agility @ sea

I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so happy to see land than this morning after hand steering for 30 hours from Taou to Tahiti.

Of course, we planned to do this crossing without an autopilot and the Garmin Class A autopilot rudder sensor had failed in 3 different units so I knew this terribly unreliable product wasn’t going to just start working. Before we left, I tore the autopilot apart just in case a good marine corrosion cleaning would help, but no joy, we had no autopilot and we must get to Tahiti.

The story starts the night before at Valentine and Gustov’s home where we had a spectacular lobster and parrot fish meal with two sets of friends we’ve been cruising with and another new friend who plays guitar and started the evening with a small sample of boat related ballads.

Before dinner we hung a Rally flag that Ryan Martens had given me for the last Agility boat. This time with RIP JET written on it. It gives me comfort to have remembered her this way and if anyone is ever in Anse Amyoit, check it out. See attached.

During dinner the other cruisers gave practical advice and warned Jerri that it’s difficult to hand steer for a long period of time. Needing to rest at no more than 30 minute shifts, etc. I didn’t hear or just didn’t listed to those conversations, but borrowed a Galerider 36 storm survival sytem. Basically a stern drogue anchor that’s used in storms or, in our case, could be used to slow the boat down in a big blow so that we could rest and get some sleep.

Before going to bed, Jerri asked how crazy this was and I reassured her as best I could and we went to sleep in a half dream state wondering what we had in store.

It’s not the things you plan for that get you, but the unplanned and to lose the most capable of 3 crew – Jerri, me and the autopilot – we felt shorthanded.

It’s easy to forget how hard it is do anything but steer while steering a high performance sailing catamaran. You can drink, but you can’t pee for example.

The weather forecast called for 3 – 4 meter swells on the beam at about 15 second intervals. Winds would be constant at 20 – 30 knots in the right direction for the entire voyage so, all-in-all, not too bad a forecast and a good fast one at that.

The first 3 hours from 7:00 AM to 10:00 were squalls and rain. A lot of helm work to keep the boat straight, but I took each opportunity to trim the sails and reduce the need to steer hard into the weather helm. I kept thinking about my brother Steve who sailed from Mexico to Florida on an Allied Princess 36 ketch when his autopilot went out on a multi day passage and how he no longer sails. Thinking of this made my stomach get a little queasy, but I quickly put it out of my mind.

After futzing with the trim and the rudder lock, I finally got the boat sailing itself. It was a beam reach, forward jib fairly flat hiked out about 45 degrees, aft jib similar but a little looser foot so that it would luff first and the aft mastfoil feathered into the wind so that it wouldn’t produce a weather helm. Forward foil about 45 degrees to the wind like the soft sails. Anyway, with a little compensating rudder for the weather helm I was able to lock the steering and the boat would oscillate from about 70 degrees apparent wind to 100. Once the boat pinched into about 75 degrees the aft jib would de-power and the pressure to go to windward (weather helm) would decrease and the rudder pointing down wind would overpower the luffing mizzen. At first I set the stopwatch to see how long I could go without changing the rudder and before you know it, it was 15 minutes. That lasted about 3 hours until the wind shifted and our course was so far from our destination that I had to hand steer again. We were booking along at 8 – 10 kts like this for hours.

While Jerri was on watch, I decided to try out the drogue borrowed from Andiamo. I didn’t want to set the parachute fitting at the end which would have slowed us down to a crawl but I got the line out and created a bridal and tested the setup with everything but the Galerider fitting. Pulling a 500 foot or so of line created a lot of drag, as expected, and I thought it might allow me to steer the boat a little better. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that it made the boat more stable and it slowed us down so after a few hours I brought it in knowing that if I needed it, I now knew how to set it up and deploy it without too much drama. It was of our last ditch strategy if we were too tired and there was nothing we could do in the middle of the night.

After dinner the wind had shifted and after another hour or so of trimming the sails and fine tuning the rudder lock position we had a decent point of sail and were self steering again. However, the wind had picked up and was gusting to 30+ Kts apparent. That’s too much for full sails, but since that were hiked out so far I left them for a few hours because the thought of hand sailing down wind in 30Kts through the soul crushing waves seemed a bit overwhelming. That meant that we had to sit right next to the helm and be on a look out for gusts and be ready to steer the boat (fall off) if the wind got too strong or we got a squall with more power. I tolerated this seated position with full heavy duty bib foulies that I’ve owned for 20 years and never worn for more that 5 minutes and my new offshore extreme foul weather jacket. I had the jacket with the face mask covering my face and the hood just covering my eyes so the small slit was my only direct exposure to the waves. I’d keep one hand on the bill of the hood and as soon as the wave would crash over the hull I would quickly lower the bill and not get another dousing of salt water in my eyes. I was successful about half the time. Ok, truth be told, I was kind of enjoying it but it was fairly brutal. Had we had an autopilot, I’d have been sipping hot cocoa from the pilot house and would have reefed down and been doing a comfortable 6 – 8 knots while one of us was sleeping in bed. Life is totally different without an autopilot.

Finally, around midnight after awhile of going too fast and getting too wet, I reduced sail and we were hand steering again. When you hand steer for hours on end and are very tired it becomes hard to hold a heading. Our boat is fast and when sailing at 10 kts a slight change in rudder, wind or waves can cause a 45 degree change in heading in about 5 seconds so you really have to pay attention.

Jerri was now at the helm for a couple of hours while I rested and I took over about 1:30AM. It was nasty outside and while the Chris White forward cockpit is excellent in so many ways, steering in these conditions is not fun. Wave after wave come over the bow into the cockpit and bathed us in fresh warm seawater. When you get one of these warm blankets your whole body gets wet every time and you feel like you’re in a bathtub. Jerri likens it to getting sprayed by a fire hose rather than a bathtub, but you get the idea.

After hours of this, I try to steer from inside. We have an issue with our steering where the outside helm requires a great deal of force to steer by hand and the inside is worse. So steering from inside is a real chore in big seas. After doing this for another hour, with the seas and wind building again, my mind and body were kind of spent so I decided to change sail configuration, sail more directly to our heading and slow the boat down. I pulled up the water generator, which would break if we sailed backwards, so that we could contemplate a hove-to point of sail or even potentially deploy the gale rider which could get caught up in that rig.

While bringing in the sails, I back-winded the forward jib, took in the aft jib and before you know it we were sailing hove-to going forward at about .5 – 1 kt. I wasn’t comfortable with the traditional boat forward hove-to because the rudders don’t like running in reverse so trying the downwind hove to seems like it would product the least stress on the boat. Man was that nice to figure that out. After watching the boat for about 15 minutes and seeing that we were stable in the locked configuration, I turned on a few more running lights, tuned on the radar and Jerri and I took a nap. I couldn’t sleep for the first 30 minutes and made several minor adjustments but after that I was dead to the world. The alarm I had set for 4:15 came and went without notice. Jerri woke up at 4:30 or so and I got up and hand steered until about 7:30 when Jer took a rotation and I rested some more.

By about 10 in the morning the seas and wind were building again, but before you know it, we could see the outline of Tahiti. I put out all the sails and we were consistently sailing 10+ kts and surfing at 14 – 17 kts racing to our destination.

I can say it was a beautiful sight and hitting 17.4 kts surfing (Jer’s record this morning was 16.4 – see picture) toward a calm anchorage we were both elated and perhaps a little proud for having “hand steered” for 30 hours.