.jpg)
The Quest through Doldrums
This afternoon we sailed near Rossel Island, which can be regarded as entering the windless sea area. The wind and sunshine were beautiful all around. Perseverance and Zhuhai were running parallel to each other three or four nautical miles in our windward direction. The boat speed was maintained at 10-13 knots, and the outlines of the islands and mountains were hidden in the fog. There were only low-pressure and thick dark clouds on the horizon, which seemed to be brewing something.
Suddenly, a large amount of water vapor seemed to rise on the sea in front of Perseverance. From downwind, it looked like smoke emitted after a fire was extinguished. At the same time, the dark clouds in the front gradually formed into a cone-shaped thing towards the sea below. "Everyone, get ready to reef the main and lower the headsails at any time!" Before everyone could react, Philip had already stepped onto the deck quickly saying, "this is a tornado, um... although it's my first time seeing one." Then he took out his cell phone and quickly took a couple of photos.
Looking over at this time, the funnel-shaped clouds were almost touching the water, on the sea below, a wider range of water mist was floating into the air, and the long dark clouds far away in the sky came closer in an instant. Looking from afar, Zhuhai was lowering its spinnaker, while Perseverance made an emergency change of course, sailed away from the storm and lowered its headsails. Although we had prepared the ropes, we were still watching the ‘show’ from the other side and watched this surprise from a distance.
This whirlwind connecting the sea and the sky soon gave us a taste of pain. We were surrounded by water mist. The white caps on the surrounding sea became more and more dense, and then huge raindrops fell down. The strong wind violently flipped the boat up, and the reading on the anemometer jumped from 18 knots to 40 knots in one second. The crew retracted and put the mainsail to the Reef 2 position, and the Yankee sail was lowered immediately, but the boat speed could still reach more than ten knots. The heavy rain fell as scheduled. It is no exaggeration to say that the rain was so dense that people had to turn their backs to avoid choking. However, it still made everyone feel particularly excited. After enduring several days of deck sauna, they felt a long-lost cooling-off. Later, a bottle of shower gel was handed to me from somewhere, and I had a good wash in the rain. Some crew took out their clothes and started scrubbing/washing them on the deck, and some took a shower under the mast and in a small waterfall pouring down from the sail...
The storm lasted for nearly an hour, when the clouds and rain cleared, the sun had mostly set into the sea. The cotton-like clouds left by the storm were illuminated bright red. Tropical ocean storms come and go like this. This can be regarded as truly experiencing a baptism from nature in the Doldrums Corridor.