Day 14 – Saturday 18 Janaury.

By Grant Chapman.

We had been at sea for two weeks now and were relieved to be heading more directly for Rio, erring on the side of caution a bit by sailing on a slightly higher bearing as we wanted to avoid the centre of a local high pressure that looked like it was ridging up into our path on the coming Tuesday. However lots can change with the weather in 4 days so we would keep on downloading our GRIBs to see where the wind was and wasn’t.

The wind was a bit iffy at times but generally it blew at about 10knots throughout the day. At one stage it strengthened to 18knots and so we changed spinnakers for the heavier white one but swopped them back again when we realized that the puff was just an isolated flash in the pan. Somehow we managed to redeploy the big spinnaker without attaching the guy line so there were was a bit of frantic activity on the foredeck accompanied by the inevitable cursing as it was sorted out – all the time with Peter reminding everyone that the spinnaker was an inanimate object and wasn’t to blame.

What must have been a very big fish bent one of the rods almost double as it grabbed the lure and shot off in the opposite direction to the boat, snapping the line within seconds. Then a smallish fish – perhaps a few kilograms – took the lure on the other rod and we saw it bouncing along in the surf on a wave a fair distance from the boat before it managed to rid itself of the lure just as we got to the rod to try and reel it in. We were starting to run out of decent lures and not looking forward to having to eat toppers and mash for the rest of the race if we weren’t able to land another couple of fish.

We changed partners again, it being the start of the third week at sea. Peter was with Virgil, Grant with Lorraine, Chris with Cathleen and Marcus with Ashwyn. The position report we received indicated that we had slipped down two places to sixth in our class which was a bit disappointing as we didn’t think that we were fairing too badly. All of the yachts seemed to be in the near vicinity still though, having obviously taken a similar routing to ourselves.

We cooked the Snake Mackerel that we had caught the previous day in a Thai green curry which helped clear the sinuses and was very good, if not a bit cheeky for sensitive palates like Peter and Cathleen’s so we also prepared pilchards (without chilli this time). Even though we had carefully removed what we thought were most of the bones from the Mackerel we still found ourselves chewing on several as we ate it.

The wind strengthened as night fell and continued to be gusty throughout the night. We were flying along on a somewhat risky broad reach with the big purple spinnaker up and a big sea following us, every now and again corkscrewing the boat as she surfed down a wave when at just after 2:00am Zulu in the morning Peter was jettisoned out of bed onto the sole in the aft cabin (him being on the port side while we were sailing on a starboard tack) and Grant was also woken by a shower of water pouring through the aft hatch. We had broached. There was chaos in the cockpit as those on watch scrambled to release the spinnaker sheets and guys to try and save the spinnaker from being shredded as it hit the sea and filled with water.

Peter shouted various instructions to everyone and brought the situation under control; Marcus on the helm needed to bear off to bind the spinnaker behind the mainsail, Ashwyn had to release the spinnaker sheet which then pulled right out and the spinnaker started to flog with the sheet whipping back and forth wildly as it threatened to lash the spinnaker to shreds and Chris released the spinnaker guy to put the pole right forward so that the big bag could remain behind the mainsail while it was being dealt with. Chris and Ashwyn then went onto the foredeck and pulled the spinnaker into the forward hatch as Lorraine eased it down on the halyard. Miraculously the spinnaker survived the ordeal without any visible damage. We unfurled the genoa and goose-winged it out on the pole to make the boat more stable and wait for the gusts to abate while we regrouped and discussed what had gone wrong. Marcus, who was at the helm at the time, said that he felt the big gusts coming through and saw the wind speed increase to 25 knots at which time he had said “release the sheet”, having to repeat it 3 times after which the boat then broached. He admitted that he hadn’t been more authoritative about the instruction or asked someone to be at the winch ready to release the sheet at a second’s notice. Ashwyn, Chris and Lorraine said that they had all been out of position and nowhere near the winch and had also heard Marcus’ request but hadn’t done anything quickly enough – Chris was busy trying to put a rain jacket on which he then left to release the pole guy which was less of a priority than the spinnaker sheet which was required to collapse and de-power big bag. Chris commented that he thought we had taken a flying fish on board during the broach as something shot across the cockpit – we suspected that we might have lost a spare hanked line from one of the cockpit cubbyholes and would need to check what we had lost when it was light in the morning. Ashwyn had been at the companionway hatch and did eventually get to the spinnaker sheet but too late. Marcus and Ashwyn had just come on watch, taking over from Chris and Lorraine. Peter pointed out that even though Marcus should have made his requests clearer there should have been a plan in place to deal with the possibility of a broach, given the sea and wind conditions at the time and that it was also the responsibility of the crew to assess the situation and take preventative measures and not rely on the helmsman to issue commands. Only a couple of days ago we had been discussing this particular syndrome with regard to airline pilots and how many commercial passenger aircraft accidents have been attributed to an unhealthy deference to the captain by junior pilots for all instructions and decisions relating to a flight, resulting in the junior pilots subconsciously not taking any action when they were consciously aware of a problem, waiting rather for the flight captain to assess the situation by which time it was often too late.

The broach served as a good lesson to everyone on board and there were several discussions about what needed to be done to prevent situations like this from happening again. Clearly a squall had passed over us in the early hours of the morning as it had started raining lightly at the time that we broached and we had the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how it should have been dealt with just after sunrise when a similar squall with high winds passed over us during Peter and Virgil’s watch. The sun rose at 6:00am Zulu, a big red orb on the horizon lighting the whole of the eastern sky up with a red glow and curtains of rain backlit about 20 miles of our stern. We took a picture of these conditions which we have included with this blog. Such lighting conditions at sunrise could only mean one thing – we would be experiencing a squall within the hour. Sure enough, just before 7:00am Zulu the squall hit us with big dark cumulus clouds rolling overhead, bringing showers and strong gusts of winds exceeding 20knots. Virgil kept the boat on a run during the squall as this was the safest point of sail to avoid a broach, with Grant advising him which way to steer from the Windex wind direction indicator at the top of the mast as the wind shifted this way and that, compounded by a big swell in a following sea that was accompanying the squall. We could bear back up onto our desired course to steer after the squall had passed. All the time Peter had the spinnaker sheet in his hand and was de-powering it as each gust caught us. The three of us managed to keep the boat going on an even keel through the squall, keeping the boat speed up to a respectable 7 knots average during the shift. We had been advised at the navigator’s briefing at the start of the race that we were going to get these types of squalls approaching Rio so now at least we knew that we had an effective way to deal with them. What they did bring is good wind which we needed now to get into Rio in time for the race cut-off time.

Red skies in the morning sailor’s warning – a squall about