Day 6 – 230nm in 24 hours…..and a waterspout!

The last 24 hours have been pretty amazing.  Starting at 7am yesterday through 7am today, we sailed 230nm.  For a cruising boat that is almost unheard of, for a 40′ foot cruising boat that is even more rare, and for a boat with only 2 people aboard, more rare still.  The best part was that we weren’t pressing at all.  We had just main and genoa up the whole time, we barely touched the sails until early this morning and we barely adjusted course.  The autopilot steered the entire time.  We ate lunch and dinner in the cockpit just like any other day, only we just smokin’ along hour after hour.  For those not familiar the 200nm barrier for cruising boats is like the 4 minute mile or the one hour 40k TT.  It just isn’t easy to do, but we did it, only 4 days into our first ocean passage on this boat and after only sailing her for 7 days.  We hit the 200nm mark after 20 hours and if I could have exited the race course and gone home with my trophy right then, I would have, but mother nature had other ideas.  The fun was just getting started.  Another post to follow with the full description of everything, but here’s a brief recap:

We had been sailing in 25-ish knots fairly comfortably.  Chris came off her watch and suggested that we put a reef in as the winds were starting to increase to 30+, so we did – not always the easiest thing to do with the breeze at your back.  Justin’s watch went by, and when Chris came back on deck, we decided to take down the main and just use the genoa.  Then Chris called Justin on deck to put the main back up, as the seas were rolling badly, with the wind seemingly easing.  Justin came up in his underwear, expecting to give a quick hand by tailing a halyard winch.  However, once he was up on deck and we had hauled up the main to the first reef, we were suddenly pelted by rain and wind.  We both looked around and were horrifed to see a waterspout falling out of a cloud VERY close to us.  It ended up passing no farther away than a 1/4 mile, and we could see very easily the power it was instilling onto the water, which looked like it was getting beaten by a blender.  We managed to avoid it by watching where it seemed to be heading and then steering for where it had just been.  Our hearts were a’thumping.

The rest of the day has been more of the same – lots of wind, big waves (some 15-footers, meaning 30 feet crest to trough), and much to our dismay, yet another big thunderstorm that exploded all around us.  We saw a lightning strike less than 2 miles from our boat – there’s nothing more helpless than feeling that there is so little to do but just try to sail away from an electrical storm in your little boat that looks like a lightning rod.  Neither one of us have ever experienced such pelting rain as we did today.  On a lighter note, that pelting rain did wash away the pee that Justin left in the cockpit while trying to relieve himself on deck because there was too much going on for either one of us to be below.

We finally have blue skies and fluffy clouds again, although we’re still seeing 25-30 knots of wind.  We have already reached 200 miles again, for a second 24 hours, so at least it has been a quick passage through the weather.  We’re looking forward to getting out of the Gulfstream and into more settled weather.

Position – 38 deg 53.72’N, 60 deg 2.25’W