[Dar Es Salaam - Phuket] Day 27 -- The Storm

The morning of the twentyseventh day didn't bring any different weather. The sky was overcast and only occasionally the sun would break through, but not for long. I hadn't slept much and hadn't slept well either. Strange dreams had kept me from resting properly and I tried to make up for that during the day.

Late afternoon we saw another squall approaching from behind, closing in on us. It always seemed like a lottery if a squall we saw would actually hit us. At times we were surrounded by them, but none would get close. This time it was only that one to see, but it surely did hit us, and hard. In bursts up to 30 or 35 knots of wind it built up a raging sea, white foam sizzling on top of the waves. The boat was shaken from one side to the other, everything loose shifting its place constantly. My brother and I used the hard rain for a freshwater shower, not thinking the squall would last too long and taking advantage of what was given.

The squalls that had hit us before had lasted 15 or 20 minutes, usually. After half an hour, this one had not lost any of its rage. The rain was still pounding down on us, the wind wouldn't give in and the waves built up still higher. The wind and the waves were fighting against each other in what direction to turn our boat, the captain at the wheel still teaching them otherwise. The autopilot was useless in circumstances like that. It was completely unable to manage and the captain announced we would go 90 minutes shifts during the night. The weather was on the edge of a storm, winds at Beaufort force 7 or 8. In a good boat you'd have called it heavy weather, but judgement always depends on the circumstances, I assume. If you try to cross on ocean in a nutshell, anything might feel like a storm. If you do the same in a big ocean liner, you wouldn't even think about worrying at a Beaufort force 7 or 8. So to us, this was a storm and we decided we would not want any more of it.


We managed to take the mizzen sail down just before the winds increased even more. Taking a sail down on this boat could best be described as uncertainty. There were so many places the sails and booms could get stuck that we never knew what difficulties we would run into when getting a sail down. The rings on the mast, the lazy jacks, a dozen lines and the sail itself had all proven points of weakness before. Fortunately, this time the sail slid down easily even though my heavy and determined pulling might have helped a lot.

At nightfall, it was my brothers turn. I went to eat and rest before my time would come. One and a half hours later I stuck my head out from under deck to find that the rage had stopped and it was merely heavy weather with occasional bursts of strong wind to go against. It was still raining making it even harder to see the unlit compass. Without that, steering the boat seemed impossible. With it, steering seemed child's play now, until a big wave or burst of wind started to tear on the boat again. But staring at the unlit compass, steering and keeping an eye on the wind was tiring me quite fast.

I did a longer watch than I was expected to. After a while I had been able to turn the auto-pilot back on for a good while and my brother, unable to sleep, had come and we had chatted my watch away. It was well past 3 in the morning when the captain woke and took his turn. I went to sleep, but with the boat rolling so much I would wake again with the rising sun.

captains log:
overcast morning, looks like more shit weather
1200 N1°42 E81°48
1700 get hit by shit squall, 30kn of wind, sea building up
1730 manage to drop mizzen
keep on going bare-poled
rain galore
1 lybelle on board