Sailing in good weather

We were enjoying a sunny Thursday in the Scilly Isles when we got news of a storm brewing. North-westerly winds were building through Friday to around F7/8 on Saturday, before easing on Sunday. We had around 130 miles to get to Cork for our Monday night flight, which at 5 knots is 24-36 hours. We decided to get going immediately (i.e. after dinner) allowing us to be in the shelter of Ireland for the last 12 hours as the storm built up, and into a marina by Friday night or early Saturday morning.

We quickly posted a postcard from St Agnes, swam back to the boat and motored to Hugh Town on St Mary’s to pick up supplies. We motored straight past all the  other yachts and anchored. Our skipper elected to stay on board once he realised we had anchored at a chart datum of +2.5 m in a falling tide. This bold anchorage did allow us to get supplies on board rather quicker than had we anchored elsewhere.

We started off after a dinner of fajitas and the additional cooking of Friday night’s bolognese. The first couple of hours were spent leisurely sailing along, reefing and unreefing the sail as we tried to get the best speed but not need to reef overnight. We soon got into the swing of watches – having 3 hours on watch then 4.5 hours asleep worked well. The next 24 hours passed remarkably quickly – sleeping or on deck, with occasional excitement of passing trawlers and watching fluorescing sealife. 

We were heading upwind the whole time, so staggering around the boat with everything at 30 degrees was difficult – this meant usual tasks were delayed and snacks were more favoured than proper meals. I wasn’t feeling fantastic by this point (despite it being the only time I have taken seasickness tablets). Soon I diagnosed myself as being hungry (harder than it sounds when rocking around in the sea). I swung down to the cabin and quickly ate more than my share of pasta, bolognese and cheese – just what I needed, and luckily the others weren’t feeling up to proper meals so there was plenty of it.

Without a chart plotter, we had the fun of occasionally plotting our position to find we weren’t getting very far. Puffin is less than ideal when sailing into the wind, so we took slightly longer than expected – after 24 hours we were around half way. The storm had begun to build as forecast, and Ireland (being a good 60 nm away) gave us no protection.  A most interesting night was had – Jo and I were on overlappingwatches – we were having fun handling the boat together into the night, but then the seas and wind rose.  I went to bed and left Jo with a capable novice. I got no sleep, crashing around in the cabin hearing the water slosh around below and above me. Jo got soaked through repeatedly as wave after wave came across the bow and crashed across the entire deck. Colin, our skipper,was unlucky enough to stick his head above to ask for a bucket just as one of these waves crashed over – getting soaked while standing inside really didn’t help the seasickness.

My next watch started at around 4 am, and we quickly saw lighthouses. Trying to count flashes as we careered up and down waves, making the horizon disappear every few seconds took all my effort while not helming. In reality it took until daylight to figure out what was actually going on. Helming was seriously hard work as we were often overpowered. Although knackered, cold, wet and hungry, we were almost on dry land so we all stayed up. After a couple of tacks, we realised we were going close to backwards. I was trying to navigate and was repeatedly thrown around the cabin, once landing on top of the charts and covering them in water. My concern for the charts lasted all of 30 seconds – they were soon lifted off the table and dumped in the bilge water around my feet. There was no hope for them any longer. Soon enough our skipper was woken and came up – he successfully got Puffin going upwind, slightly. For the next 6 hours, we continually thought the next tack would be the last, but Puffin defied us at every turn by not wanting to go upwind.

During these hours Jo and I descended towards hypothermia, fell asleep upright in the saloon wearing soaking wet and cold waterproofs. I eventually pulled myself together enough to have a hot drink and start to be of use again on deck and navigating. More often than not I was the bearer of bad news as I found that we would require yet another tack. Luckily Colin seemed infinitely better at helming under these conditions than us, so stayed on deck the whole time often alone. An interesting time, which wasn’t particularly enjoyable and really showed how we should have kept to the watches as we approached land. We became lax not only with watches but eating, sleeping and trying to keep warm as well – all of which are near impossible in a rocking soaking wet yacht.

We later realised that we should have put the storm jib on. We’d looked at this earlier in the week and decided we didn’t know how it attached, and quickly put it back in the locker without figuring it out. We really didn’t want to work it out in the storm. Also, no one on board had ever used a storm jib, so we weren’t sure what benefit it would have – we’ve now been informed it would help going upwind!

We eventually arrived in Crosshaven at 11am on Saturday. We slept, showered and ate. The restaurant was fantastic with good local food and ale for reasonable prices. The marina bar was brilliant – with a map of lighthouses all flashing in the correct manor, mini canons  and beer barrel seat. The only thing lacking was people – we were the only people there. The next day (Sunday), the wind had strengthened and we doubted our ability to safely vacate our mooring so instead of sailing to Cork we took the bus.

Puffin, post-passage: there was a lot of kit to dry!

We’ve learnt a huge amount about sailing passages, and sailing in heavy weather, and will be much more prepared the next time we find ourselves in a similar situation. Dave (and perhaps Jo not quite as much) is looking forward to doing more exciting things in the mountains and at sea to replicate the feeling of adventure.