Feeling my way through the darkness
It feels good to be moving in the right direction again. The last week in general has been frustrating to say the least and in the last 48 hrs Medallia has seen more damage than at any other point in the whole race. I guess we are both just tired.
I have to put my hand up at this stage and say I really messed up my navigation this week. When I stopped to laminate my rudder tube just north of the Falklands I had a choice to split and go north or to continue following the foilers to the east. I could see the depression that just battered me developing and I should have then made the decision to head north and around the back of it from the start. The option was there, I saw it, I did not take it and I have been kicking myself in every spare moment since.
Anyway enough said. I made a mistake and boy have I paid for it in the last week. Passing through the eye of the depression on Friday night was an intense experience. It was pitch dark, total cloud cover blocking even the light from the stars. As I got closer to the centre the wind built and built, until finally I was on deck, pulling the mainsail completely down in wind that I could feel pushing my body. It is incredible just how much your world shrinks in those circumstances. You can see nothing outside the footprint of the boat, when I looked up my head torch merely illuminated the water droplets filling the air and reflected light back in my face. The waves were confused and having no vision outside the boat it was impossible to know when and which way you were going to be knocked next. I spent most of the time crawling around on hands and knees, my balance is so bad I struggle to stand up on a moving deck on a good day. I felt like I was feeling my way through the darkness. I had a map in my mind of my route through the depression and not being able to see it physically I had to use clues to guess where I was. The barometer, in a steady fall then stable. The wind direction which I was mostly deducing from my course and the trim of my sails. If the sails started flapping I knew the wind had backed.
Finding my way through was quite a success, and as the dawn broke I was in the centre of the low, hoisting the mainsail again in the lighter winds and looking forwards to moving north. As the breeze started to build I turned the bow up towards home and was confronted with a brutal sea state that I just hadn't bargained for. The waves were big, coming from three different directions and with a really short wave length. Every time Medallia started to move I would feel us being launched up onto a wave and then dropping off the back of it, into thin air, falling a few metres with the most gut wrenching crash. The rig shook, the boat sounded like it was splitting in half, I was thrown across the cabin or cockpit, where ever I was. Exhausted having been up all night getting through the low, I put Medallia on a conservative course at reduced sail and was trying to sleep on the floor when we came down hard off a wave, there was the gut wrenching crash and then all manner of kit rained down on me from the windward side of the boat. I was pinned onto the leeward side, the boat was heeling over crazily and I knew exactly what had happened. In the constant pounding we had broken one of the keel lines. It took about an hour to replace the line, I had to get into the compartment with the keel canted to the wrong side and while I worked I was liberally hosed with sea water.
As the sea state started to ease, I gingerly turned to the north, enduring as much slamming as Medallia and I can take, we gradually wound ourselves back up to full speed and I am happy to say have banked some good miles north in the last 12 hours.
Storms pass, the weather changes. There is much to fight for and much to celebrate about.
I have found that in the midst of any situation on board, whether it is a storm, a leak or replacing the rudder you quickly lose sight of the big picture. I guess you need to have your head in the detail to manage a crisis but it's important to remember to zoom back out when you lift your head again. Storms pass, the weather changes, problems are managed or solved and then I can move on. There is still so much more ahead of me in this race and no matter how difficult any situation seems in the moment I am bolstered by the long view. Less than two years ago I sailed an IMOCA for the very first time, now I have 5,500 miles ahead of me to the finish of the Vendee Globe race. There is much to fight for and much to celebrate about.