0615hrs 23 Oct 2005 UTC 38’39”S 015’52”E Ref 475
After the storm – there’s a calm peacefulness about 35 knots, flat early sunlight, metallic grey blue sky, smaller warehouses rolling in from behind and, eerily, at right angles from the side (I’ve just seen two breaking crests creaming in towards us – one from the west and one from the north and the point where they meet a steep pyramid of foamy power). Don’t know whether this is a lull or we’ve climbed over the worst of it. Anyway, we are looking at the barn door again a bit under 200 miles ahead. We have a sort of horizon on each side but the warehouses behind have their own moving sawtoothed breaking presence that is never low enough to form a horizon.
I remember sitting in the cockpit yesterday in the midst of the uproar and chaos – stomach knotted with that sort of mild foreboding – not fear – that is always corroding the vitals but revelling in the majesty and indifference of the seething blasting masses of water and wind. The storm jib was set on a one metre strop, so the solid water was going underneath most of the time but the almost solid spray was hitting the orange sail all the way up and cascading down off it and blowing horizontally away under the foot and around the leech. Marvellous – the sail was glistening even in the gery gloom and broke into triumphant sparkling glory when the sun came out for a few seconds in a gap in the scud. Football fields of white water undulating back from the breaking crests as the waves passed under us. And noise – you always remember the noise – a roaring shriek with spray buffeting the back of my hood and the hissing surge of tons of water smashing past and over the cockpit. Halyards banging and whirring, Kevvo’s vane horizontal, quivering and shaking.and the continuous thump of the hull throwing aside vast masses of water into sheets of spray – the upwind sheet moving sideways, upwards and instantly curving back across the boat as the wind reached it.
And I remembered the single hander who was lost recently down here in one of these and was sad and the knotted foreboding felt like dread – but the spectacle was so vividly alive and enveloping that in the end it doesn’t frighten. And there was the albatross – serene in 60+ knots, – head to wind, looking down at me and laughing a lot.
It’s a lot scarier at night though.
The logs ramblings can be cryptic, so we have added: