When I packed for my two-month stay in Sweden I imagined I
might try to go sailing somewhere, but in my imagination this involved somehow
going to Greece or Italy and sailing around in a warm climate. However, when the opportunity arose (see
earlier post) to sail the Bergen to Shetland race, I jumped at the chance. The fact the race fit so neatly between the
end of my work in Lund and the beginning of the conference I am attending in
Uppsala made me think it was meant to be, fate was calling, so to speak.
I already talked about my trip to Bergen to race with the
Kelso crew and meet the boat owner, Jon, so you can just read all about that in
an earlier post if you so choose.
So, to begin, the 198 NM (which stands for nautical mile)
Shetland Race is a “Category 3 with life raft race,” which means it comes with
10 single spaced pages of what you need to have on board, down to the exact
number of flares.
It also means you must have a life raft.
I arrived in Bergen on the Sunday night before the race,
because Monday the crew was going to meet at the boat to go over the safety
features.
This was the first time I was meeting most of the crew. They don’t always sail together either, so it
was the first time some of them were meeting each other too.
I had met Sverre on my last trip, but in the intervening
time had not learned to pronounce his name.
Sverre was put in charge of food and while I am normally a food control
freak, he was an excellent choice for such a task. I knew the minute he showed
up with a dozen loaves of bread because the bread in Shetland wasn’t good
enough to use for the return, that Jon had chosen well. Granted, we didn’t eat a dozen loaves of
bread, but it was good to have them anyway.
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| Sverre |
Sverre’s son Erik was also coming along. Erik was pronounced more like Aarick but at
least I could say his name, sort of. He
worked nights, so was coming straight from work and to sleep for the beginning
of the race.
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| Erik and Sverre resisting authority |
The two other new crew that I had not met before included,
Rune, which for the first two days I thought was Luna, but in reality there is
just something Norwegians do with their Rs that I cannot for the life of me
figure out.
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| Rune before the start |
Then there was Terje, which most closely resembled to my hearing
“Talyia” but also with an R sound I could not pronounce. When I finally saw it spelled out I had no
idea how what they were saying matched what I saw in print.
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| Terje steering in no wind |
Also, Jon, which I pronounced Jon, but all the Norwegians pronounced
more like Yawn unless they were talking to me, then they would call him Jon for
my benefit, I think.
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| Jon at the start |
My name just sounded the same because Norwegians all speak
English.
This meant I knew when they were talking to me, but I’m
pretty sure they didn’t really know when I was talking to them.
I knew when they were not talking to me when they spoke in
Norwegian. This made it easy to not have
to pay attention a lot of the time.
I did enjoy listening to them talk Norwegian. I liked to imagine what they were talking
about based upon words that sounded like English ones. In terms of sailing this wasn’t too hard and
I could figure out what we were doing, but mostly I just made up what they were
talking about otherwise.
At times on the crossing I would be sitting in the companionway
semi-conscious while the second shift was above deck and think to myself, “now
they are talking about kittens,” “now
they are talking about a movie.” I have
no idea what they were really talking about, probably not kittens.
After the introductions, and
because this was a safety meeting, we did a man overboard drill, though since
we were still at the dock, it was a bit more of a theoretical drill than an actual
one. Still, Jon put on a wetsuit and
jumped in the water and had to stay there until we figured out how to pull him
out. Technically we had gone over how to
do this before he jumped in the water, but it still took some time. This involved using the appropriate safety
equipment and hoisting him out of the water. I am glad we didn’t have to try it in 20-foot
seas. Though, to be honest, it would have
been mostly impossible in 20-foot seas, so there is that.
Our safety meeting also included looking at the laminated
picture of the boat where all the emergency gear was identified in Norwegian, which
in a crisis wasn’t going to be of much use to me, but I figured would be
moderately helpful to everyone else.
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| Emergency Map of boat |
We then discussed where to find the life raft (the back of
the boat) and the EPIRB, which is an emergency beacon (also affixed to the back
of the boat).
Unlike sailing in Hawaii where I now know we take a
relatively cavalier attitude towards ocean travel, we were required to wear
life vests and if we moved outside the confines of the cockpit we needed to be
attached to the boat, which, I might add is a royal pain in the ass. Actually, it was preferred that we be attached even in the cockpit.
As it was explained to me, the North Sea is cold.
You won’t live long in it.
If you fall off the boat it is likely you will die of
hypothermia before you can be picked up.
However, at least your body will be floating on top of the water because
you are wearing a life vest. Thus, it is
best to be attached to the boat, even though this could mean if you are thrown
off the boat, you will just be dragged along in the water until you drown.
The goal, really, is not to fall off the boat.
After the safety meeting I felt much better about the life
saving techniques on hand.
So, safety meeting completed, the next day while everyone
else went about their normal lives, I went to Bergen to try to secure a pair of
boots.
In terms of foreshadowing, I really wish I had managed to
get to that sailing store in Gothenburg before they closed! It turns out that having good footwear is
kind of crucial.
After some wandering around, I was able to find a pair of white-soled
rubber boots (boats and black soles are not meant for each other). The only pair with white soles were
mid-calve, but with wool socks I figured they were better than Keen sandals, my
other shoe option.
They were.
With the race set to begin the next day, Jon went to the
skippers meeting and to keep me entertained while he was busy, he had asked a
friend of his to take me rock climbing.
Jon is both a sailor and a rock climber and so has friends
in both worlds, though like mine, there are very few that cross over.
His friend, whose name began with a ø, but capitalized,
stopped by his house after dinner to pick me up.
In Norway you don’t really worry about
it getting dark in the summer so you can go climbing whenever you want.
We drove out of town to a climbing area
with a view of the North Sea from the top of the cliff and right above a small
lake. It had about 20 different routes
that were super fun and getting to climb again made me happy. We climbed maybe 8 or 10 of them before I
decided I should probably try to avoid getting too sore for the big race the
next day.
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| Norwegians climbing |
We hiked out about 10:30 PM in full
daylight.
I love Norway.
The next day we all arrived, got our
fairly considerable amount of gear stowed and headed towards the start. Erik, having arrived just from work, went
below and promptly fell asleep in the fore cabin.
The race began at 1:00 but we had to
motor out an hour to get to the starting line, which was out of the fjords and
at the entrance to the North Sea.
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| Motoring to the start |
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| The start lined up with the light house |
There were 45 boats entered into the
race, which was the biggest start in which I personally have ever competed.
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| The Start: Photo from Google Plus by Ulv K Hjellestad |
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| The Start: Photo from Google Plus by Ulv K Hjellestad |
The race also came with the most
massive committee boat – the Norwegian coast guard was out to start the race
and there was no missing the starting horn!
I was assigned the jib, but in reality
the race is in one direction for 198 NM, so there was not much in the way of
maneuvering after our start, which was fun, quick, and we were well positioned,
not that it matters a ton in such a long race.
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| More pictures of the start |
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| Start |
We had a set course and once the sails
were trimmed for the course, there wasn’t much else to do in that regard,
though I will be the first to admit that paying attention to the sails over the
course of what turned out to be a 38:28:02 race was not something I did as well
as I should have.
Next time.
While the wind was light, we were
making good progress. The wind report had called for a light spot off the coast
of Norway and then the winds would increase in intensity as we moved further
onto the North Sea, as would the waves – up to 6 meters, which is about 20
feet.
On the map the light spot didn’t look
all that big. But maps, not being 1:1 reflections of reality can be deceiving.
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| Not what I had thought the North Sea would look like.... |
In reality the “light spot” was
virtually windless and kept us captive for somewhere around 20-24 hours of
sailing. Well, we were “sailing” in the
sense that we were on a sailboat. However,
the sails were flogging most of the time because there was simply not enough
wind to keep momentum going.
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| High speed... |
The upside was that all the boats were
in the same position and for endless hours we could still see most everyone
going agonizingly slow towards Shetland.
Now, I have been trained to sail by an
amazing sailor (thanks Ron) who taught me that we are not supposed to talk while
sitting on the rail (sitting on the rail means sitting on the edge of the boat
to help distribute weight to enhance speed – in light wind, it means sitting on
the low side of the boat) and we should avoid what he called “picnicking,”
which is when everyone starts eating at the same time and nobody really pays
attention to the race.
Ron is a big advocate of keeping your
head in the race at all times.
He also advocates cutting off the
handle of your toothbrush to save on weight for long distance races.
The first two items are both excellent
pieces of advice, and ones that make a lot of sense, but which we failed to
follow because it is just not all that possible to avoid such behavior for 20
hours. In fact, talking makes the time
go a bit faster.
Maybe if we were professional sailors
we could do this.
We were not.
As for the toothbrush issue, I know
that I for one brought an entire toothbrush with me. I cannot say what the other members of the
crew brought.
Sorry about that, it probably contributed
to our loss.
Anyway, things continued apace.
At some point Erik woke up, saw that
nothing at all was happening and went back to sleep in the fore cabin.
We watched the sunset somewhere close
to midnight and you can’t really complain about being able to watch the sun
“set” on a summer evening over the North Sea.
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| Somewhere around 11:30 PM.... |
Ostensibly, we were working in two
teams of three – Jon, me and Erik were one team and Sverre, Rune, and Terje
were the other. We were working on a 3-hour
shift system, but only casually using this system during the day.
Once it became “night” in the sense
that the clock said the time should indicate darkness, even though it wasn’t
dark, half our crew went below to sleep.
This meant that Jon, Erik and myself
were on watch when the steering broke.
Steering, it turns out, is helpful for
going in the correct direction. Having
no ability to steer meant that despite the fact we were not going fast towards
the finish line to begin with, now we were floating aimlessly unable to really
go the direction of the finish intentionally.
Jon, who was driving, was the first to
realize that he could no longer steer a course.
He leaped below to get the emergency tiller, helpfully marked on our
laminated map in Norwegian, but since it was his boat, he knew where it was.
I figured all would be fine, since he
could bypass the steering issue by using the tiller.
Except the tiller didn’t fit on the
coupling.
Now we had a problem, because we had no
mechanism for being able to steer at all.
While it is likely that the problems
with the steering were caused by 20 hours of flogging and trying to sail in no
wind, the up side was that the sea was calm and there were no waves.
The lack of steering was sufficient
cause to wake everyone up and have all hands on deck, despite the fact there
wasn’t much to be done by all hands and it made the cockpit really crowded. Still, like any construction crew type
scenario, it is important to have people standing around waiting to be helpful.
So everyone got up and supportively
handed Jon tools while he went into the steering compartment to try to figure
out if it could be fixed.
Jon is pretty tall – somewhere around
6’4 I’d imagine and the steering compartment is not really made for someone
that tall. I’m not exactly sure how he
fit in there, but since I was entirely irrelevant to the supportive handing of
tools process, I decided I would be most useful by watching for other boats and
making sure they understood we could not steer.
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| Jon fixing the steering -- Photo by Sverre |
Nobody got that close, but I did watch
most of the remaining fleet that was not in front of us, get in front of us
while we did circles in the water.
On the up side, Jon, it turns out, has
a bit of DIY MacGyver in him.
Erik, after being enlisted to bring up
tools, declared that he was going to bed. After an hour or so, Rune suggested I
go to bed too.
On the yellowbrick, which is a tracking
software for sailing races, you can see when we loose our steering. It is when all the other boats pass us.
After some work, Jon was able to get
the steering fixed, which was more than a good thing since otherwise we would
have been consigned to drifting aimlessly and who knows how long that would
have lasted.
We went back to floating primarily in the correct direction, but now behind everyone else.
After being beaten
into submission by 20 plus hours calm, the wind finally picked up.
A lot.
I can’t really remember when we got
wind, perhaps I was asleep when it started.
However, from no wind, we ended up in 25-30 knots of wind, possibly up
to 35 knots and 20 foot swells.
In other words, it sort of looked like
the North Sea I was expecting to see.
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| Before it got windy |
However, with such weather comes lots of waves over the side of the boat
and it was only a matter of minutes before we were all soaking wet, despite
layers of foul weather gear and wool clothing.
This is when you realize you should
have more layers on but there isn’t anything to do about it because there are
not necessarily more layers to put on and if they exist, they are wherever your
bag got stowed and not accessible.
During the last 15-18 hours of high
wind and high seas, Terje told me stories about his time on an oil
tanker. Though some of these stories might have been told on the way back, it gets blurry. As the wind battered us, he told
me about sailing through 40-foot seas, (I don’t think I’m exaggerating the
number), massive enough to make you wonder if a huge tanker might not
survive. He told me about having been in
a hurricane with winds so powerful that they had unrolled the massive fire
hoses on deck and had them flying free in the wind. He told me about sailing through the English
Channel (I think, though I could be remembering this wrong) and possibly losing
some missiles off the ship he was on due to high seas and horrific weather.
Despite being bolted and firmly affixed, they washed off the ship as if they
were not even attached. Fortunately this
did not cause an international incident.
I like talking about disaster in the face of bad
weather. It makes it more interesting.
Also, Terje owns a Tesla so we talked about that. I love Teslas.
I also like being on 20 foot rolling seas. However, they are impossible to take an
accurate picture of to truly demonstrate how big they are.
In what was probably at least 30 knots of wind, possibly
more, we did a sail change.
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| The sail change involved taking a piece off the forestay... long story |
By we, I mean Jon and Erik.
They were on the foredeck and Terje was helping keep the sail from blowing off the boat. Since I was in the cockpit, I cannot claim
to have been instrumental to this sail change.
My job was simply to help lower the jib halyard while they did the
significant work.
What can’t be seen in this picture, is just how big the
waves are, just how much we are pitching into the water, and just how high the
winds are, blowing the sails and making the jib change more than a little
challenging.
The second 15-18 hours or so of the race were in these
conditions. I learned that I can
actually fall asleep in the following positions.
·
Sitting in the companionway curled into a ball.
·
Sort of laying/sitting on the high side berth
with my feet against the table to keep me from falling off the berth. I was so
cold and wet that I couldn’t really stop shivering until Sverre kindly gave me
a blanket and Erik’s sleeping bag. Erik,
at this point, must not have been asleep even though we were ostensibly on the
same shift. Like I said, our rotations
got a bit off.
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| Me sleeping -- but you can't tell how the boat is moving from the still picture |
·
On the way back I learned I could sleep on the
high side with my head almost touching the floor and my feet above them, having
lost all sense of what is up and down.
·
Technically, while I did not sleep this way on
this particular race, I have also slept curled around a winch with my back to
the waves so that when they hit I didn’t get hit in the face.
All this goes to demonstrate that despite the fact I mostly
think I cannot sleep when in my actual bed, I can sleep in a variety of very
uncomfortable positions.
And by sleep I mean a semi-loss of consciousness and the
sort of liminal place you enter between sleep and waking where it is hard to
move. Compounded by the fact that with
one exception, I just didn’t bother taking off the foul weather gear – because
when you are in a moving container being thrown around by 30 knot winds and 20
foot waves, getting undressed is simply too much effort.
At this point, I should also insert the most important thank
you of all – to Jon’s girlfriend Monica, who let me use her foul weather
gear. I would have died without it.
Literally.
At some point around 3 in the morning our second night out,
we neared Shetland and the end of the race.
Someone came below to wake me up and I was dispatched to
wake Erik up. However, he just ignored
me, being a sound sleeper.
I came outside to see the city of Lerwick in Shetland,
Scotland and the surrounding bay. It was
mostly surreal since at 3:00 am it was still light and while we had been at sea
for going on 38 hours, we ended up racing another boat to the finish line and
they kept shutting us out of passing them.
Bastards.
Well, technically, we would have done
the same thing to them.
So we finished the race, rafted our
boat to all the rest that were already in (the winner beat everyone else by
hours) and celebrated our arrival with a toast of Scottish whisky.
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| Some of the other boats |
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| More boats |
I don’t normally drink scotch at 4:00
am, but it seemed like an appropriate occasion to do so.
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| I know this is vodka not whiskey, but it is the same brand |
Then we all went to our respective
berths and slept for the remainder of the morning.
We actually had a big day ahead of us.
Sverre had rented a car so that we
could see some of Shetland. We also
needed to see if it was possible to get the tiller fixed in case the steering
broke on the way back and we needed to use it.
This meant that our travels around
Shetland were determined by when we dropped off the tiller and when we needed
to pick it back up.
In other words, after dropping off the
tiller to an ironworks place, which of course existed here in Shetland, but is
something you never would have been able to find in Hawaii, we only had a few
hours to drive to the Southern part of Shetland and back to pick it back up.
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| For all your emergency welding needs... |
Shetland is described by the Lonely
Planet guidebooks as follows:
“The rugged and
remote Shetland Islands– a collection of mighty, wind-ravaged clumps of brown
and green earth rising from the frigid waters of the North Sea – are Scotland’s
northerly outpost and feel miles away from anywhere.”
This isn’t the nicest description, and it doesn't really make you want to go there. However, I kind of liked it. You can still see where peat is harvested from the “ravaged clumps of brown and green earth.” I imagine that you then sold your peat, which accounts for the name of these accountants.
Back to our trip, Sverre for all
outward appearances seemed to be a fairly mild mannered Norwegian who works at a
school with deaf and hearing impaired kids as a teacher and administrator. However, put him behind the wheel of a
mini-van and tell him he only has a couple hours to show us the island and he
turns into the equivalent of an Indian taxi cab driver and I mean this with no
disrespect for either party. I’m not
sure what the speed limit was, but I am sure we broke it, given we were passing
all the other cars on the road.
Evidently, it is sort of a novelty for Norwegians to get to pass people
on the road.
I was excited about seeing Shetland
ponies, especially since the brochure had promised that they wear sweaters
knitted in Shetland designs.
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| I did not see a pony wearing a sweater and I was looking |
Sadly, we did not see any
sweater-wearing ponies. We did see some non-sweater wearing ponies,
but because we were in a mini-van breaking all known traffic speed limits, I
only have blurry pictures of them.
Rune and I were in the back-back seat
talking about global political economic issues with my occasional interruption
to say “ooh—ponies!”
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| Ponies |
Then we would go
back to the topic of unequal distributions of wealth and the new Pickety book,
which I have not yet read, and the fact that what are called “conservatives” in
Sweden are like Democrats in the United States.
At least, this was the conversation until I saw another pony.
After stopping at a crossing gate to
let a plane take off (the road crosses the airport runway),
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| Much like a train, there was a gate to keep you from wandering onto the runway during takeoff or landing |
we arrived at the
lighthouse on the Southern tip of the Shetland Island and instead of ponies, I
became instantly distracted by the thousands of Puffins that were standing
around and sometimes flying.
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| The dots are puffins |
I had never really given much thought
to wanting to see a Puffin in the wild, but I can now check seeing Puffins in
their natural habitat off my list of things to do in this life.
It was worth the trip.
They are adorable and much smaller than
I expected. Also, they fly, but not
well. I wanted to take a lot more
pictures of them but my camera was almost out of batteries and I wanted to
hopefully save some batteries for the race back.
We wandered around the lighthouse a
bit, which was built by the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson of Treasure Island fame.
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| I could work here.... |
Evidently we hit a special day because the
Orcas were in the bay. I did not see an
Orca because, much like shooting stars, I am usually looking the wrong way when
the breach. Still, it was nice to know
they were there.
Since we were on the speed tour version
of the lighthouse and because we had to pick up the tiller, thus ensuring a
back up steering mechanism for our return, which was far more important than
seeing Puffins and Orcas and wind-swept Scottish scenery, we drove like bats
out of hell back to Lerwick.
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| Wind-swept Shetland scenery captured from the back of a mini-van |
The tiller was picked up and brought
back to the boat where it was determined that it did indeed fit. The welding job, which had cost Jon a beer at
a local pub later that evening, was excellent.
Most of us just stayed in the mini-van
for this part. Then it was off to Scalloway,
which is directly across the middle of the Island and not very far from
Lerwick. Here, we saw a World War II
monument commemorating the efforts by Norwegians and Shetlanders to resist the
Nazis by using small fishing vessels to cross the North Sea to bring
supplies to the resistance in Norway, help fight the resistance in Norway, and
bring people from Norway to Shetland.
Having just crossed the North Sea, I can appreciate a bit more what this
particular monument honors.
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| Terje by the memorial |
We were all somewhat hungry and so
wandered into the local pub, which sadly didn’t serve food, only beer and packaged
chips. We had that instead, except
Sverre because he was driving. Also, I
had a cider because the last time I was in Scotland I was 19 years old and had
my first cider, thus introducing me to the fact that alcohol was indeed a
pleasant drink to be had and that I should perhaps continue to drink it. I like to call cider my gateway drug. I owe Scotland a lot.
The pub had a Viking design to it with
lots of battle axes and stuff. It turns
out that according to the Norwegians, the Shetlanders like Norway and think of
themselves as mostly Norwegian and not very Scottish.
And, by the way, viking helmets do not come with horns I was informed. That would be tactically stupid.
I cannot say I have enough evidence one way
or another to take a side on Norwegian/Shetland nationality debates. Also, in the upcoming vote for Scottish independence, the Shetlanders want to double down and get out of Scotland too. Evidently, they don't really feel like part of the larger nation. They do seem to have their own language here.
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| I think they want us not to litter |
To make things more complex, we ate
each morning at a lovely café with a Norwegian name that served excellent
English scones and pots of tea.
Personally, I am for the dissolution of nationality and a further
embrace of cultural hybridity as exemplified by this cafe. As long as there are good scones.
Last on our agenda for the day was to
meet up with the welder to buy him a pint at the local pub and then attend the
awards ceremony.
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| I would have assumed that this crew would have won the race based on their outfits, but it turned out they were just well-funded by a weapons and marine product manufacturer |
Both were completed and
both involved having a pint and in the case of the awards ceremony, tiny
plastic glasses of wine. Since we came
in 10th for the Shetland part of the race, which is actually
remarkable given we floated in circles for around two hours, we mostly
lurked in the back by the food.
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| We are in the back. Photo by David Gardner |
I will
say that Norwegians cheer like I would imagine Vikings to cheer – with a sort of “heeyyy” sound, which
was fun to listen to.
Then we went by a wine shop and back to
the boat where we drank wine and ate more chips until we ran out of wine, so we
decided to head over to the Sailing club to see what was going on. Normally, time would matter in these types of situations, but since it was still light outside, time had stopped mattering for
the most part.
The sailing club was filled with music,
drinks and people dancing.
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| The sailing club |
Erik, the
youngest in our midst, immediately declared that he was too young for this and
proceeded to sit along the wall. Some of
us had some more drinks and did a bit of dancing. The band was often playing country music and
so I just celebrated the fact that I was dancing with a bunch of Norwegians in
the Shetland Yacht club to country music.
What more could you ask for, really?
Our final rest day in Shetland involved
mostly eating and wandering around on our own.
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| They have a home for widows |
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| The other side of Lerwik on a nice walking path... |
My quest was to purchase better wool socks and waterproof gloves for the
return. Sverre’s quest was to purchase a
pair of Shetland-patterned gloves for his wife.
Rune’s quest was to avoid shopping as much as possible and see more of
the area. Terje got candy for his kids and some duty free
whiskey, but given he was staying in a hotel I am not super sure about his
quest for the day. Jon’s quest was to shop for
cheaper boat parts than you can get in Norway.
Erik’s quest was to sleep and watch TV. I think he had planned to watch a rugby match, but I don’t know
if he made it to that. He sleeps a lot.
We had a team meeting to talk about the
return and how to sail more competitively.
We determined we would do four-hour shifts and be more rigorous about
these so as to stay focused, we would sit on the rail in a more focused manner
too, and try to keep our focus on sail trimming throughout. We then had dinner at a Chinese restaurant,
watched Bridget Jones’ Diary, which
was an interesting choice for sailors, and tried to make it an early night.
Sunday marked the start of the return. There was some unrafting to be done, since
all the boats were attached to each other and then we all went out to the
start. The race committee had inserted two buoys from
the previous year that we had to round in a sort of jig-jag fashion, making the
only technical part of the sail the first 20 minutes or so. We thought that perhaps the course had been
set this way to make it more entertaining for spectators on land, since after
we got out of the bay it was a “drag race” as one of the other sailors had put
it, to the finish.
We began preparing for the start,
checking times, angles, etc. I was on
jib and spinnaker for the start and depending on how things looked, we would
set the spinnaker either right before or immediately after the start. I have to say that getting to fly a spinnaker
with 43 (some had dropped out) boats in a relatively small space was incredibly
fun and exciting. We had a decent start,
were in the middle sort of.
There was yelling of “starboard” everywhere, but in Norwegian. Imagine 43 big boats all crammed together
trying to maneuver through this very tight zig-zag course.
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| We are going out that way |
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| We are the yellow one -- Photo by Leslie Irvine |
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| Our sail shape sucks here.... |
We were doing pretty well until we had
to gybe the spinnaker, which was not pretty in any sense of the word, but were
able to recover and continue to carry the spinnaker out the channel.
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| After our gybe -- which involved a lot of complexities I won't go into. Photo by Sverre |
Once it was down, the rest of the race was a
rhumb line to the finish, which really sounds like a "rum" line, which is more apt for sailors.
We settled in for a long day on the
rail – the winds were about 15 knots heading out and were expected to get
heavier through the day and into the middle of the channel, which they
did.
 |
| On the rail -- Erik is trying to sleep. |
With only a bathroom break, we sat
on the rail for the first 12-15 hours of the race before dividing into our
respective shifts. Erik declared that he loved sailing upwind, which makes him possibly the only person I know who does, but then he sleeps a lot so maybe that makes it less painful. My shift was on until
midnight and then we had the first rest period – midnight to four – which is
when I found out I can sleep upside down.
By this point everything was wet – we were all soaking wet, there was
water all over everything down below, and no hopes of getting dry. I had pre-empted getting super cold by
wearing six layers of shirts, which while wet, kept me warm. No more shivering uncontrollably for me.
Sadly, about six or eight hours into
the race, or maybe earlier, the running backstay broke.
Now, I don’t normally sail on a boat with running backstays and they
scare the crap out of me. When I do sail
on a boat with one, I live in fear that I will be made the one in charge of
them. You see, if you loose your
backstay, you loose part of what keeps the mast in place. The mast is pretty important and if it comes
down, well, sailing is pretty much over.
So, when our running backstay broke it meant that more pressure was placed
on the mast.
However, Jon, being a doctor/sailor
version of MacGyver, was able to rig a temporary fix, though not one that made
it possible for us to sail as hard as we otherwise might have. In other words, without the appropriate
tension from the backstay, we could not put as much pressure on the rig as we
would have liked in order to push the speed.
It meant that we stayed with our smaller sail instead of shifting
to a larger one. Over 27 hours or so,
this made a difference in our overall time, I’m guessing.
Or maybe it was because I brought an entire toothbrush.
Hard to tell, really.
The return meant more time for rail
sitting and talking. To stay warm I developed a little rail dance that involved wiggling my feet, then my hands and then doing the turbo-gopher dance move, which is the little caddyshack gopher dance used for the FTP protocol, but that is too much information, really if you don't immediately know what I am talking about.
We had lots of
sandwiches because we still had over a half-dozen loaves of bread to eat. We tried to stay on a schedule and keep
focused, which mostly worked. When we
hit the dead spot on the return, it did not last nearly as long, but was still
a good 6 or so hours of sailing without much wind. The earlier predictions had suggested that we
would be on a reach (an angle to the wind where the wind comes generally from
the side) but by the time we hit the lull, the wind was moving behind us and
this meant we could set the spinnaker again.
After finding the spinnaker, which for
some reason had been put in a closet instead of re-packed in its bag, and
re-rigging for it, we put it up only to watch the lack of wind make it flog and
threaten to wrap around the forestay, which would be bad. The boat that finished right after us had its
spinnaker wrapped all the way around the forestay in a big knot – not good or
fast.
Fortunately, we managed to avoid this
fate and under the power of light wind, we crossed the finish line in something
around 27 hours. Also, we were not
last!
 |
| The finish line. Photo by Kystvakten |
We celebrated with a toast of a
very nice Scotch whiskey that Rune had given to Jon. Between my sunburn and the whiskey, I turned
a very unpleasant shade of red.
 |
| Motoring back to base. Photo by Rune |
After putting the boat away and packing
up everything, I had to say goodbye to my new Norwegian friends, all of
whom were kind and generous people and tolerated my presence with grace and,
well, tolerance. With only a paltry 4
hours of semi-consciousness in the past two days, the remainder of the day
involved getting a shower, re-packing my now salty and damp clothing, having
dinner, and preparing to leave the next day for Sweden.
In the end there are many words to
describe a 198 nm x2 race across the North Sea – cold, wet, long, fun, boring,
challenging, exciting, an exercise in endurance, and a test of patience. In the middle of the misery of being cold,
shivering, and sitting still on the rail with waves dousing you in icy water,
you wonder how in the world this could be worth it. But it is and the temporary discomfort gives
way to a sense of the larger experience because happiness isn’t ever found in the moment,
but over the course of the journey.
So, I can only express my gratitude for
the amazing opportunity to have such an adventure.
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