The odometer that is counting down to our arrival in Maui is sitting just above of 400 miles! We passed the 500 mile mark over an early breakfast this morning. The islands should be visible on the horizon in the next day and we've cleared 2,900 miles in two weeks! The rest of this journey should be a cakewalk! (maybe)
We started the race two weeks ago with a conservative attitude towards preserving the boat and sails. The past 24 hours have demonstrated a complete reversal in approach. The team is driving the boat like a stolen dirt bike. In the past day we've had:
" Four epic high-wind / high-speed kite failures that required all hands on deck to reboot the rig
" Done well over $1,000 in damage to the running rigging
" Melted a rope to a winch
" Wrapped two ropes so badly they had to sliced off at their clutches
" Suffered innumerable bumps, burns, and bruises to our persons
The details of our wipeouts are glorious and they are a testament to how far we have come in terms of our comfort and confidence with handling the boat well beyond the intent of its designers. All of them happened in winds that would certainly be classified as "storm conditions" and we wear these victories proudly. It has become a bit of a competition among the skippers to see how hard they can push the boat before things start shaking, smoking, and snapping.
The first wipeout happened last night just as dinner was being plated by Travis downstairs. Adam was at the helm with the bulk of the crew on deck preparing to drop our biggest kite and switch to smaller white sails. The wind had built up to irregular gusts in the low thirties that literally made the boat hum as it rushed over waves. The crew's ability to continue to maintain control was questionable in daylight and the sun was going to set shortly on a boat that would be unable to see waves and squalls. With Steve C. positioned on the bow ready to pop the release on the front corner of the sail, Darin, Jason, Steve T. and Ty assembled in the cockpit to ease it down and drag it into the boat.
Adam began the exercise to drive as far away from the wind as he could to take pressure off of the sail. Before the boat had settled into its moderate course, a monster wave picked the boat up from behind and spun it back up into the wind. The wheel was spun hard over to compensate but it was not enough to overcome the lift of the monstrous ocean swell. As the boat fell into a trough, another wave hit, a heavy roller that kicked the boat's rails into the drink. The crew on deck was able to brace themselves during this, but Travis did a cartwheel across the cabin downstairs with knives and cutlery flying everywhere (he escaped without incident). As the boat powered back up, the nose swung back downwind into the tail of the swell that had knocked them over. A momentary acceleration pushed the nose deep into a wave and Steve C. up to his shoulders in water. After, what felt like minutes, of grinding the nose of the boat into the wave, the bow rose out of the sea and the helm powered up enough to regain control. Following that, the kite dropped smoothly and everyone escaped unhurt.
Our second wipeout took place this morning around 5:00am, just after sunrise. After sailing through the night in steady breeze on white sails, the team was eager to throw up a kite at sunrise to get back on track for a 200+ mile day. Everything went great until Tyler and Adam were rudely awoken by about six gallons of water coming through their cabin window from above, right onto their faces. Tyler exclaimed, "What's going on here!?"
What followed felt like absolute pandemonium at the time, but looking back, the crew did an excellent job of containing what could have been a very dangerous and expensive incident. The inflow of water into their slumber was followed by confident demands from the top deck "all hands on deck". They scrambled up to the deck in their underwear with heavily matted sleep-hair to find what looked like the aftermath of a derailed train. The noise from our large kite powering up and then flogging in the wind is what I imagine a helicopter crash sounds like, but repeating over and over again. Upon arriving in the cockpit we looked forward to find Steve C. struggling to maintain traction on the bow, soaked head to toe, with eyes as large as dinner plates trying to make his way to pop the release at the front of the sail. The rest of the crew was in the cockpit scrambling to bring the sail under control and unwind the control lines so that it could be brought into the boat.
Steve C. was unable to pop the release because the sail was violently pulsing in the wind and then Travis gave the order to cut the line to the release. Unfortunately, Steve could not hear anything over the sound of the sail. A few moments passed and nothing was getting solved. If the sail continued to flog in the storm it would shake itself to pieces, ruining our most effective downwind weapon. The control ropes began to grind on each other as they whipped around and the air was filled with the pungent smell of burning plastic from the friction between the ropes.
Something needed to happen quickly. Adam looked at Travis calling for the line to be cut and responded by jumping down the hatch, and running for the knife rack. The first knife that looked sharp enough to get through the bulky high-strength line was a gargantuan cooking knife. He popped out of the cabin and sliced through the offending line. He only had to get about a quarter of the way through the line before the tension on it caused it to completely fail and the kite released.
Shortly after recovering from that emergency, the lines were replaced and rerun. A smaller kite was brought on deck and hoisted. It wasn't more than ten minutes before a heavy gust rolled the boat and cause the new lines to fail due to being too wet or small for their clutches and another wipeout (#3) ensued. The team's recent practice in bringing down sails quickly shone through and Darin, Jason, Ty, and Steve T. were able to quell any danger within a minute.
The last (hopefully) wipeout of the day featured Steve T. on the helm. He had been driving for a few hours, driving the boat at a furious pace while pointing the boat exactly where we needed to go. The wind had been slowly building all day and Steve was doing a spectacular job of keeping our speed up in the double digits as we overtook waves running away from us.
To maintain high speed in rocky seas, over three meters, with an overpowered kite, it is tremendously helpful to "hot wire" the main sail right in. The upside of this is that you can push the boat well beyond its design speed and not have to work very hard to do so. The downside is that if you happen to wipe out, it tends to be catastrophic. The reason being that "hot wiring" the main sail puts it into its most powerful position and the only way to get out of a wipeout is to take the power out of everything. In layman's terms: it works really well, until it doesn't.
As we hummed along we had to keep our main sail more and more powered up to compensate for the rolling seas. Without any warning a wave that was completely out of synch with the other waves we were pushing through charged at us from port, and gave us a bit of a smack our bottom. The result must have looked like a blooper reel from a demolition derby as our very delicately balanced boat spun hard to the right and the resulting shift in inertia would have flipped the boat over had it not had thirty tons welded to the bottom to prevent just that. The kite flogged as all of the energy in the wind we had been running from powered it up instantly causing the rope holding it to buckle and lurch with such force that the friction caused it to melt itself to the winch it was wrapped around. A few moments later the boat was back under control and the team demonstrated its skill in getting the kite stowed away without any damage.
We are now cruising on white sails in heavy winds. I'm not saying I'm opposed to flying kites in this wind, but if it blows up again, I'm just going to cut it all loose. I don't think I have the arm strength to muscle another kite into the boat! : D
In similar news, we've also been "boarded" for the first time. A term I was unfamiliar with until it happened. Being boarded is when a very large wave hits you from the side with sufficient height to crash well above the side of the boat. This afternoon we had about three feet of blue water fill the cockpit directly from port. The open transom quickly drained it out, but it was shocking to be sailing in sun and clear skies one moment and looking up inside a wall of crashing blue water the next. We also lost some laundry that was drying during that altercation. Fortunately, the iPod and speakers escaped completely unscathed.
We are on day three of winds in the high twenties and doing laundry on the boat is now all but impossible. It seems to get rained on, swallowed by a crashing wave, or blown out of its pegs before it has a chance to dry. I will keep you posted on how this affects morale and warn the shore crew if we will be turning up in our underwear.
Jason continues to be our good navigator and tells me that we are on course for a couple more days of racing before we hit the shores of Maui. Darin is keeping his hands busy wrestling sails around and making sure we're all well fed with top quality meals. He seems anxious to get a rod back in the water regain his top spot in the fishing derby but we are sailing way too fast to catch anything right now. And while he isn't busy being our bad navigator, Travis has been spending his days and nights tagging people off of their shifts early to help preserve strength and is doing a terrific job leading the team and managing resources.
This all may sound quite traumatic, but I assure you that we're having a blast! The food is still spectacular and we are all laughing at getting through this crazy journey. Travis grilled up fresh Mahi-Mahi yesterday night and we spend our days sipping on cool ice teas in warm breeze. The hot sun, hitting our mileage targets, and getting closer to our friends and families are all keeping our spirits high!
Missing you all like crazy,
The boys on Turnagain
