We got too close too the low and got...triple reef weather.

By Ann and Lisa- We had come up with a game plan – skirt the low to the south, wait for it to pass above us and onto the southeast, then we would be on our merry way headed direct for Fiji. All was well in our little corner of the world as Captain Bob went below to bed and Ann and Lisa were left on watch around 9:30PM. We were motoring due west in very light winds – and since R2D2 (the auto pilot) wasn’t feeling well tonight we were hand steering Charisma. No problem – according to the latest gribs, we were just on the edge of the little low passing above us. We expected light winds through the night until we made our right hand turn to 360 at 6am the next morning. We took turns at the wheel, 30 minutes on – 30 off, for the first few hours. Around 11:30 the wind picked up so we set the main sail and continued to motor sail. “Under control” was our motto – having every best intention to let Captain Bob get some well needed shut eye until his watch began at 3am. Well…. the high seas had other plans for us! The winds continued to pick up, and by 1am, our little corner of the world looked like a washing machine out of control!

Part II: Enter Captain Bob to the rescue By Bob- It was nice and cozy in the quarterberth and since Charisma is a solid boat, I didn’t hear all the commotion going on up on deck. For all I knew, we were in 15 knots of wind having a nice night…

But I did get awakened. “Bob, come quick. It’s getting really windy!” My first though; “Yeah, whatever”. But once out of bed I had a look up the companionway hatch and was shocked to see that both of the foul weather boards were in and the hatch was closed and torrential rain was pouring against them. My second thought at this point in my sleepy haze: “You want me to go up in that!!?” At this point I snapped out of my semi-coma and realized we needed to do something. I wasn’t sure what, but knew that once I went out on deck in this mess it was going to be a long night. So…I took my time getting dressed properly in foulies, warm socks, seaboots, etc. I’ve spent way too many a night shivering in shorts and a tee-shirt after charging onto the deck only to realize there’s no going back down in foul weather.

Anyway, once on deck here’s what I saw. Charisma was doing her imitation of a runaway freight train. With something on the level of mid-thirties wind, maybe higher (our wind speed is broken) with just a double reefed main up Charisma was boiling along at 10 KNOTS. Yes, that’s the first thing that caught my attention. We were going waaay to fast. My first thought was since we already had a double reef, we needed to furl the jib, so I worked my way in position to do that only to find “the girls” had already done that. OK, 10 knots, main only. Too. Fast.

The next thing I noticed-at first out of the corner of my eye and not quite fully conscious of it- was that Lisa was at the helm and fighting for her life to keep Charisma from rounding up. She had half a turn of the wheel correcting for the out of balance helm caused by having only the main up-but more interestingly, HER FEET WERE COMING OFF THE DECK she was working so hard to steer against Charisma’s power in the gusts.

So in my muddled state, still a bit wonky from just waking up, I took over the helm and set the wind vane. At least now we would have some time to think with Wilson taking charge of the steering. That worked pretty well until a really big gust decided to take over. ” I’ve got the helm again”. That’s when I realized what I should have noticed right at the get go: something’s gonna break if we don’t slow down right now. So, we hove to (non-sailors will have to look up this term, also called Heave To or Heaving To). Simple, painless, easy. Took about 30 seconds and everything got calm and quiet. Except the rain. You couldn’t even see the bow of the boat it was pouring down so hard.

You see, we planned to skirt the south side of the low, but came a little too close and hit the front of the lower side of the low. Heavy rain, high winds. The good news is it didn’t last too long before we were in the dregs behind the low. Then we just sat hove to for the rest of the night waiting for the weather to improve. It did and we’re now following part two of the plan, which is following the south winds behind the low due north to Fiji. 400 miles and we’ll be there. We’ve also posted a second blog which analyses our No-Lo Maneuver Tactic. Enjoy!