Hello everyone. Below is another update from after our communications equipment failed. n23.01 w51.56 Good afternoon everyone, Today finds us reaching home averaging 10 knots of boatspeed in 10 -15 knots of breeze. Its somewhat of a bouncy ride as were racing across the swell instead of the preferred with the swell. Its a gorgeous day though. The sun is out and the temperatures are getting to be a lot like home. The water has changed color slightly and we expect it to change more the further south we go. Visitors! We had a couple of visitors yesterday. Gill arrived some time in the early afternoon while the whole crew was on deck soaking in the nice weather. Gear was strung all around the cockpit airing out after having seen some hard usage. Gill is some kind of bird. A land bird. He has no business being 600 miles out to sea and we can only assume he got blown offshore by Fay. At any rate he hoped and puttered around the decks, eventually landing on TKs ankle and a short hop later he was drinking directly out of TKs bottle of water. Gill eventually visited with every member of the crew and quickly made himself one of us. A little while later Tyrone showed up. Tyrone was less social and were thinking Gill didnt really like Tyrone being around as Gill spent a good part of the afternoon chasing him around the deck trying to peck out his eye. Were not quite sure when Tyrone disappeared but Gill stayed with us through the night - having found himself a spot down below to get out of the elements. Now normally we wouldnt let strays down below, but we werent aware of his being down here until this morning when he flew out and landed on Marcs shoulder as he was going up on deck for the morning watch. Sneaky sneaky Gill. Gill spent the morning on deck with the on watch crew before flying off to unknown adventures. Hes probably gone to look for Tyrone to apologize for the eye pecking business. So farewell to Gill and Tyrone, and TTFN - Ta Ta For Now to you. So everyone that was the last update written at sea. At this point we just accepted the Satphones antenna was not going to be fixed before reaching land. This was a hard realization for us for several reasons. First we were having fun with the updates and keeping friends and family and supporters informed of our progress. We also have understood how our families and friends relied on these updates to know we were safe and sound. Most importantly though we had to come to terms with the fact that we were now blind. We could no longer get our GRIB files (incidentally for those who dont know: GRIB files are obviously weather files, but the GRIB format compresses a massive amount of information so we who are using expensive satellite services can load them that much faster and save that much more money. Its a computer generated file that originates from a database containing the worlds weather information. We select a set of parameters like we want all the weather within a 1000 mile diameter of our position, or we create a box using lat/long numbers and we get all the weather inside that box: We use the box method most often). So we were flying blind now. We had an out of date weather file that barely indicated a new weather system hanging out over the Virgin Islands and we had to guess where that system was going to be. We assumed that we could skirt the edges of it by going south and staying east of it. Unfortunately Gonzalo grew, and bent our breeze around to such an extent that we got sucked right into the edges of it. All day and into the evening we sailed until the squalls started again. Unlike with Fay though these squalls had lightning in them. All around us in the distance as the sun when down the light show lit up. We managed to just sneak in behind most of the squalls, but it was just a matter of time before we got swallowed up by one. And so said so done. We eventually got caught. The breeze and sea picked up, and we were hard reaching in the dark. After having been hammered by Fay we chose to stay conservative and took down the jib. And still we were reaching hard through the dark of the night. The squall spit us out the back of it eventually and the breeze moderated to about 20 knots. We were just starting to feel better about ourselves for making the choice to take down the sail and slow up a bit when POP. The lashing on the backstay let go. We immediately turned dead down wind to take the pressure off the rig and ran all our spare halyards to the back of the boat to support the rig. Next we dragged the main down and wallowed while making a plan. As the sun finally started to come up we decided the rig was safe to carry the storm trysail which we hoisted. This is the point on the tracker you would have seen us start to go in random directions. We decided we needed to stop the boat now. We chose Saint Maarten for our stopping point knowing they have fantastic services for anything wed need. With a destination in mind we pointed our bows to the islands and puttered forward. But it was torture. The seastate had the boat rolling back and forth, side to side and up and down. With out power in the sails we were at the mercy of the sea. Not to mention we at this point had limited supplies. While there was still a nasty roll going on we discussed what needed doing, made a plan and executed. Marc put the Party Pants (the climbing harness) on and the boys got to work on the grinding handles to get him up the rig and replace the lashing. Because of the sea state and exaggerated roll at the top of the mast it took a while to inspect and replace the lashing, but the job got done. Back on deck we took a little chill and prepared the boat to go sailing again. Up went the main and we slowly added sail as we gained confidence in the new lashing. At the same time throughout the day the seas continued to ease, the sun emerged from the clouds and by evening we were sailing upwind at 10 knots in flat seas in 10 knots of breeze. The sun set and as soon as it was dark enough we could see the glow from the lights in Anguilla 50 miles distant. We passed by Anquilla about midnight and reached Simpson Bay in Saint Maarten about 4am. The rest, ladies and gentlemen, is history. We got a first hand view of the carnage there. Boats sunk at the docks and all the flotsam that goes with a storm. From there, you know the rest, and so here ends our trip back into history. Tomorrows update will find us on our way home. TTFN - Ta Ta For Now Team BOSS
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:29:02 +0000
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