more. i hummed and hawed for a bit and finally , right at dusk , decided that it would be irresponsible to take the risk and started the engine and turned into the predominant wave train. we started smashing head long into them trying to get a few miles of westing to avoid the seamount. the folly of that decision was soon apparent when the darkness fully engulfed us. it was very difficult to keep the boat pointed into the predominant wave train and i, for some unexplained reason, chose to hand steer. there was a glow on the horizon from a fishing vessel that i believe was also hove to as it never changed position in relation to me but i could not see it on radar or on ais. this and the wind indicator were the guide posts for steering. after a couple hours of this madness ( my crew occasionally sticking their heads out to wonder what the hell i was doing ) i finally felt that i had achieved enough westing to heave to again and feel safe that we wouldnt drift over the sea mount. after heaving to we decided to all turn in and try and get some well needed rest. this turned out to be impossible for me as each wave that hammered the stern sent a shudder thru the boat and thru me also. the waves hammered all night and we all awoke to another day at sea.