Crew Blog

Oh what a night

27 June 2008

When I came on watch two nights ago at 8:00 p.m., the previous crew had just replaced the mid-weight spinnaker for the heavy weight. The winds were rising and a challenging night was anticipated. The waves were building and rocking the boat so drastically that it was hard to keep the spinnaker inflated.

By the time 10:00 p.m. rolled around and it was approaching my turn to helm, I looked back from where I sat holding the vang in the snakepit (poised to throw it off the winch if we were threatened with a broach) and was relieved to find Skipper Mark on the helm. Mark never takes the helm except when it’s absolutely necessary and, despite the level of confidence I’ve gained in helming over these last ten months at sea, I wasn’t too keen on taking the helm that night in those conditions.

Koh had already spent quite some time on shotgun (manning the main sheet to the left of the helm) so I volunteered to relieve him.  Moving in next to Mark, I said, “So basically we’re going to fly the kite until you need sleep, right?” He had a short moment to chuckle before muttering an expletive as a wave rolled us so hard to the left that the kite was backed and collapsed against the wrap net.

Still muttering obscenities under his breath, Mark fought to manoeuvre the boat so as to gently re-inflate the spinnaker. If it re-inflates too quickly, it will pop open like the apartment building-sized parachute that it truly is and impose huge forces on the lines, halyards, and shackles controlling it. Perhaps a month ago a sudden re-inflation of the kite in similar conditions snapped the metal shank of shackle as thick as my ring finger as easily as if it had been a piece of chalk, necessitating an immediate emergency drop of the spinnaker in the worst of conditions.

This is what we were trying to avoid Wednesday night.

Finally at 11:00 p.m. Mark could take no more. “Prepare to drop the kite,” he shouted over the wind. “It’s too hard to control.” To me he volunteered in a lower voice, “My arms are about to fall off.”

To be safe, we woke the oncoming watch a bit early to have more help. For 30 more minutes, then, Mark still had to fight to control the spinnaker while we prepared as thoroughly as possible for the drop. I’d moved into the cockpit to join the other three who were pulling down into the companion way. After it was successfully down (an entire story in itself), I asked Mark if I should go back to shotgun, go forward and help with the clean up on the foredeck, or go below and help fold the kite. “Actually,” he said, “why don’t you take the helm.”

With no headsails up and nothing more than the main eased out to the shrouds, we were still doing 9 kts. When I took the wheel, Mark slumped down by the mainsheet to rest a bit.

Ahead, in the dark under the dim glow of the deck light, the rest of the crew moved about the deck tidying up the spinnaker lines and setting up to hoist the Yankee 2 to be poled out as a replacement for the dropped kite. In the heavy rain and air thick with mist, their day-glo yellow hoods and bright red foul weather gear were only moving mounds of dull red with dim white dots to Mark and I back at the helm. Their muffled voices reached us over the wind noise, some rising with directions, some acknowledging, some offering requests, and some moving around silently getting done what needed to be done without any direction at all. No one voice dominated, however. The group worked fluidly as a team.

I pointed out that representation of teamwork to Mark, adding that witnessing such moments during such challenging times were when I felt best about being on this boat.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” he said, heaving another exhausted sigh.

I wish I had a picture to offer but in the pouring rain at night in a heaving sea, none would have been possible. Those moments really aren’t about how they look, however. They’re about how they feel…how they feel to all of us.

These kinds of moments, be they the thrill of stormy kite drops or quiet Iceberg Watches at night on the very tip of the pulpit on a calm sea are also some of the things I’ll miss the most in the times that follow the end of this race.

Timothy Ettridge