40+ KNOTS IN A BLACKOUT NIGHT

Man, what a night! It’s 1149 now as I write this and we’re sailing downwind, wing-on-wing, full main and full yankee in absolutely perfect trade wind conditions (we crossed into the Tropics last night too by the way, below 23º 30’ N). But holy moly, I haven’t had a stormy night like we had last night in a long time. The closest comparison was that crazy storm-out-of-nowhere on ISBJORN on the Atlantic crossing in 2019 - we had gusts to 50 knots that day and ridiculous rain, but it was in the daytime so didn’t feel as creepy, and didn’t last as long…

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The wind built faster than forecast. We ate dinner with full-sail, close-reaching on a building SSW’ly breeze, then decided to throw a reef in before dark. By the time one reef was in, it was basically time for a second, and before 1930 we had two reefs and a partially furled headsail. Ryan was scheduled to be on the 1930-2230 watch, and we expected the front to pass over us not until like between 0200-0400, so Ryan was going to do an extra hour or so so that I could be up (I follow him on watch) when we got the expected big windshift. 

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Well…everything happened sooner and stronger. Before Mary came off watch, she set the staysail, furled away the yankee and put the third reef in the main, so we were properly snugged down. I went to bed, but was pretty anxious so didn’t sleep much at all. Ryan had the first big squall, with just sideways, crazy downpour rain, like more rain than I’ve ever seen, and the sky was so thick with water and so dark you couldn’t see anything at all. One of the crew joked you needed a windshield wiper just to see the compass. As it turned out, that squall was our windshift, like 4 hours before we expected it. They followed the wind around to keep the boat on a broad reach, and we were sailing south after a few minutes. I didn’t quite believe it cause it was so early, so we stayed on that course for another two hours, thinking it was just temporary, but in the end that was it.

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So then when I came up on watch, we had a bit of a lull and decided to gybe. The waves for horrendous on that course cause the wind had been SSW, so we were bucking square against the leftover sea state. We did a clean gybe and the new tack was much better…I half expected that maybe we were out of the woods, that it would start to clear behind the front on the NNW’ly wind, but I was wrong!

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Around 0100, like an hour into my watch, we had another HUGE squall. By then, we had combined the watches from 3 into two, so we had more people on deck, and one person stayed at the nav station to monitor RADAR and AIS. We had a few ship crossings and Ryan actually spoke on the radio to one of them, as we had a few CPAs at like a mile or so, and there was no possible way for us to change course. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a big squall on such a dark night. It was howling, blowing well over 40 knots sustained for maybe 15-20 minutes, with torrential rain. The sky was so thick that the masthead tricolor light was reflecting the green and white light off the rain, so it made this eerily glow aloft, kinda like when you’re in the fog. You could barely make out some of the wave crests, but otherwise there was zero distinction at all between sea and sky. The boat handled wonderfully, even as we barreled along and hit surfing speeds over 14 knots a few times - it was still fingertip steering, and the crew did a remarkable job at keeping a good course, as the stakes were pretty high (don’t gybe!). The heavy rain actually flattened down the waves quite a bit, so it wasn’t too rough in the heaviest squalls.

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Well this continued all through my watch, just one after another of these super heavy squalls. And sometimes between them, a few stars would come out and we’d think it was clearing. There was also lightning all around us, but off in the distance and up high, never heard any thunder, but still makes you nervous. I went down around 0230, then Mary called me up again at like 0330 to gybe, as we were getting a little close to these offshore seamounts and worried a bit about the sea-state there, so gybed offshore again. Then I finally went to sleep and slept like a zombie until like 1000 this morning. It’s so nice having a co-skipper you can 100% fully trust, Mary is awesome, very confident, decisive and just on it, so it was easy to fall asleep. 

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By the time I woke up they had shaken some reefs, and now since I’ve been on watch we’re back to full sail, gybed again and set the pole, and are finally aiming straight for Cabo, like 80 miles away now.

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// Andy