Day 4: Still upwind sailing

Monday 19 November: Day 4 to Bermuda, still upwind sailing in variable conditions.
Midnight and we are still hard on the wind, occasionally on the rhum line to northern Bermuda, but mostly heading slightly south of it. Cloudy Bay is thundering along at 6-7 knots, ploughing into the waves sending rivers of water down the side decks and making the ride far from comfortable. But there is no other way, unfortunately. Betelgeuse, our “racing partner” is putting up a good fight, but looking at the AIS data we are steadily out pointing them and slightly faster too. Soon we can see their green nav light 6 miles away off of our port aft beam.

At 4am a huge tanker crosses us, it’s destination: Egypt, Suez canal. It passes 2 miles in front of us and soon we feel the effect of its wash, which slows CB down to 3-4 kts as we bash through it.
Sitting for a pee on the bow toilet we are entertained by what sounds like a slow rhythm Caribbean steel band! The various tins of bottom paint, stacked in the shower tray, are playing a tune in time to the bow surging up and hitting each wave! Interesting. Hope none of the lids pop-off!

At first light we pass through rain squalls – yes we are definitely in the mid Atlantic now! Feels like our Atlantic crossing again. Each time we come to a squall the wind at first veers and strengthens, allowing us to free off and back up on the rhum line, and CB takes off at 9+knots ploughing through the waves sending spray right over the spray hood – whoopie , what a ride. But from that thrill the wind violently backs 100deg in a few seconds pinning the Genoa to the rigging. Once the autohelm recovers, we are again hard on the wind but now heading south, a turn of 100deg and not the direction we want to go! But 15-20 mins later the wind veers back to normal. We went through 3 squalls like this, and each time the wind is a little less on our exit. During this fun and games, Oana is comatose in the saloon berth. Hopefully she will be able to sleep off the sickness.

Glen listens to Chris Parker’s weather review on the SSB at 07:30. The reception is brilliant. We guess the “fix” we did on the back stay antenna did the trick. Sounds like we just managed to squeeze through the weather window, because from tomorrow it’s again storm force winds along the east coast of USA.

Betelgeuse calls on the VHF asking if we can see their AIS or not. They pronounce the name “Beetle-Juice”! Hmmm, boat name can be confusing sometimes!
Mid morning Oana surfaces very slowly. Her back is now aching from too much lying down, because each time she is vertical in anyway she gets nauseous again. We (Cloudy and Glen) help her eat some cereal. Glen puts it in a bowl with milk and Cloudy jerks the cockpit around to make it go down! Semi successful!

This last windshift to the south seems to be staying. So while Oana is up we tack onto starboard and make slightly better VMG to Bermuda. Ironically, in this huge Ocean, we cross tacks with Betalguese and almost have to call starboard on her! It turns out they are motoring with just the mainsail up. No wonder she was tough to put astern of us on the AIS … she was cheating! Or maybe she just didn’t know she was in a race 🙂

The wind has now dropped and because of a Gulf Stream eddy current we are in, our tacking angle is a disaster. So we follow suit, furl in the Genoa, turn the engine on and turn closer towards the line to Bermuda. As the saying goes: “if you can’t beat them, then join them”! And we spend the rest of the afternoon side by side motoring waiting for the wind to veer south so we can sail again.

Oana’s green coloration has gone. Nice to see her normal color and smile back. So we have a light lunch in the cockpit and even manage to keep food on the table. The sun makes the cockpit very warm in the tent. The saloon is 24degC for the first time in months without the heater on. Brilliant!

After Glen’s early evening nap he tries out sailmail on the SSB using the modem. It’s been a while since we tested this. He connects easily to the radio station in South Carolina and also to Nova Scotia in Canada. Manages to send an email and also download weather GRIB files. Good job, because this is our backup to the Iridium.
By the time he has finished, the wind looks good again to sail. Not the perfect CoG to start with ( we are about 30deg north of the rhum line ) but 2 hours later the wind has veered as per forecast and we are cracking along at 7-8 knots slightly cracked off the wind and on the rhum line. Great!

Another 2 hours on, close to midnight, the wind is up to 18kts, 25kts over deck, and we still have full main and Genoa. We are literally flying … it feels like. Don’t think we’ve ever heard such a tremendous noise of water rushing passed Cloudy, spray everywhere and waves being pierced and thrown wildly each side. What a thrill, and in full moonlight too. But at a constant 9kts directly into the waves and rail in, we are clearly pushing too hard. As tempting as it is to maintain the joy ride Glen wakes Oana to help furl the main.
Even with 1/3 the main rolled away, the helm is still too hard over and we are still doing 8+kts. So the Genoa gets reefed too. Speed drops to 7kts and feels much more comfortable, especially for the poor old helm, which seems to be nicely balanced again. Downside is that the occasional waves, which are building all the time now, stop our momentum and it takes a few moments to build speed back up. Previously nothing was slowing us!
So ends another day of upwind sailing in the Atlantic.