Life on a tilt - the extreme version - Level 4

The experience that the crew had during the race from Portsmouth to Puerto Sherry, reminded me of the level 4 experience we had. Here is the translation of the Hebrew blog post.

Suddenly, the yacht balances and becomes more tranquil. The atmosphere lightens, and even the weather seems to conform. When you experience this sensation, you know the yacht is sailing in backwinds.

When sailing in backwinds, the boat glides effortlessly, and everything is calmer. The apparent wind (the wind you feel on your face) is slower, leading novice sailors to believe that the boat is moving slow. However, yachts like the Clipper 70 actually move faster in backwinds, especially with the gennaker up.

The Clipper Race is set up to take advantage of the trade winds, so sailors spend most of their time sailing in backwinds. However, in a round-the-world race, a "short sail in headwinds" can mean several consecutive days of sailing in headwinds, with the boat tilted at 45 degrees or more to the left or right, night and day. This is what the yachts experienced in the recent race from Portsmouth to Puerto Sherry.

This post is about my experience of sailing for more than 24 hours in strong headwinds, extreme tilt, and high seas.

Down below

In one of my level 2 blog posts, I wrote about the difficulties of sailing on a yacht when it is tilted. The Clipper 70s can achieve greater tilt angles than the Clipper 68s on which we trained in level 2. The photo below shows Izzy in an exercise that demonstrates the tilt. The area where she is doing the exercise is sometimes referred to as "the death corridor." Most of the space down below is characterized by long and narrow corridors running the length of the boat, but this zone, which you encounter when you go down from the cockpit, runs through the width of the yacht. If you are not careful, you will fall around five meters onto the drysuit cabinet.

Indeed, just at the beginning of the sail, one of the crew slipped in this location, luckily with just a nasty scratch on their hand. After this incident, I took extra caution when going down from the cockpit to the lower deck.

During level 2 training, we would sail quite horizontally at night. However, during the race, you don't slow down because people need to sleep. The yacht is sailing at maximum possible speed 24/7, and if you need to tilt, you tilt.

In this situation, each activity requires a lot of energy and mental strength. My main difficulty, being not very flexible, was putting on my boots. I tried putting them on on the high wind side and then on the down wind side, but I encountered different difficulties in each case. Once or twice, I even angrily threw my boot. However, I got better at doing it over time.

As usual, I got the top bunk. You can adjust the angle of the bunk, and I took my skipper Hanna's advice and adjusted the angle to about 20 degrees toward the wall (in my case, the starboard wall). I also set up the mattress partially on the wall. This way, when the yacht tilted starboard, I basically slept on the wall, while when the yacht tilted to port, I slept partially on the bunk and partially on a piece of cloth that was meant to prevent me from falling down (and it actually did).

Surprisingly, going up to or down from the bunk was easier than I thought it would be, mainly because the corridor between the bunks is very narrow. When we tilted to port, I "walked" on the opposite wall, and when we tilted to starboard, I climbed up using the lower bunk and just rolled myself into the bunk. Zipping the sleeping bag was a completely different thing, which required my best acrobatic abilities.

On the upper decks

I remember one time when I was called to the helm during high-tilt sailing. To get to the helm station, I had to climb out of the cockpit to the high side of the yacht and go all the way back to the station. When the yacht is horizontal, it takes me less than thirty seconds to reach the station. However, on high tilt, it took me about three minutes to go through the same short path.

First, I had to climb to the high side of the deck (which is like climbing a mountain), then carefully move all the way back, and then climb into the helm station. During this time, I had to keep myself clipped to the yacht, which requires me in some cases to clip on the short tether to a new safety point, then clip off the long tether and clip it back on the new point, and then clip off the shorter tether. I had to do this three times when moving to the helm station! Of course, before taking the helm, I had to take a minute to catch my breath.

Therefore, even on the upper decks, every action requires much more time and energy. Even tidying the ropes in the cockpit, which is an essential activity, is energy-consuming.

After sailing almost continuously from Monday to Wednesday, most of it in headwinds, we returned to the Isle of Wight on Wednesday to anchor and get some rest before the training race that was held on Thursday and Friday. Since the real race is already underway, I will not translate the last chapter of the level 4 series, but I will share my experience of the real race from Punta del Este, Uruguay to Cape Town, South Africa later.

I'm sharing all the action from the race on Facebook - follow me to stay up-to-date! 

An exciting experience in a stormy night shift and to where did third of the team one to? - Clipper Race Level 4 Training

It is just before midnight, not too long after the start of the second night shift. For the whole day now we are constantly sailing upwind in a tilt of 45 degrees. The winds speed is 35 knots and the sea height is 3 meters. At these condition, Dan and me found ourselves crawling to the front deck to drop the head sail (Yankee 3 sail) while the waves giving us a good wash. At a certain point I discovered that I lost the sail tile, a rope that we use to secure the the head sail. Luckily Cat also joined us with an extra rope and tied the sail (wisely, she tied the sail tile to her storm suit).

This was a good test to my Musto ocean suite and ocean trousers as well as my boots (also Musto) and sealskin socks. Except for slaty lips and a bit of wetness on my sleeves I came out of this shaking experience completely dry. Well, I guess this is what I wanted from this training. Finally stormy condition which I'll surely encounter during the voyage.

In the following video that I took the next morning, we can see the crew preparing to hoist the same sail that we dropped at night (in a bit better calmer whether).

This happened during the first night when we actually sailed and this is how the day started...

After breakfast, we raised the anchor, trying not the scratch the new beautiful sponsor painting of the yacht. Almost immediatly we hoisted the sails and sailed almost constantly till Wednesday (well we had a short stopped to disembark one of the crew member who broke her ankle).

The Solent, the area residing between Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight had quite a nice whether (well, for England), however the minute you leave the edge of the Isle of Wight you reach the open sea of the English channel, where we met the mighty ocean forces.

It was almost like an invisible line. Before it the ocean is calm but after it we encountered winds of 30 knots and more (54KMH) and 3 meters waves. All this while we are sailing in head winds. We managed to sail at a speed of 10 knots which means that the apparent wind (the wind that you feel on the boat) reached 40 knots. All this factors cause clipper yacht to sail in a tilt of 40 degrees and more (and about that in the next chapter).

In Israel I sail with a yacht that has two sails. On a clipper yacht you can hoist three sails which we did. The mainsail, we set to third reef, we hoisted the stay sail (a sail that reached about two third of the mast and a storm jib (special head sail used when there are very strong winds).

And, as the yacht is sailing 24 hours a day, the crew was divided to two teams. The starbord team and the port team. During the days there were two shift of six hours each (0700 and 1300) and at night three shifts of four hours (1900, 2300 and 0300). Ofcourse there are other duties such as preparing food, cleaning the heads, engine checks, logging and navigation.

And with the speed, the waves and the waves came our green friend, the sea sickness. In few hours, I believe that at least third of the crew were incapacitated and others (including me) were partially functioning.

This is how, at a stormy night, I found myself performing a task that I usually avoid: going to the front deck and the bow. And it was an excellent experience for me.

Helming during a stormy night

Well, not as stormy as the night before. My first helming in this training happened during the second sailing night.

It was Tuesday, our third day on the sea. The winds were still strong and the waves high however one level below the previous night. This was also the day, where I may have experienced sea sickness. I did not vomit but I did felt bad. I discussed it with some of my fellow crew people and reached a major decision for my life: to stop drinking coffee. Yes, it seems that coffee increases sea sickness and due to its acidity can trigger vomits. The coffee has been replaced by herbal tea: mint or even better mint with ginger. You can eat a green apple to replace the arousing effect of the coffee and we had plenty of them on the boat. Two days I suffered from mild headache but it is better than sea sickness.

And, we you are wondering, from that day till today I do not consume coffee on regular basis (I did sinned couple of times).

But let's go back to helming. During the night shift, Cam our additional qualified person (And what a person he is), asked who wants to replace the helm man and I jumped on the opportunity.  

Because we sailed at night where you cannot see the waves coming at you, Cam gave me a great tip: when I see the bow rising I should turn the helm slightly toward the wave and then quickly return it to its original position. It took me few minutes to get used to it but it worked as charm when I got it.

It is hard to explain the experience inn words, but it was at the dark where the waves are invisible, that I felt a connection to the ocean rhythm. I felt the cyclic movement of the waves that combines uniform rhythm with a constant change.

This experience which is coming and going helped allot when I helmed during the training race at the end of the training.

In the next chapter I'll tell about the life on a yacht that sails two days in an extreme tilt. How do you climb the top bunk? and how do you not fall from it? How do you cook or even go to the toilet (which is called a head in a yacht).

This post is a translation of the original Hebrew language post. It is my own free hand translation so it may not exactly fit the original post wording.