Windhorse Sailing

Day: 3
Position: 40 15 south, 61 12 West
Air Temp: 49 degrees F
Daylight Hours: 8.75
Heading: WSW
Weather: Heavy overcast, SSW winds 20-25 knots
Seas: Heavy steep 8′chop from the SW, 4′ NW swell

What a difference a day makes. Sometime in the middle of the night we motored in calm seas and two knots of wind out of the south into the “roaring forties,” so named for the band of latitude between 40 and 50 south (or north) for strong westerly winds. After a day and a half of moderate northerlies the low pressure center moved over us, giving us a nice respite from the southerlies that we are now dealing with on the back side of the low. We had hoped to make a small anchorage called San Blas before the southerly hit so we could hole up until she blew through. But it wasn’t to be. The southerly hit this morning, building quickly to 20-25 knots and a steep sea to suit. Shangri-la has been humming along on a reasonably comfortable close haul at 6-7 knots and we are still making decent ground, but we’ll likely have to heave to if the winds build further and possibly deploy the parachute anchor so we won’t have to give up valuable ground we have made south.

We have had two setbacks, though neither more than an inconvenience. The first presented itself last night as our winds died and we brought out the tiller pilot, which steers the boat when we don’t have enough wind for the wind vane. Nada. Something has happened in the electrical circuit and either the pilot itself has shit the bed or something has gone astray in the wiring. But we don’t plan on having many calms on this trip so this is hardly something to worry over. The other inconvenience happened today. I rudely awoke Luke mid-morning from a deep sleep to help me hank on the staysail, as I am still unfamiliar with some of Shangri-la’s systems and thought it would be prudent to get a hand. Luke boldly took to the foredeck and while I tried in earnest to keep our head down and keep the seas from breaking over the deck, although Luke definitely took some good shots. After a couple problems with the halyard he was almost home getting the sail hoisted when one of the hanks got twisted on the stay and shredded a good foot of the luff and ripped the hank right out of the sail - so much for the staysail for a while. We’ll leave it to repair at an anchorage at some stage. We are now flying a very deeply reefed headsail, storm jib and a triple reefed main and other than a queasy stomach when I go below, we’re sailing well.

There are many reasons I’m on this trip with Luke- the challenge, the adventure, the unknown, and doing it in the middle of winter just seemed outright insane so therefore worth a shot; but this morning just after sunrise I got a glimpse of why humans have always ventured into inhospitable places for a tiny share of a view few have seen. Hundreds of Molly Hawks, a smaller cousin of the great Albatross swept in from over the gray horizon and treated to me to an air show of such spectacle it has left me with goose bumps all day. Such exquisite flyers, never beating their wings, simply rising and falling with the waves using unseen eddies and currents to their advantage for speed and height. Like watching a big wave surfer in a huge tube, faintly touching the wave with his inside hand, not for the picture, not to be steadied, but just because it feels awesome, so does the albatross almost indiscernibly brush the water as he screams by, a knowing touch with the water that is where he spends more than 85% of his life. They are the dolphins of the sky, in perfect harmony with their environment. We pale in comparison in our rolling, rocking, pounding home but she got us here and there’s no telling what’s over the next horizon.

Gavin McClurg