Blog from Family Affair

by Paul Michael, July 11th, 2012

Today has been some of the best sailing of our lives.  Like people go to Alaska for good fishing, they should come here to sail.  The wrinkles on my face at the end of this voyage won't be from the sun but from smiling. On the North Pacific pilot chart for July, this area off Cape Mendocino is the windiest spot on average in the ocean.  Twice I've sailed through here in the summer before but was heading north.  It's much more pleasant to be going "downhill" instead.

We're in an area of a developing gale and have had about 25 knots of wind gusting to 35 knots out of the northwest.  Sharina set a new speed record for us at the helm of 15.4 knots surfing down a big wave.  Then it was bested by Tom on the next watch with 16.7 knots.  In the early afternoon, Sharina regained her title at 17.6 knots!  It's hard to describe how cool this is without being here.  It sounds like a constant waterfall all around the boat.  The speed over the rudder makes the helm feel like a sports car.  The 8 to 10+ foot wind waves toss the boat and it takes constant attention at the helm to keep the boat on a strong wind angle and to prevent it from falling off through the wind on a crash jibe or rounding up into the wind, both of which could take us out of the race.  The helmsperson has partners on the main sheet and boomvang, ready to dump energy from the main should a round-up start.  It's a lot of work and a 4 or 6 hour shift can leave you very sore and drain!
ed.  I have the beginnings of blisters on my hands from helming even with gloves.  We love every minute of it.

Life below deck is a constant struggle for balance.  The floor can be a wall and vice versa on a repeating basis.  Before we left, we installed some floor to ceiling poles in the main cabin for handholds and they really help.  It's loud and bumpy.  It's difficult to drink from a Nalgene bottle.  Of the boats in the race, Family Affair has a very comfortable interior.  It must be a lot more unpleasant on the ultra-lightweight displacement boats.  There is not much that's forgiving on a sailboat and we all have minor forms of scrapes and bruises.   We were all pretty green for the first couple of days, but now we're adjusted which is good news.  I was concerned about being stuck in the tiny nav station (formerly one of our heads) plotting and having to work on the radio and computer when sick.

We've had cloudy weather the entire time since we've rounded Cape Flattery.  At night there are no stars for reference and you steer by magnetic compass and the wind instrument.  You try to put out of your mind the chaos ensuing in the blackness that surrounds your tiny world.  

How people had the courage to do this before GPS I'll never now.  Someone relying on sextant would have only a rough idea of their location after sailing hard for 4 days.  When our crew member Dan Ohms did the Vic-Maui races back in the 80's, he had a stretch of days near Hawaii that were cloudy and prevented them from gaining a celestial fix.   They knew they were close, but didn't know exactly. When the clouds lifted slightly, there was a pile of clouds that was bigger than the others. They steered for it and found the islands.

We've been routinely easing and taking in some of the higher loaded halyards, sheets, and guys every few hours.  This lets the heat and friction points vary.  At the 6am watch change, we decided to lower our main spinnaker to inspect for chafe.  The winds had piped up to 20+ knots with gusts to 25.  What we found was impressive and not very pretty.  A 6 foot long span of the spinnaker halyard had its outer casing stripped nearly away and the core was beginning to fray as well.  The bowline we tied on the guy yesterday after the splice failed had carried so much energy that it melted into a near-solid knot.  There is a lot of horse power involved when dragging 24,000 pounds through the water at the speeds we've seen.  Also today, my 12-volt microcomputer let out a puff of acrid smoke but is still working for the moment.  I have a laptop for a spare if needed.  Man and machine weren't designed to exist here long.

After being bare headed with a double-reefed main for 20 minutes, we were flying our small spinnaker.  At about 8:30am the seas were building into a confused state and we had a significant round up. These occur during a combination of wind gusts and large waves.  The gust puts pressure on the mainsail which is aft of the keel and causes the boat to pivot on the keel and turn up into the wind.  A large and immediate rudder correction is needed to quickly command the boat downwind, you hope it doesn't break.  If during the large rudder command downwind a large wave sweeps under the boat from astern, the boat will slide off the passing wave and round up further into the wind.  The spinnaker really begins to complain and make a lot of racket.  Once rounded up, you can become stuck there about 60 degrees off the wind. It takes skill, timing, and a cool head at the helm to ease the rudder back to near neutral, build up speed, time a large oncoming swell, and then turn aggressivel!
y onto it as if on a surfboard.   There are few times that you will ever see a sailing yacht turn as fast as when rounding down the crest of a large swell.    

Tom handled the first round-up and I was at the helm for the second one.  We had a spinnaker net up to prevent a full wrap of the spinnaker behind the forestay.  It saved our bacon once yesterday and twice today.  We quickly got the smaller spinnaker down and one of our working jibs up for a headsail.  After shaking out back to a single reef in the main, we were making tracks again, but not nearly as fast as before.  The two spinnakers are our main engines but we can't afford to lose them in this gale.

With jib we ran hard with a full main for many miles at 120 degrees off the wind and then put a single reef in when the winds picked up to 25 gusting to 35 knots.  The seas grew huge and we had routine surfs past 14 knots.  We had tons of whitewater over the decks and several waves that came over the rear quarter and got us all soggied.  It's pretty wet and humid below decks.  We're looking forward to the sunny trade winds a few days ahead of us.

-Paul Michael
s/v Family Affair

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