Sailing Diary: Leg 5, Race 7 - From the equator to Luzon Straights Along the Philippines East Cost

But before that, it turns out I forgot an important part of the cruise up to the equator, the Doldrums area...

So here is:

2/2/2024

Remember the watch that was lost two days ago? Well, I was sitting in the sail locker. When the huge top hatch of the sail lock is open it becomes a great place to escape the unbearable heat in the yacht's belly.

So I was sitting there and had a peek aside for a moment and what a surprise! In the corner I saw the watch! It turns out that it fell out of my arm when I helped take down or raise sails to or from the sail locker.

We arrived at the Doldrum Corridor, an area where many sailing ships have been stranded with no winds for days or even for long weeks. Luckily, competition rules allow us to run the engine for 36 hours in the corridor, where we must sail exactly no more than 10 degrees north (that is, up to 600 miles).

Yesterday was the Bartek's and mine cooking duty. Bartek is my bunk partner, which means that I meet him only during watch changes and in the cooking duties. Before lunch, I went up to the deck and discovered a spectacular sight. I don’t remember seeing a sea so quiet. Imagine a quiet water lake that extends to infinity. Occasionally flocks of flying fishes hovered on the surface of the water and a number of birds also hovered over trying to catch the fishes. One of the other yachts sailed about four hundred meters away from us.

After the cooking duty we have a full night's sleep and we also swap watches (to get to know the rest of the crew members). Since my next watch began in 1300, I got another precious rest time!

In the above picture, you see all of us huddling in the shade of the sails during a noon update meeting in the Doldrums...

6/2

I don't remember ever having experienced such a swings at a physical and emotional energy level. Yesterday was one of my worst days. "What am I doing here anyway?” I asked myself yesterday on the night shift when I was completely exhausted by the change of sails. Today, for the first time in many days I managed to sleep about four hours in a row, I felt much better. But this emotional pendulum exists all the time.

Yesterday in the afternoon, when I was in my bunk, I felt that the yacht was tilted more than usual and heard a commotion above. I was happy that I setup my bunk correctly and the piece of fabric that is supposed to protect me from falling did its job.

This storm cloud, destroyed our plans. After 24 hours of a nice progress when we thought we had already found the trade winds, suddenly we had to turn the wrong way. The other yachts that sailed behind us saw what was happening to us and took a turn to the North. We have been 24 hours under the clouds which caused us to drop to the 9th place 40 miles from the nearest yacht in front of us. The situation has improved and we’re back moving in the right direction, but we’ll need allot of luck to move beyond our position. Right now all we can do is it to sail better, helm at a straight line as possible and do our best trimming the sails.

8/2

The view of the sky in a bright night in the open sea is breathtaking. So many stars. On the watch from 1900 to 2300 we saw Orion, The South Cross, the North Star and many more constellations! On the dawn  watch (0300 to 0700), we saw the amazing scorpion system as well as Venus and the moon shine together.

These things help me move on in the emotional pendulum the I am experiencing.

In the race, our situation has improved very well because in the last 24 hours we had really good winds, while the other yachts have been stuck in wind holes. Our distance to the leading group is about 20 miles, which is nothing considering we've been through about 3000 miles so far. The race is still open.

9/2

We are already well trained in fast reefing, even this time when we were wet to our bones from the Monson rains. This time I was in a helm check position and found myself reaching to the coffee grinder before we started the reefing. That’s quite a distance to pass when the yacht is tilted by at least 45 degrees and you should be clipped on all the time. The strong winds allowed us to move further in our position.

Personally, because of the storm, I weren’t allowed to drive and that fact and the fact that I was being soaked in water just increased my moodiness. For night watch I wore the storm clothes because I couldn’t afford to wet any more clothes.

I am on cooking duty today, which means that I'll sleep all night. 

Yes, beyond the watches on deck, there are lots of other roles that go through duties: The cookies prepare meals all day and take care of the galley cleaning. Engineers check the engine, navigators fill a log every hour with all sorts of data (legal requirement), head cleaners (that how we call a toilet in a ship) take care for hygiene. One of the hardest duty is emptying the bilges. The bilge is the bottom of the yacht which takes water all the time. While there are pumps (manual), when the yacht is tilted, the water move to a location that the pumps do not reach and we use a bucket to drain them off. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean that there is a hole: the bilges are filled with rain, the waves that wash the deck and even from our sweat.

11/2

We’ve been on a pretty constant wind with the spinnaker for about three days. Today I got to helm again and felt much more comfortable. Helming time went through like nothing. Today we expect to reach a pretty stormy front and we are preparing for a survival mode. It seems that we will sail down wind with the storm. That means on one hand we will sail quickly and relatively comfortably and on the other hand we will be at the storm for more time as we sail with it.

13/2

The storm starts with strong winds and over time sea goes up and the waves wash us all. Waves of warm water. So we though we all wear storm clothes there are clogs or similar shoes on our feet. For me, the storm started a little before the strong winds started, when we went up to front deck for a Yankee 1 drop.

It isn't always the case, but at that night the move from the cockpit to the front deck was like a transition between two worlds:  from a relatively quiet world to a stormy and wet world. The waves washed us mercilessly when we struggle to lower the largest and heaviest headsail to the yacht. We folded the sail during the change of watches because it is easier to employ the entire crew for folding it.

The sail in a storm is far from being pleasant. Although the original plan was to sail downwind with the storm, the wind direction required an upwind sailing. Which means the yacht has always tilted at crazy angles. The watches themselves are pretty boring: we sit in the cockpit wearing storm clothes and absorb waves from time to time. I also got to helm the yacht twice, which was quite hard.

These are exactly the days I ask myself "what am I doing here?”. However, now the storm as passed, the sun went out and we raised the spinnaker. Even the heat in the yacht became reasonable. Tonight, I had to turn off the fan I felt too cold.

Our generator will probably be fixed only in Ha Long Bay, so for now we are running the engine in order to activate the water maker and to load the batteries of the yacht. As a result, the charging of private devices is limited because the yacht engine is use much more fuel than the generator.

And here is another video of storm sailing. I sit there with the blue hat and talk to Bob dressed in the red coat...

Sailing diary: Leg 5, Race 7 (part 1) - from Airlie Beach, Australia to the Equator

 29/1/2024

In the belly of the yacht the heat is unbearable and on the deck the sun is blazing. In the galley, the kitchen and dining room, we have two clocks. One of them has a thermometer. When we cook the temperature passes the maximum of the thermometer: above 50 degrees Celsius! I'm so glad I brought the rechargeable fans that allow me to sleep between shifts.

Today, the morning shift actually started well. I felt refreshed and ready for the different tasks. Also, I was chosen to helm second. Before helming, we do an helm check, keeping an eye on our previous helmsman. The goal is to steer the yacht in the prescribed direction with as few deviations as possible. After about an hour and a half of trying to overtake the yacht in front of us I moved to the helmsman's position. However, not for long. Not because I was helming badly but because my right leg burnt!

Despite a ton of sunscreen, I got a nasty burn.

I spent the rest of the shift moving between the sauna in the belly of the yacht and trying to find shade on the deck. Tomorrow I'll wear long pants.

I have aloe vera cream, so hopefully the leg will heal quickly.

We are currently tenth position, but our distance from the leading yacht is only about 10 miles which is nothing when it comes to a race of about 5,000 miles. We're making good progress and keeping the distance from the leaders so the competition is still open.

31/1

We weren't quite ready when we entered a storm cloud. When the wind suddenly picked up, I felt like I was trying to move the steering wheel to get the yacht back in the direction, but the steering wasn't moving. At first I thought it was because of the winds but then Harry hinted to me that Hannah had taken control of the wheel.

The state of the sea changed at once from a very comfortable state, winds of 20 knots with waves of about half a meter to winds of over 35 knots with waves at least three meters high while we are in full sail formation with the yacht at a high tilt. The first few minutes were very scary until Hannah took over the yacht and we managed to reef the sails. At the first moment, I found myself frozen while Hannah had to raise her voice telling to me to take care of the main sail. Finally, when I got off the helm toward the main sail sheet, I did it the long way (with of course constantly clipped on). We spent the rest of the afternoon and into the late hours of the evening in rough seas until the storm disappeared.

The next day, we sailed into a similar cloud. This time, we were prepared to reef the sails. Of course we were able to circumvent this storm and there was no need to reef. Skippers accustomed to "champagne" cruises will surely ask why we didn't reef the sails in advance. Well, we are in a race and reefing will slow us down. So, we are getting ready to reef but actually do it at the very last minute.

Here's a video from another incident where we were sailing in high winds...

Personally, I had a tough day, emotionally. It started with me not finding my drinking bottle, later discovered under my mattress, continued with a shoe that disappeared even though I had attached it to rubber bands designed to do so. The shoe was found under a sail, I don't know how it got there but it happened just when we had to get to the deck quickly due to a broken halyard (another event that happened to us). It continued with Hannah asking me to get off the helm because I couldn't get control of the yacht when sailing with a spinnaker at night.

At the end of the day I found out I had lost my watch. Surprisingly, the loss of a watch of a watch worth about $1000 annoyed me less me than the other stuff. I hope I'll find it too although there is a chance it lies in the bottom of the sea.

4/2

Ofcourse, we crossed the equator while I slept. We've had a lot of events since the last update, we've gone into an area with very weak winds. Which means hard work on board. Frequent changing of sails and trimming them all the time. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed these shifts. Doing it is good for me even though it is not easy, physically.

Of course, crossing the equator is a major event on the yacht. When the small, snowflakes (sailors that haven't crossed the equator) turn into a hard-shells tortoises. For this happy occasion, Neptune himself rise from the sea and judges each and any sailor who first crossed the equator. He accuses them of all sorts of ridiculous charges. I was accused of having a strange name, of being too slow in my responses and of blocking one of the heads (that's how we call a toilet on a yacht). Ofcourse, we all were found guilty. For punishment he purred a nasty pulp on our heads and announced that we are now hard-shells.

Bob, the ship's engineer who turned 70 yesterday, played Neptune very convincingly.

Few minutes later, we washed our heads (in seawater, of course).

Here are the new hard-shell owners in a photo shoot with Neptune...

As for the competition, we are currently not checking our position. In this segment, the yacht that will find the trade winds first, will have the greatest advantage. So we're on our way to finding the trade winds.