Weather forecasts arrive on board via satellite communications, in the form of a thing called a GRIB file – a binary file that populates another application already on one’s chosen device and shows the weather for the next several days for the area one is going to as that is interesting to one (as in – of us). Of course, what you then have is only a forecast and as such it can be wrong. Here especially, weather is a law unit its self given the scale of everything involved – the sea, the continents that border that sea, the distances air masses cover, the extremes in temperature. Usually, one can believe most of the stuff three days out, but after that -hmm – not so much! On Monday of this week we started to see a couple of frontal systems – depressions, anticyclones, lows, call them what you will, that could spell danger for us.

Our skipper, Dave, discussed them with us crew and explained that he was going to course correct to try and miss the first one and we would just keep monitoring the second to see how things developed. We beautifully missed the first one by planning to skirt around the top of it, heading a little further north. We couldn’t get around the second, which continued to build itself into quite a storm, picking up energy from the ocean as it traveled towards us. It was most likely formed off the River Plate, a nasty place for weather to form. You may remember the River Plate, either from secondary school geography or from the 1960’s movie – “Battle of the River Plate”, that hugely enjoyable, yet somehow forgettable British made war movie that tells the tale of the sinking of the Battleship Graf (no idea how it was spelled – may be a distant relative of Stephie.) It divides Argentina and Uruguay and it has a massive, nasty mouth (a bit like Howard Stern). Of course, it may not divide those two countries for long, given the Argentines’ voracious appetite for claiming territory on the basis of proximity – if you know what I mean.

Anyway, for a few days we monitored the second depression. Up until yesterday afternoon we anticipated catching the back end, or rather joining the depression after the warm front had moved through and before the cold front  arrived – uncomfortable, but nothing special. When the the latest forecast arrived on Wednesday things had changed – it had slowed down to pick up more energy and it was looking like we would catch the entire thing – and so we did.

I can’t make light if this, because in all honesty, last night might just have been the scariest night of my life, even scarier than the night I went to see the Woman in White – an Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical flop that I think only lasted a few months (OMG it was terrifyingly bad). The barometer dropped steadily all day, alerting us to the arrival of the weather system, lets call it “The Bugger.” We started shortening sail during the afternoon as the winds freshened, eventually having only our main sail up, with the 4th reef in (so like a storm sail) and the engine on. About 16.00 hrs, the wind started to build more significantly and moved from about 25 knot gusting to 30, up to 40 knots, gusting to 45. The seas reacted to all the energy coming from the wind now traveling over them, added to the huge fetch that they had – from traveling all the way from Antarctica. The ocean really did start to bubble like a cauldron of boiling soup – using an oft used simile that I’d never really understood until yesterday. The difference was that this sea didn’t just have lumps emerging on the top, it had very steep sided waves which then crashed down onto the one in front sounding like claps of thunder and throwing white “sputum” all over the place.

We knew we were in for a bit of a shaking and needed to batten the hatches and be prepared to tough out through the night. James, my watch buddy, and I were on watch from 18.00 through 21.00 and as the skipper headed to his cabin to get some rest he instructed us to alert him if the barometer dropped quickly, even if it started to recover. Thomas, the first mate and a very experienced sailor and seaman, was left to hand hold us and we needed it. By the time our watch ended at 21.00 we were seeing sustained winds around 45 knots and gusts well above that. We were being thrown all around the place and standing on the spot was more active than the average pilates class. I stayed up for the next couple of hours to monitor things, because in truth, I didn’t fancy trying to lie in my bunk at the front of the boat as it rocked and rolled and crashed. By about 22.45 things were settling down and the winds seemed to be dying off a little. So I thought I would try turn in, in anticipation of our 03.00 – 6.00 watch, now only a few hours away. I was being naïve. I climbed into my bunk wearing pretty much everything I had been wearing all day, in anticipation of there being a crew call to deal with a sail change.

At first, I read passively listening to the winds howling and the waves crashing into the boat, just inches from where I was lying. Eventually, I wasn’t able to maintain a still position in my bunk, because we were being thrown around so much. Clearly, things were hotting up again. Around midnight my cabin mate, Edgar, came down having finished his watch and told me the winds were now maintaining 55 knots and we’d recorded gusts of 58 knots and the sea state was now very rough. Hello – I knew that – I had bruises all over my body to demonstrate that – from being thrown around the bunk like a child throwing a rag doll (if children still do actually do that or should it be like children dealing with a space monster on their iPhone). I decided to cut my losses and get up and head to the pilot house where I sat for the next 2 hours watching the winds continue to build and the skipper continue to try various techniques to reduce the impact on the boat. By just before 02.00, we had sustained winds of 60 knots and we’d seen gusts up to 68 knots (alright, hands hp, 67.9 – I exaggerate for effect).

Just for reference, a hurricane is declared to be a hurricane when it reaches 63 knots sustained. Old Beaufort, the naval wonder of the nineteenth century, who formulated his wind definitions used extensively by mariners and the BBC in their shipping forecast, would classes this bugger as storm force 10, occasionally 11.

Earlier, as I lay in my bunk listening and feeling this massive energy force kick us all around the place, I listened to music on my trusty iPod and rediscovered stuff I hadn’t heard in years, including listening to a number of episodes of Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show, and for those who have never listened (and possibly haven’t ever heard of him), it is program where a British comedian plays a very minor celebrity of yonder years, if ever, who gets into trouble and speaks in malapropisms. There I was laughing out loud to Count Arthur and it must have sounded like I had lost my mind – laughing while all around us a storm was showing us why we shouldn’t have come here.

Anyway, even that couldn’t keep my mind away from – well if this continues (the storm, not Count Arthur), I may really be in the danger that I so vehemently told people there wouldn’t be any. I wasn’t scared – I was way past that, but I applied a stiff upper lip and didn’t show my fear to anyone, and to be clear, everyone else was dealing with the same thing – being very afraid and trying not to show it.

By 02.00 hours, we were all crammed into the pilot house when the Auto Pilot alarm went off, indicating it couldn’t react to the violent changes in direction we were being handed. So, Dave announced that he was going to manually turn the boat to windward, to use the wind to slow things down and then tie the helm over to the weather side and see if she would just sit and settle down. This maneuver was something between a tactic called “lying ahull” and something called “heaving to.” Heaving to is standard thing to do, to effectively stop a boat and provide time to figure things out, but we were way passed that. Lying ahull is something Sailors have done for years when in a storm and needing to get some respite, but it is now frowned upon by many, because it can leave the boat vulnerable to being side swiped by a large wave and then broached (rolling down sideways and sometimes completely over). But, drastic times lead to drastic measures.

In the end, Dave did a hybrid of these two, neither fully one, nor the other, but something we will know forever call “lying aDave.”  He managed to get the boat to sit stable about 60 degrees off the wind and to just take what was handed to her, without being constantly bombarded the way she had been for the last six to eight hours. Like in a heave to, the boat creates a flat wake to her lee side as she drifts and that tends to quieter things down. We all needed to steady our nerves and get some respite from this constant bombardment. In truth, despite taking medication, I was also starting the early signs of being sea sick and so were most of the others.

Dave togged up and went out into the cockpit, closing the watertight door behind him and executed the maneuver brilliantly. When he got back inside we all sat waiting to see what would happen. The first thing was the slamming that we’d been feeling for hours was significantly reduced. Next, because of the angle we were now at, the wind noise quietened considerably. It was looking like this was going to work for a while and at least long enough for us to catch our breath. As we were sitting there, contributing to the gallows humor, there was a discernible sound of relief in the conversation. Then, all of a sudden, a bloody great wave smacked the weather side of the boat, crashed onto the deck and against the window of the pilot house – moving the boat many many feet to Leeward and it shuddered, gasping for air. This is a big, heavy yacht and the force required to do what had just been done had to be immense. The forces surrounding us were immense.

We all gasped and waited for what would come next – but nothing did. However, while watching the various instruments on the panel opposite where I was sitting, I could see that as we crested a wave and slipped sideways down the other side, we clocked 23 knots of speed on our instruments. Slipping down waves at 23 knots is quite something and not something to cherish!  And with that, Dave the skipper headed off to his cabin with a “wake me if anything develops.”

Well pardon me for saying, but what else was likely to develop for God’s sake? What more could there be in store? Thomas now took charge. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Dave heading to his cabin –  either he was very comfortable with where we were, a supreme act of chutzpah, or he had given up and wanted some solitude before we went down to the bottom. I was rooting for the Chutzpah.

While we didn’t officially come on watch for another hour, James and I stayed up in the Pilot house watching for developments. The barometer had stopped dropping and was now edging up, but only millibar by millibar. The winds had stopped notching gusts in the 60’s, but they were still registering sustained 50’s. Periodically, we would switch the foredeck spotlight on to check on the sail, but it would also allow a clear view of the ocean rolling past the boat. It looked really angry, circling white foam, leaping up into the air before crashing into the boat showing that behind the foam was a solid wall of water. Off the stern, we could see waves that towered above us by 12 to15 feet. As we rolled onto our watch, some of the other guys decided to try and get some sleep and so James, Thomas and I ended up alone monitoring things.

We stared at the instruments, willing for the wind to decrease. By 05.00 were were regularly seeing wind speeds in the middle 40’s and sometimes down to 30 which started to relieve our anxiety, but this wasn’t a linear reduction – as it dropped into the 20’s it would zip back up to 50 to wrong foot us. We decided we needed to once again start to sail and so we untethered the wheel and headed a little more down wind to try to resume our chosen activity – sailing. Once again, the Auto Pilot was engaged and the movement of the boat resumed, still banging and clattering and swaying and rolling, tilting and leaping.

A shout out the Auto Pilot here. Hand steering through this wort of weather is miserable. I have done it in lesser conditions (40 knot winds) and there is nothing romantic or heroic about it, its cold and demoralizing. You can’t see where you’re going and you can’t see what is about to hit you. The Auto Pilot takes huge amount of pain out of coping with heavy weather, but even it has its limits, as we found out. At 06.00 our relief watch came up from their bunks, ready to take over and so I slid away to mine and got into my sleeping bag and caught a couple of hours of sleep.

This had been quite a night. While I never really thought we were in so much danger that we might not make it through, I did feel ultimately and totally out of control and at the whim of the wind and the sea. Unlike most modes of transport, when you’re on a boat out at sea and away from the land – you can’t change much to hide from the weather you get given. Of course, you can try and avoid it by taking careful note of the  weather systems in advance and then delay your departure, but when we left Stanley, these systems were nowhere to be seen. If they had, we would probably have left anyway, but knowing the power earlier, of the second one, we might have slowed down or tried a different route, but frankly, there is no avoiding weather all together, we just have to deal with it and that’s why we’re here, to learn to deal with it, as much emotionally as technically.

When I signed up for this lark, I knew that I was likely to encounter discomfort of this sort, and I can’t overstate how uncomfortable, physically and emotionally, last night was. I had no idea how quickly and how brutally things could develop (and I have read thirty or more books about crossing oceans and dealing with heavy weather, a euphemism for shit scary). Now that I have encountered it, what do I think?

Well, first of all, I know the boat is as strong as she looks and capable of withstanding most of what this ocean could throw her way. Second, I’m fine if we don’t have to demonstrate this ability again. Third, it was chutzpah!

Pip pip

P.S. – again! As I was sitting writing this piece, down in the saloon, the night after THE night, I was sitting minding my own business accompanied by a couple of the guys who were washing up after dinner when all of a sudden we were side swiped by a rogue wave. It sounded and felt like it does when you are in your car and another car hits you in the side (never felt that – hmm). It knocked me across the saloon where I was sitting on the starboard side of the big table and ended up 10 feet away on the port side –  all the while I was juggling with my iPad which I was totally resolved wasn’t going to lose. I eventually palmed it onto the safety of a padded bench while the key board slid across the floor. We were all in a state of shock, but essentially no one and nothing were hurt (the skipper was outside and got soaked – well, his fres socks did – but that’s the price you pay for nipping outside for a sneaky smoke). This was a timely reminder that we are in the world of the elements and we shouldn’t forget that – I don’t think we will.