Tuesday 10/13/09

Just spent the last two days in a 40 knot gale so it's been rough ridin' as of late. This whole last week we have been unlucky with the wind direction and have been running low on fuel, so once again we deviated off course farther south to pick up the north end of a low pressure system moving through. The weather forecast only predicted 25 knots of wind; they were way off. Gale force winds starts at 35.  Needless to say we caught the low, or rather it caught us, and we did our best to ride it out. There is not much else you can do in that situation except hunker down in your bunk, try to ignore the shudder and crash of the boat getting pounded and sacked by "linebacker" waves, and pray that none of the halyards or sails break or rip. It is truly amazing the amount of forces this vessel can endure. Of course are engine decided to start having problems in the middle of the storm, so we spent the better part of the night rocking about in the dizzying confines of a dark fume-filled engine room trying to diagnose the problem. The engine was overheating, and we finally narrowed it down to the seawater pump which brings water in to cool the engine. We replaced the impeller and gasket, but that still didn't do the trick. Eric exhausted all his knowledge about what possibly could be the problem and he finally rigged up his own pump system and connected it to the engine. It would have bought us about half an hour of running time in case we weren't able to sail through the San Francisco channel. Still unsatisfied and undefeated, he read and reread the manual, and finally after the storm calmed down tried one last thing that seemed like such a miniscule detail that it would be a miracle if it worked. We merely flipped the plate at the head of the pump around, screwed it back on, and amazingly enough, the pump was able to circulate the water due to better vacuum this created. Of course this is a very limited explanation of what was wrong and what we did, but anymore detail would be too confusing, not to mention I don't think I could describe it in proper mechanical terms. 

This was a strange storm because we went in and out of patches of sunshine. It is amazing how things always seem far less daunting when the sun is shining-it truly acts as a beacon of hope. That night nature granted me with another truly amazing sight that has been etched into my memory. I was on early morning watch and I popped the hatch because I saw a faint flashing through the window. The winds were howling and the turbulent sea was illumined by a celestial stadium of shimmering stars and a thin sliver of moon.  Unruly waves roiled wildly out from underneath us, casting spray that glittered in the nocturnal luminescence. Huge thunderheads filled the horizon from whence we had come, and about every ten seconds lightening flashed from within this seething cauldron, giving us faint bursts of light through the dark clouds. This was the worst of the storm through which we had come, but the lightening must have been obscured by the low lying clouds during our passage. I lifted my eyes to the other horizon which also was filled with looming cumulus storm clouds, the telltale bearers of the coming squalls, and they were golden fringed by soft natal light of a copper dawn. There are no cameras nor words enough that can truly capture the essence of this magical panorama! The whole experience of being out here has been unparalleled and of immeasurable value-in a sense, impossible to recreate.