Passage Notes

This is the first blog post by Tod since we left this year, I think. I have been holding back, since we sort of have a policy of "if you can't say something nice, better to say nothing at all". But I wanted to reflect on some of our feelings about our long passage from Mexico to Marquesas. One of my big motivations for writing this is for *us*, to help remember how we felt. I imagine that over time our memory of the feelings might fade, and we might even be tempted to do a passage like this again ... until we re-read this posting! Sorry for the length! I don't mind if you don't read it all ;-)

I should emphasize that my complaints here are just for me, although I think Jolanda feels pretty similarly. The one crew member who never complained about feeling miserable was Tessa! Several times during the passage she declared it to be "the best day ever!". She spent most of her days listening to audio books, watching DVD for a couple hours, and playing in her room. She really never complained about not feeling well, nor about being bored, and in fact hardly ever asked when we were going to be there. The closest thing we heard was during our recent 4-day passage between island groups: she told me that she wished we had stayed in the previous anchorage, the place we had been "before we started this dreadful journey"! (We think she is picking up some new expressions from her audio books!) I think she liked it better in the previous place just because we had been having ice cream almost every day!

Last year we were at an amusement park, and Tessa wanted to go on a spinny-round ride. Generally I avoid those kinds of rides, but she really wanted to go and I decided I could probably manage that one. Did you ever get on a ride thinking you would be OK with it, and then realize that it was *not* ok!? All you can really do is hold on, maybe shut your eyes, and try not to get sick while waiting for the ride to end. It might have been three minutes. Now, imagine that feeling, but the ride goes on for more than three weeks!

To be honest, we were not feeling nauseous for all 25 days of the passage. For the first few days, Jolanda and I both were taking a drug to combat motion sickness. And anyway, coming out of Puerto Vallarta the seas were pretty mild for the first couple days. And after the first few days, my feeling of nausea was limited to when I was below deck working for an extended period... for example, trying for 20 minutes to use the radio to send emails! Instead of nausea, the more common feeling is just a dull uneasiness in the head. We also both felt quite lethargic, and any little exertion seemed so big and demanded a recovery period afterwards!

In a previous blog post Jolanda wrote that sailing has extreme highs and lows. Well, regarding this passage, I would say the spectrum of feelings was a bit different. On the positive end, I would say there was one four-hour period which I would describe as "not unpleasant" -- this was when we were flying our spinnaker, zooming along on pretty calm seas with a nice breeze. But that was really an "outlier" data point... four hours out of 25 days! The rest of the spectrum would include words like: fatigue, exhaustion, hot, humid, wet, annoying, sadness, despair, misery, tortuous. At one point, I mused that they could sentence convicted criminals to a sea passage, but for sure it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment!

The rolling caused by the swells and waves can be really horrible. The worst rolling seemed to be in the beginning, about from day 3 to day 10, if I remember correctly. There were two swell directions, one from the north and one from the north-east, as we were traveling west. That might not sound like a big deal, but the result of this is that the boat would be rolled side-to-side by one wave, and then we would yaw (sort of rolling with a twist) by the other wave. The side-to-side rolling is tough, because the boat can rock like 60 degrees within a few seconds (leaning 30 degrees on one side to 30 degrees on the other side). It makes it incredibly difficult to even move around down below. And doing something like cooking becomes a serious endeavor, even becoming dangerous. Our stove is gimbaled, so it stays relatively level while the boat rolls -- it is really quite amazing. But even that mechanism has its limits: occasionally the boat would roll so hard that the stove would hit the limit of its travel, and then shit could really fly! Think about having a pot of boiling pasta when that happens... not good!

But the side-to-side rolling was not as bad as the other kind. When the swell direction is directly from the side, that is the simple rolling. But when the swell direction is from behind it is quite a bit more unpleasant. In general, we never went directly downwind, with a relative wind angle of 180 degrees -- that kind of dead-downwind sailing is difficult to do for multiple reasons that I don't need to explain now. Instead, on this passage, most of our sailing was with a wind angle of about 150 degrees -- so, from the back corner of the boat. The feeling of the rolling from this direction is worse: as the swell comes under the boat, it is lifting the back corner which causes the boat to turn significantly down into the valley of the swell; then it passes under the boat and turns it back in the other direction. So you end up with a twisting plus a rolling -- just like some of those horrible amusement parks rides that I hate!

It is hard to describe how the constant rolling of the boat affects on one's psyche and spirit and body. For example, even sleeping is so difficult. In general, it seems easier to sleep when your body is in line with the rolling -- so, with your body in line with the boat. Also, it is probably best closer to the middle of the boat. In our main saloon our settees are oriented in the correct direction and are long enough to lie on; and we have equipped these with lee cloths, which is a piece of fabric that we rig up with lines to prevent one from being rolled out of the bed! But even with this, there were many nights when we could barely get any sleep due to the extreme motion, along with the constant noise of sails flopping and blocks clicking and lines snapping and cabinetry creaking! About 7 or 10 days into our trip we were both exhausted from lack of sleep.

The rolling also makes it difficult to move, or even to stand. You almost always need to have one hand for the boat. Did you ever try putting on your pants with one hand?? It's not easy, so you end up trying to time the swells so you can pull up your pants without falling over.

I also came to have negative feelings about the different parts of the day! In the morning, seeing the dawn coming, I felt like "crap, the sun is coming up soon and I have barely slept." And when the sun was rising, I felt like "crap, it is gonna be getting hot soon", which happened by mid-morning -- hot and quite humid. Also, all morning the sun would be at an uncomfortable angle where it was difficult to find shade under the bimini. By mid-day I would be thinking "when will this day ever end?!". By late afternoon, the sun would again make it difficult to find a comfortable shaded place. Around sunset was often not unpleasant, while we were having dinner. But then I would already be dreading the coming of the night. On most nights, the wind would reliably increase, sometimes quite dramatically. (I have yet to read about why this happens... usually I am accustomed to wind dying down at night). In the beginning we were sometimes caught off guard when this happened -- we were maybe going comfortably along with 15 knots of wind before sunset, but then by 8pm the wind would rapidly pick up to 20-25 knots. That kind of increase can cause some problems when we have full sails up. Eventually we came to realize that we needed to shorten our sails before the evening, especially the main sail which is difficult to reduce after the wind starts howling. Also I didn't like nights because you can't see the waves .. you can just hear them, and sometimes they sound quite frightening! Occasionally I swear the waves would sound like a wild animal roaring!

[Speaking of sounds, both Jolanda and I noticed weird auditory hallucinations... well, maybe not exactly hallucinations, but just faint sense of someone talking, or singing. I guess it's the result of so many sounds from the wind and waves and whistling of the wind on the various boat parts, and maybe the lack of sleep, and hours of not talking to anyone. Sometimes I even enjoyed listening to the faint "singing" for quite a while -- one time it was like monks chanting, another time like some celtic music!]

The other bad part about the nights was the possibility of squalls. In the tropics, rain squalls can come at any time, and in the day they are already annoying. In a typical squall the wind will start to kick up, and soon after the rain starts -- sometimes light, sometimes a downpour. At the peak of the squall the wind might be 25 knots, occasionally gusting to 30 -- in the big picture of weather this is not too bad, and our boat can handle that without much problem (as long as we don't have too much sail up). But it can feel a little frightening for a while. The squall can pass in as little as 10 minutes, more typically a bit longer; for one day we had solid rain for hours, and on and off for the whole day. But at least during the day you can see the squall coming -- you can see the dark clouds and often even the rain falling; sometimes we were even able to change direction a bit to avoid the squall. However, at night this is all different -- you might see clouds, bur generally cannot see which clouds are going to produce a squall. And in the dark, the wind and rain seems a bit more intense and frightening. I must say we were fortunate to never have any significant lightening close to us during our trip (so far!).

During some heavy squalls early in the trip, we discovered a bunch of leaks that we never knew we had. One was around an overhead hatch that is just above our bed, and that leak saturated a cushion and got our mattress quite wet.

Well, it seems that I have complained about the passage making enough! So, let me complain about one more thing ;-). I am sick and tired of salt water!! When it gets on your clothes, they never really dry properly -- they are always a bit damp due to the humidity and the hydroscopic (i.e. attracting water) nature of the salt. After swimming we feel like we need a shower to get it off. But the worst is the feeling on all the surfaces of the boat after several days of salt spray -- everything is coated with a layer of moist salt. It has an almost oily quality. One nice thing about rain squalls is that it can make the boat feel clean again for a while.

To end on a positive note, we recently did our last substantial passage for this season: a 520-mile, four-day passage from Nuku Hiva (in the Marquesas island group) to Kauehi atoll (in the Tuamotu island group). For this season we have one more two-day passage to look forward to (to get over to Tahiti), and then mostly just short hops. That passage started with a surprise: the wind compresses around the big mountain of Nuku Hiva, such that just outside the headland of the bay the seas were quite large, and Bliss got rolled more than I have ever felt in 10 years, probably about 50 degrees I am guessing. It was no problem for Bliss, but it sure surprised us! The rest of passage was uneventful but generally unpleasant, and the four days felt like it stretched on into a week! At one point I remarked that I didn't know how we had managed for 25 days on the big passage. Sitting here now though, in a very flat and calm anchorage inside an atoll, it is hard to remember the feelings.

A friend remarked in their blog that only by doing a long sea passage will you find out if you are a passage-maker or not. I think Jolanda and I can both conclude that we are in the "not" group!

-----
At 2019-May-14 06:46 UTC the position of Bliss was 16°27.033'S 145°22.083'W, with course of 000T (*T) and speed 0.0 knots. Wind speed 14.7 knots from 076T (*T)