Tawodi Sailing Adventures

44.10 S 105.48 E 1800 miles from Hobart

The wind, for three days, has been anywhere between 20 knots and 50 knots, blowing from the south to the southwest to the west to the northwest to the north. Capricious in power to the point of absurdity while swinging a pendulum through the points of the compass.

Lucky stars be thanked that it hasn’t blown from the east, our direction of travel.

Every day of this wind, every fraction of every nanosecond adds to the ferment of water rolling past us, rolling over us. We can hear it coming, we can hear the surf about to break and in those moments we are the beach, the breakwater, the solid bit an ocean pounds against.

Standing, looking aft through the slim wall of plexiglass that divides cockpit from interior, we watched one and then two waves casually meander over our transom and fill the cockpit. We watched an aquarium of throw cushions and lines bump up against that thin margin of protective plastic.

Three days of this and as near as the magic of forecasting can tell we have three days more, maybe four and maybe worse, maybe more wind, maybe bigger seas.

Out of a lexicon of experiences we’ve had enough of this one. The only perfection this practice brings comes as a honing of atavistic tenacity. We are resolved, we are inured. Reckless supposition might label that statement a complaint, we’d argue it more as an accounting of fact. The southern ocean’s a tough place to be, we’ve got it, we understand.

The sun cracks its face out from clouds and pounds itself on the sea. It plays in the huge bowls of water, lending depth to the confusion, range to the immensity. The sun comes out, catches a shower of blowing spume and twists it into a spray of diamonds. Birds swing themselves off wave faces at impossible speeds, shunting their bodies through catastrophic wind as if they were strolling along a park lane. And at night our bucket of ocean seethes with pockets of glowing green water; each bit of surf and froth and spray glimmering through the blackness with bioluminescence.

In brief moments there’s that beauty to this damp, cold, howling life and then we are hit again, pounded relentlessly, reminded that the ocean doesn’t care about us, the ocean’s indifferent to our state of existence.

Three more days and then, we assume, there will be more. We’ve had enough but the ocean and its weather aren’t listening to us.

At least there aren’t any icebergs. The silver lining in this monster of a gray cloud. For that much let us be eternally grateful.

44.30 S 85.30 E 2700 miles to Hobart
Two, almost three days of flying. Wing on wing with headsail out to the left and main out to the right; pole and boom like bone to our wings, lines going forward, aft and up like tendons.

Now, this point of sail, wind pushing us from the rear, has its quirks. We waddle across the southern Indian Ocean, a kind of Charlie Chaplinesque motion as wind and wave rock us. We waddle except for those moments when we arrive at the top of a wave, teetering at its summit, the bow eerily perched over nothing and we hang for breath taking nanoseconds before rushing down the long slippery slope, surfing along with a hum of huge water.

Waddle, waddle and then woosh and we are flying.
Those flying moments give us better than ten knots of boat speed. Those moments have given this boat upwards of 20 knots but that was in reliable seas where the waves marched onward like well-trained soldiers. Here the waves march wherever the hell they please. Rather than march, they run drunkenly forward and sideways; their passing leaves the rear end of Tawodi wagging ferociously as if it were the butt of an over eager puppy.
Loathe to give up much speed but not overly fond of feeling like we were sailing through a rapidly changing slalom course controlled by the whims of a child with A.D.D. we compromised by streaming out a long bite of line and chain off our transom.

This worked fine through one, two, three close calls with unintended jibes; lent enough stability to the helm that our autopilot could recover before calamity fully took control.

And then calamity scored a small one for herself.
Sails flapped, lines groaned, alarms went off. Beep, beep, beep- OFF COURSE, OFF COURSE, DISASTER, DISASTER. Full sound and fury of doom on the big seas.

The Captain, Rocket Boy that he is- jetted out to beat doom back into submission. Except for a small amount of discomfort to the Captain, who was wearing nothing but a long sleeve shirt and sea boots at the time- nevermind the reasons for his lack of clothing, catastrophe was averted.

The drogue went out after that. We would be just fine with going a little slower.
The drogue went out but it wasn’t enough to surmount the power of this water. Another wall of water came at us sidelong, forced another jibe, another set of alarms, another howling of sails and lines.

And that time it broke our boom-vang, snapped the aluminum bracket right off the mast.

Another injury added to our long list of boat wounds.

But, as the Captain says, at least the boom-vang is optional equipment. At least there’s that.
Today, like icing to our sailing cake, it’s blowing 50 plus knots.

We keep returning to our most recent weather forecast and no matter how we look at it, stand back, squint, spin it around, look at a day ahead, a day behind, it keeps telling us the same thing: wind in the low twenties.

We turn and check the wind speed instrument- squint, study on it, rub our eyes just to make sure and- yes- that’s 53 knots, that’s 51 and, hey, that’s 58. Like the saying goes- forecasts are what you expect, weather’s what you get.
Thus goes the passage, thus goes us thousands of miles from everything, sitting inside, watching the weather, reproaching the forecast and eating cookies.

44.29 S 65.32 E 3500 miles from Hobart.
“You’re lucky.”

A friend of mine once observed that those two words had a tendency to precede phrases like: “that you didn’t lose both legs,” “that the scarring doesn’t cover your whole face,” “that the hillside only took out half the house.”

Luck, it seems, has a myriad of forms, but the one so often spoken of is the kind of luck associated with dismal occurrences- the kind of luck that makes the most out of what could have been completely awful.
Last night we were lucky.

The fog, bored with just hanging around, whipped itself into rain, the wind poked its nose above 30 knots and the Captain decided we should just roll up that jib before he crawled into his bunk and called it an evening. Why wait for it to get nastier, why leave the drippy, cold nasty work for the night watch to do alone?

Stuffed into all our foul weather gear, we went out there, into the stink.

Out there, shouting at each other from either side of the cockpit- shouting out of necessity, not just for fun, rolling the headsail in and - twang- there went the furling line.
The first bit of luck came when half of the furling line recoiled, running itself into the furling drum and jamming. In the building, way past 30 knots of wind, the headsail didn’t come immediately and terribly unrolled and suddenly full. That little snagged furling line kept us from being swiftly forced into dealing with a monster of sail-cloth flapping in building winds and careening seas.

If it doesn’t seem like it would be that bad, take it on faith. It would be bad. Overpowered boat, lines flogging like cat-o-nine tails, confusion, mayhem, injury and damage soon to follow- it would be that kind of bad with all the kinetic energy of an ocean working to make it worse.
We were lucky. That didn’t happen.

The second bit of luck was that all this happened with the Captain awake, on deck and able to take advantage of that first bit of luck without having to think too hard on it.
It seems that much of sailing round the bottom of the world involves the kind of luck that keeps us from near misses with ghastly possibilities. And then much of it involves a better sort of fortune.
A few days ago a friend we met in Cape Town, South Africa, whose business brought him to the U.S.A., was riding a bus near Washington D.C. He was wearing a Tawodi crew shirt. Chit chat amongst his traveling companions came around to the shirt and to us, what we were doing, where we were. Fascinating stuff, no doubt. A young woman sitting nearby, drawn in by the fascinating stuff, interrupted, smiling and enthusiastic.

“That’s my cousin Stephen. You’re talking about my cousin.”

From us in San Diego, to him in South Africa, to her in Washington D.C.; how funny to travel so far to shrink the world so much.
There’s no doubt that we’re glad of any luck- luck that forgives the foolish and the brave, luck that hands us a winning lottery ticket, luck that keeps us and our boat upright in the world. But drawing lines between disparate dots of humanity, if our trip around the world helps that blessed event along than we are lucky in the best of ways.

Though the winning lottery ticket would be really nice as well.
We passed our nominal halfway point early in the morning, halfway round the world and lucky. Lucky not just because we’re surviving the southern oceans but because we have gathered such a good crew of humanity along the way.

44.58 S 45.26 E 4400 miles west of Hobart
Leviathans, the Kraken, Grendl and their brethren in the water monster’s union have been having a bit of a rest. Their little coffee break has given us two days of easy sailing before the wind in reliable seas under sunny skies, an altogether charming state of affairs.
Sure it’s not precisely warm and the battery cable lug going to our alternator snapped and one of our autopilot drives decided it no longer wanted to turn the boat to the left but we’ve got sweaters, spares and a Captain that can fix just about anything.

Sure the water temperatures dropped below 42 degrees Fahrenheit and the boat interior is beginning to ooze condensation but that’s ok.

At least we’re not, for the moment, being beaten senseless by charging masses of water.
A day ago, standing out in the inebriating pleasantness of a cloudless morning, I gazed off our starboard side, gazed and then spotted a big black thing. Visual acuity not being a strong suit it really did look like nothing more than a big black thing.

And then it was gone and then it was there and then I sucked in a whole bucket of air. It was the biggest damn dorsal fin I’d ever seen and it was coming right for us at ramming speed.

Instantly frozen, with my mouth flapping soundlessly, I watched as it sped towards us and then- fifty feet away, dove precipitously away. Shouting for the Captain, I spun round to watch it emerge on the other side and spied another half dozen of those big black things, those dorsal fins coming at us from the rear.

And then they were with us- a pod of Orcas careening past, around and under.

The Captain and I leaned out to look and then, as if we both had the same vision of Shamu leaping out of the water to snatch a tasty morsel, we leaned back in. No need to tempt fate on such an enjoyable day.
Aside from the Orcas the royal albatross keeps a steady command of our attentions. Angels of the southern ocean- graceful, elegant, calming to the eye as they soar past. Angels right up until they land.

Two pontoon sized feet come out and an indecorous waggling of tail feathers precede the landing, more of a plop than anything. Folding up in an odd sort of reverse origami the angels turn into something that looks like a giant feathered rugby ball with a head, a big head. Big head, big beak, a squashed ball of a body.

Purpose built for flying it seems that the landing and sitting part of existence got sacrificed along the way.
And so we have a day, perhaps a day and half more to leisurely study the birds before the next ball of weather rolls over us. We run the watermaker, fix the broken running back-stay, contemplate emptying a couple of jerry-jugs of fuel into the tank and try to scoop up as much of this bliss as time allows.

42.16 S 37.29 E 4850 Miles West of Hobart
Late summer in the Southern Indian Ocean. Sounds kind of nice. Like a phrase found on the front of a glossy vacation pamphlet. Evokes thoughts of languid days that smell of jasmine and rare spice. Makes a soul imagine the inexplicably well timed arrival of tropical drinks offered by effusively happy people.

Really now, the days aren’t that languid and one might be inclined to call the smell something rare but it’s not a smell that brings jasmine or spice to mind. As for the tropical drinks and the effusively happy people- we just don’t have the space for either.
We slid below the fortieth degree of latitude a couple of days ago and rolled into the raggedy edge of big weather. There was the familiar ramp up from 20 knots of wind to 40. There was the familiar horror of waves that could swallow houses.
Heaving, blindingly large walls of water; the kind of natural wonder one might view in an Imax movie. View and be momentarily pinned to a seat by the evocative power of that medium; pinned, clutching the arm rests, trying to tamp down an odd worrying sensation in the gut.

Experiencing them in all their liquid fleshiness is a bit different. It plays havoc with one’s sense of acceptable proportion and does little good for one’s feeling of love for nature. The moment of being bowled over by ocean water, it’s the kind of moment that closes the face, shoves the shoulders up and braces every muscle. And then it passes and whatever’s gone to the floor gets picked up, whatever’s been lost is hopefully not too important and, with luck, the only body pains taken are bruises.

We breath out and wait for the inevitability of the next one.
Flat bottomed and lacking a bilge the appearance of water on the floor in these kind of conditions comes as no surprise; it has nowhere else to go. Two days ago the water made more than an appearance, it became an overbearing passenger in our cabin. Waves running over us rolled aft to our two lazarette hatches, two Bomar hatches that make the phrase ‘water-tight integrity’ seem like a novel pastime. They are old, their gaskets are tired and they spend a good portion of their life underwater. Blame for the clamorous increase in water appearing in our interior was placed firmly on their shoulders. We freely cursed them and their failure. They did have something to do with our damp environment but the cockpit seat drain tube that had come loose, allowing buckets of water to come on inside and have a good old time, was the real problem.
Before we managed to be clever enough to check those drains there was nothing to do but perform water stoppage triage. The Captain shoved a snake of hose attached to a bilge pump up under the floor boards, attempting to suck up the water before it bubbled up to floor level- an action that seemed like we were catheterizing the boat. The operation had success but, still, the water oozed its way floor side and so for the better part of two days, when not holding on or picking up that last thing that flew across the cabin, we were on our knees sponging up puddles of water.
And then there came a reprieve. A collapse of wind strength, a tiny bit of wave ferocity relinquished. We could shower, dry ourselves out.

It’s always in these moments, when we’ve come through and are letting ourselves breath easy that destruction seems so idiotically cruel.

Just as the Captain was getting ready to shower, our autopilot lost its way, the boat accidentally jibed and as the boom swept through its arc from one side to the other it ripped out our starboard side running back.

Another snapshot for the photo gallery of failures. Glad it wasn’t one of our heads.
So goes late summer in the Southern Indian Ocean. It may not be languid or smell very nice and our effusive happiness quotient may run a little low but it’s not often dull.