2 August: Transformation on Biscay
I hadn’t been able to catch much sleep anyway and this was not only due to the fact that my bunk was rolling heavily. The sound of giggling and laughter was heard continuously, which made me feel that I wanted to be part of the joy up in the cockpit. Karolina, Jessica and Jonathan were having a great time up there, for sure. I was trying to understand what was so funny. It must have something to do with their new language they were trying to communicate with, while I was trying to drift away into another world where I laid in my berth. From time to time the speeches in the new language were suddenly interrupted by a loud “Whhhhooooooo! Look at that wave…!!!!” and shortly thereafter I was lifted up in my bunk, my body was rolling towards lee where I luckily was gently held up by the lee cloth that was hung along the bunk preventing me to fall out.
After a while, I had heard them preparing dinner, still giggling, when the tomatoes were rolling around in the galley due to the Atlantic swell. Jonathan had been standing on his tows trying to stir in the pan. Every other minute he could see the entire contents of the saucepan from above, when Regina was heeling over, thanks to the gimbaled stove. The next moment, Regina was rolling over to the opposite side and Jonathan could just look at the saucepan itself again - from it’s outside and bottom.
Jessica, Jonathan and Karolina then started to eat dinner, carefully balancing the plates as they carried them into the cockpit, Under these circumstances, there was no way I could stay in my bunk! I just had to come up, with or without any sleep. By the time I joined them, a lot had been eaten already. They had been hungry, obviously.
It’s interesting how your body can become acclimatized to our new life. We have by now received good “sea-legs”, meaning that none of us gets seasick by now. This does not mean that we don’t get this horrible feeling caused by the sea at all any longer, but the more you have sailed recently, the better it works. And by “recently”, I mean in the last couple of days or possibly one week. It is a shame how fast you loose your “sea-legs” again. We were all fine on the North Sea, for instance, but after a week in the calm and cozy Caledonian Canal through Scotland, we all felt a bit uncomfortable the first days on the open Scottish waters.
What really helps, in addition to getting accustomed by the movement of the sea, is a positive sense of security; a feeling of being the master and having your situation onboard under control. Being an afraid passenger is the most efficient way to provoke seasickness. How often have I not heard scared wives, married to harsh seaman, excusing themselves to not enjoying sailing particularly, since they get seasick? I believe many salty husbands should look at it the other way round: Instead of their wives not liking sailing due to them getting seasick, couldn’t it be so, that since they don’t enjoy sailing, they get seasick? Psychology has a great influence on seasickness! If so, you don’t need to go and find a new, better wife who is not affected by seasickness. Instead, make sure your current spouse begins to like sailing, letting her/him take control of the boat, take the big decisions on when to reef or what should be the next harbour. And if the trip for the day just meant an hour or two of sailing, why not? An hour for an inexperienced sailor is a much longer period, involving a lot more concentration, than it might be for you. For your spouse, sailing across the bay on a sunny calm day might be an adventure, and possibly even an enjoyable one! If you then invite your spouse for dinner – oh, no! not in a restaurant, but onboard – maybe you have come a further step away from seasickness and towards a future enthusiastic sailor in your partner? Oh, and don’t forget the washing up after your meal, which I often do…
I was still standing in the companionway in my thoughts, starring at these huge waves. They must have come while I was lying in my bunk trying to find some rest for the night watches. Oh, maybe I’d better return to my cozy and warm bunk, again, since this did not look quite as comfortable out here…. I asked Karolina if it had been like this for a long time, and she answered that you need to get used to the waves, but for sure they felt huge and scary, no doubt about that! Then, we both discussed reefing. Possibly, we should take in some on the main, especially now, when it was getting dark. On the other hand, speed was good (and fun!) to ride over the waves. Besides, we needed the speed to get to La Coruna in time, since there were gale winds predicted on the coming Thursday, so we better hurried to reach Spain before that.
We were 100 miles out from Ireland by now, which had just taken us 14 hours to complete. Regina was speeding along between eight and nine knots steadily with some surfs into the nines. Our DuoGen was deployed and generated ample power, in this speed even charging our batteries, despite us having 2 plotters with radar running, one PC, the fridge and the freezer and, of course, our loyal auto-pilot doing the hard work steering. The DuoGen is so easily deployed and restored, giving such a great amount of electrical power, that it deserves my deepest compliments.
I sent off a request for a GRIB weather file via Iridium, to see the newest weather forecast for Biscay. The GRIB-weather-file unpacked onto the MaxSea navigation software, claiming it should currently blow a steady wind from north-west at 20-25 knots, which was pretty close to reality, hence our fantastic speed. Towards the morning, it should decrease to some 15 knots, so we decided to keep the main and genua as they were and to continue the joy-ride over the Atlantic waves.
The Biscay has been existent in our minds with a mixture between threat and thrill. Maybe a thrilling threat, while none of us either like threats nor any particularly adventurous thrills. Our picture of Biscay was heavily influenced by numerous stories about its dangers and storms. Although we knew that these stories were mainly applicable for the autumn and winter on Biscay, it was still this reputation that we couldn’t get rid of when we were thinking and planning about crossing the Biscay. We were both a bit frightened regarding its crossing.
Two times earlier we had had this feeling of butterflies in our stomachs when leaving port. I was convinced that this time wouldn’t be he last time, either. The first time had been when we were casting off from our home-town after having said good-bye to family and friends. The second time had given the butterflies when we were to cross the North Sea. This third time, seemed even worse than both of the previous times. The Biscay would be the longest leg up to date. Not many we knew personally had crossed it. Others we had heard of had been unlucky and sailed into bad weather, despite “summer”.
We have not lost our respect for the North Sea, but at least our own experience of it was positive, yet tiring. We knew we had been lucky with the weather crossing the North Sea. Would we be as lucky over Biscay?
Karolina and I studied carefully all weather forecast areas we had to cross on our way from Kinsale, Ireland, to La Coruna, Spain. The first area was called Fastnet. Doesn’t this recall memories of the Fastnet Race in 1979, when so many yachts and lives were lost in a storm off the Fastnet Rock just south of Ireland where we were right now? That storm had been druing summer. The next area was called Sole and not until thereafter we were to enter the area actually called Biscay to finally make our landfall in an area called Fitzroy close to the notorious Cap Finisterre. All these weather forecast areas were to be crossed by us; all in one go! The more than 500 nautical miles would take some 4 days and nights to cover.
Far too short after our arrival in charming Kinsale, we let the mooring lines go again at 8.30 on 30 July, ready to meet Biscay.
And so, we were underway.
One hundred miles and 14 hours later, this joyful giggling of Jessica and Jonathan did not quite rime with the anxious feelings we had had in Kinsale, and still had for that sake. We just needed to look at these huge waves rolling under Regina to start wondering.
We were still on the continental shelf with just about 100 m in depth under our keel, hence the confused sea, possibly? I hoped that once we had left the shelf going from some 100 m to over 4000 m in depth (!) the sea would become more comfortable.
Jessica and Karolina went off watch and to sleep soon after dinner. At least Jessica did. I don’t think Karolina found too much sleep in her excitement, just as I did have the same difficulties. Jonathan and I were now alone on watch. It had become totally dark. This was an even more strange feeling, ghosting along in 8.5 to 9 knots of speed, neither seeing the waves under nor around us. We could feel them and we could hear them, but not see them. I felt like driving on the motorway with the pedal to the metal, running full speed without seeing anything other than the radar revealed, which was not much thanks to very little traffic out here.
Suddenly there was a big bang and a huge wave from the side slammed against the hull continuing over deck and crashing onto the wind screen. What a force water can have!
“Did you get wet?” I heard Karolina’s voice from her bunk, obviously still not asleep. “No, no, I’m dry here in the cockpit, but that must have been a huge wave!” I answered. A swirling noise followed resulting from the water on deck finding its way into the outlets and back to where it belonged.
I fetched some nuts, which we had purchased explicitly for the “nights on Biscay”. I considered this one of these. It was actually cozy sitting under the sprayhood listening to all the water rushing by, feeling the boat moving, even if you don’t see much. It was very seldom Regina was sailing under 8 knots right now. Most of the time it showed between 8.5 and 9.3 knots and a surrealistic feeling of speed and the grandeur of the ocean overcame.
Lacking the moon made the night to a dark and black experience, while the stars got their chance to be regarded at. There were not many vessels around and the few that we did spot on the radar were trawlers. These, on the other hand, can make you go nuts, since they don’t follow any rules other than the fish they are following on their sonars. Fishing vessels can change course without notice, if the fish do the same, do seldom answer on the VHF and we had to divert course to avoid collision more than once on this big sea. But I would possibly act in the same way, maybe, if I were a fisherman working all year around and then getting a “stupid” pleasure craft in the way, exactly where the fish was!
“Jonathan, are you awake? Don’t you want to go to sleep?”, “Me?! – No!” Jonathan responded, “I am looking at all the countless stars above. Daddy, all these stars, are they also turning around other stars, just as we travel around the sun and the sun in its galaxy?”
Then we had a discussion about radar range and frequencies, why VHF can’t be heard behind high islands and how come Iridium is working in the Gigahertz range. The difference between geostationary satellites and LES were mentioned. Jonathan spotted some satellites in the night sky and we speculated what type of satellite this could be. A spy satellite, possibly? New food for discussion! Why were such needed? What can they see and how are they being used. Many questions that can become very difficult to answer.
At midnight, Jonathan finally turned in, with his life jacket on, sleeping in the saloon, so he could be ready for his next watch, as he explained. I knew for sure that this fellow was not waking up again until mid day, but in any case it is a good precaution to have the life jacket on while sleeping. Jessica, on the other hand, had put on her pajamas earlier and was sleeping in her berth as if we were ashore with the only difference that she had set her lee-cloth, not to fall out of her bed. At the same time she requested to continue to sail and not turn on the engine, since this would disturb her while sleeping.
The black night belonged to myself now. These first hours after midnight were still quite chilly. Maybe that would change further south? Regina was still pushing on quickly and I could hear and feel each wave passing under us. Sitting in the cockpit all by myself in the black dark, I was a happy man. I felt a deep gratitude to our made decisions in general and for the good weather we had in particular. Our courage to actually having changed our lives 180 degrees was once again going through my mind. Funny, I thought, 180 degrees is exactly what I could read on our current compass course heading south, so for sure we had done this 180 degrees turn literally. This was for sure the most thrilling and exciting thing I had ever done. Would this be able to continue like this? For how long? But was it important to know for how long? The current moment was what counted for me now. And right now, Regina was happily jumping over the waves on a southerly course. Jessica, Jonathan and Karolina seemed happy. Biscay was friendly this day, yet powerful. And I was in the middle of it all; in the center of my personal joyride, riding the great waves in life.
In the morning of the second day at sea the winds had eased, just as predicted. Once more, I was climbing the companionway, but this time at least after a short period of sleep! The waves had becalmed and we were only making some 6 to 7 knots. I looked around onto the gray sea, still half asleep. Suddenly I heard as if a wave broke very close by. And there again: another sound of breaking water. Suddenly they were all there, coming from all sides to visit us: dolphins! This was a smaller species, even more playful than the ones we had seen on the North Sea. Jessica and Jonathan were, of course, excited and we all made an excursion to the bow of Regina, watching them play, jump and swim so closely under Regina’s bow that from time to time we thought we could hear their tail fin hitting the hull slightly. Once, a dolphin breathed right under Jonathan, as he was leaning over the side of the boat, so he got wet by the dolphin’s breath. “I got a kiss!”, he shouted. We felt that we almost could touch their bodies; so close they were to us, all wanting the prime position riding our bow wave.
Sharing this joy, sitting on deck all four of us, watching the dolphins is the reward for little sleep in a rolling home. It is not so often that we actually all are awake at the same time, since often either Karolina or I are trying to catch some sleep while the other one of us two is on watch. Jessica and Jonathan join us when they please, but they can also have an hour’s watch during daytime by themselves, while I am writing e-mails or writing stories for our web-page.
On another occasion when we all gathered in the cockpit for dinner, we noticed another sailing boat approaching from south-west. The excitement was obvious, since we had not seen much traffic at all and particularly no sailing boat for a long time. I noticed the somewhat strange bearing they came from, since I couldn’t think of any port or even land from that drection. At least not within vicinity... I had merely disclosed my thoughts to the others, when the VHF called for attention. “Sailing vessel, this is Stella Maris – OVER”. I grabbed the microphone and answered “Stella Maris, this is Swedish sailing yacht Regina. Are you the red boat heading north east?”. Of course it was, and so we got a good chat on the VHF, just as I had read so often that real blue water cruisers do on the open oceans.
Never would we call up another boat just to say hello when sailing in our home waters, would we? There were so many boats around anyway, and why call somebody you don’t know in first place? What would you say to them, anyway?
But here, in the middle of Biscay, it was different. We eagerly wanted to know who they were, where they came from, where they were heading and if they had had any problems.
It was with a transformed feeling that I now spoke with Stella Maris. A feeling of affiliation! We must have become true blue water sailors talking to other cruisers on an equal level, not any longer as the dreamer ashore, walking the docksides talking to the guest boats in the harbour. We were now one of them!
Not less was the excitement when we learnt that Stella Maris in fact came from where no land was to be found close by. Their last port of call was the Azores and they were heading home for Kiel in Germany after a five year circumnavigation around the globe. They took it for granted, it seemed, that we, too, were out on a grand tour asking what our plans were, speaking about Tahiti, Bora Bora and Rarotonga, as if they were islands of an archipelago close by.
We felt we changed over the baton in the middle of the Biscay, them returning from a five year long world cruise and us on our way out into unknown adventures. After exchanging e-mail addresses, we wished each other good luck and they continued on their north-easterly course while we headed south.
We had become true blue water sailors - right here, on Biscay.
