Wind is whining in the rigging. Our small boat is thumping and splashing through the dark sea under a dark, moonless and starless sky. Flashes of white phosphorescence light up the night each time the bow dives into a wave, leaving a trail of sparkles in our wake. Sometimes there’s a larger patch of glowing sea which lasts longer – maybe some creature of the deep disturbed by our passing? It’s 0700, the end of my night watch, but it’s not yet day time. There’s a knife slit in the cloud cover just above the eastern horizon, dead astern. The first glimmer of morning is lighting up the sky behind it, an orange gash in the darkness as the sun tries to slash its way through. The wind is gusty. Mainly blowing near gale force, hauling the boat along as though we were harnessed to a full herd of wild white horses. But sometimes, every few hours for perhaps half an hour, it dies to just the regular trade wind – about 15 knots – leaving us rolling around in the leftover waves. Without the wind to keep them under control, the waves bounce and jump all over the place for a short while, restlessly spending all their stored up energy. It doesn’t take long for the sea to mellow though. Yesterday the wind stayed strong for most of the day and the seas built up impressively. Rolling mountains of dark blue ocean stretching from horizon to horizon, the tops whipped into white foam by the wind. A huge open space filled with an enormous amount of raw natural energy. The kind of sight you only get way offshore, and being right in the middle on a small boat, charging along under sail, makes it pretty special.
It’s been like this for a few days, and I’ve figured out a perfect combination of sails to deal with the changing conditions. We still have the 3rd reef in the main, which we don’t need to touch at all. The storm jib is hoisted and sheeted in tight. When the wind’s up in the thirties, Rafiki will power along at four or five knots, with the centre of effort low and centred in the boat so she doesn’t pitch and dive into the random waves that sometimes rise cheekily in front. The gusts of 40 knots or so push our speed up to six or seven; still not overpowered, but a bit creaky and noisy down below. The storm jib is working out way better than a partially rolled genoa, which, having the power coming from way up high and forward, makes for a slamming, uncomfortable ride. When the wind drops off and the waves mellow out, we unleash as much extra power as we need just by unfurling the genoa outside the storm jib.
Only minutes later, the orange gash in the sky has lost its colour, while the monochromatic seascape is starting to show hints of gunmetal blue. Maybe. I’m not sure. It might still just be grey. The yellow cans of diesel strapped to the rails on each side of the boat are catching the sun and shining happily. All still full – there’s been plenty of wind so far! There’s a thin line of sunlight shining through the hatch and dancing around on the forward bulkhead where Rose’s dad’s screen print is hanging. Like a barcode scanner trying to find a message in the regular patterns of the print.
Dawn always seems to be so much faster than dusk. The colour show only lasts a few minutes at most. I’ve not managed to figure out why – surely the physics of sun rising and setting are the same, whichever horizon it’s on? Especially at sea where there’s no land to make things complicated. Another one for the list of things to look up when I get back to civilisation.
We’re coming up to 5 days at sea now. The half way mark between Tonga and New Caledonia. The first part of this passage has been a mixed bag of wind, waves and navigating around dangers. The track on the chart wiggles all over the place for the first couple of days, and then turns into a nice straight line when the wind swung to the south. We sailed over 180 degrees west the other day! A full hemisphere away from home, and now the longitude digits on the GPS are counting down while the latitude counts up. We actually crossed the date line somewhere between Niue and Tonga, but we were having a bit of a pickle with weather and instrument failure so we didn’t really celebrate it. Also we didn’t really know where it was – none of my charts have time zones marked, and it wiggles around various countries depending on which day they choose to be in.
We’re settling into life at sea again. Keeping the boat’s speed up without pushing her too hard. Reading. Snoozing. Watching the waves. Getting a bit bored of crackers for lunch every day though. But now, time for breakfast – scrambled eggs and spinach, mmm.
Road and Ocean 