Sunday night a shocker....
Around 1700, we wisely decided to eat. It was to be the last food for a while! We could see a significant front approaching, with low black cloud and lightening flashing everywhere. We got out our lightening chains (which hang into the water from the shrouds) and reefed down to storm sails. It hit around 1900 and was rather horrendous with driving rain, 4M seas, lightening and thunder. The wind howled over the boat. We could not sail and so heaved to. We had to do this twice for a total of about five hours that night. We finally got going again in big, rough seas and wind to about 40kts. Unfortunately, during all this, one of our stanchions which holds up the lifelines and one end of one solar panel- snapped off, at deck level. We lashed it up as best we could and will need to get some welding done in Noumea. But, it is okay for now.
Next day, we were assaulted by frequent squalls and twice again needed to heave to as the boat was unmanageable. Flinders our wind vane was again its wonderful self- steering through very large and uncomfortable seas once we got going again.
We had been expecting a front from examination of our GRIB (synoptic chart) files. We had not expected it to be so strong as we were well North of the low causing it. Amazingly, the gale warning for our specific area came FIFTEEN HOURS later from the weather bureau. We expect they saw the satellite photos after the event and then "warned" about it. The warning was probably in time for the East Coast but way too late for the High Seas.
Regards,
The Crew
(a little thinner not because of seasickness (which thankfully we do NOT have) but it is too rough to do anything much but hang on. YUK!
