Legendary

What a wild ride! This year there were record breaking speeds, record breaking rainfall and a hell of a lot of wind. The first boat to cross the finish line beat the previous record by almost five hours. Even though Wave Dancer didn't win any ribbons, she had her fastest run ever, coming in twenty four hours faster than last year.

From the get go, the race was challenging. We had a perfect approach to the starting line one minute before the race stared and we were moving at seven knots on a starboard tack. Coming towards us at about ten knots from the other end of the starting line were two other boats on port tack. As rules of the road go we had the right away and they were supposed to avoid us. One of the boats avoided us by turning away from the line and the remaining boat held it's course and appeared not to see us. Our skipper decided to turn towards the line to avoid a collision and just as we were making our turn one of the crew members on the approaching boat looked around the large foresail. There was a bunch of shouting and yelling on the other boat and then instead of heading behind us they turned the same direction. 

That's me in the red and white.

When you make a turn in a boat, the boat may be pointing in your new direction of travel but there is still a substantial amount of movement going on in the direction that you just turned from. I was located in about the same place on our boat as the photo above. As the two boats slid sideways towards each other, I got my arms and legs out of the way and watched as a ten thousand pound, thirty six feet fiber glass boat collided with a ten thousand pound, forty four foot carbon fiber boat just a foot in front of me. Smack, and a crack, we hit broad sides of our boats and our boat raised and then slid away from the other boat. At this point the sails back winded and we lost control over the boat as it spun around and pointed towards the direction we had just come from. The forty foot boat that was behind us when this all happened is now heading right for us and misses our bow by merely inches. 

We got our self straightened out and headed across the start line maybe five minutes behind the other boats. From the collision we had sustained some damage. A crack in the deck where the boat flexed and split opened in a semicircle flap where a old stanchion used to be mounted on the deck let in water that ran down the inside of the boat. The skipper assessed the damage and the amount of water that it was letting in and decided to press on. 



We attempted to put up the spinnaker sail up in the twenty knot winds but we were having difficulties and had to abandon that plan. We ran with just the main and the head sail up the coast of Washington. With the exception of the mid afternoon when we were twenty miles off shore the winds started to approach gale force, we were seeing twenty eight knots of wind that would gust up to thirty five knots. This was also about the time where my body thought it would be a good idea to let sea sickness set in.
  
I need to stop here and explain how our crew schedule works. We had six crew members on the boat that were broken into two separated crews of three. Each crew would take a four hour shift while the other crew rested and ate for four hours and then the crew that was resting switches places with the crew on deck and the cycle continues like that until the end of the race. 

At the start of the race it was all hands on deck for a while. The crew rotation started at two in the afternoon with my crew on deck first. Shortly after the crew rotation started the wind picked up and the ocean turned into a landscape of awe and terror as the waves approached heights fifteen feet and were confused. The best way I could describe what I saw is something like this, imagine huge valleys of water with mountain peaks breaking all around as far as the eye could see. 

The winds were stronger than the amount of sail we had up could handle and we were ending up healed way over. We decided to drop the headsail and that didn't go exactly as planned. We dropped the headsail, and about a third of the way down along came on of those thirty five knot gusts of wind. The head sail was peeled out of it's track and flew out into the ocean. We grabbed the lines attached to the headsail and pulled the sail to the boat and struggled to get it aboard. Every time the sail was almost completely on board, a wave would break over the bow and would cover the lower half of my body and pull the sail back out. While I was on the bow of the boat, it was dropping off of each wave like an amusement ride leaving my stomach at the top of the wave. At the bottom of the wave the bow of the boat would bury into the water sending anywhere from six to eighteen inches of water across the deck of the boat. As this went on I was feeling worn out and sea sick all while bending over to hold onto the sail, and I thought to myself. 

"What the hell did you get yourself into, you bought yourself a ticket for a ride and you can't get off!" 

At this point I was vowing to never step on a boat at sea again!

This tug of war for the sail went on for about forty five minutes. Until we finally got it secured on deck along with fifteen or twenty gallons of sea water trapped up inside of the sail. 

After a few hours the wind died down to the twenty knot range with gusts of twenty five, the seas were still a bit confused but they were only about eight feet in height. Our shift change was up and now it was time to try and sleep in a bed that moves so much that you have to actively wedge yourself into your bunk or you'll end up in a pile on the floor. While little sleep actually occurred, it was a relief to get below and out of the elements. To get an idea of what it was like for me to be below in the cabin during those high winds and confused seas here is a video the stove on the boat. The stove is on a gimble so when you see what appears to be the stove moving it's really the only thing on the boat not moving. The gimble keeps the stove completely upright so you can cook on it during rough seas. 

Don't forget to turn the audio up on this one, you can hear the wind and water outside and the boat shuttering on the inside. I can imagine a white noise generator that might play these sounds. It would be marketed for old salty sailors that can't get to sleep on the land with all that quite and stillness.

After another shift change or two, I lost count. We made the turn around the top of Washington and entered the straights of Juan de Fuca. Shortly after the ocean calmed down and we saw a nice following sea with steady winds. My sea sickness subsided, I ate some food and with gorgeous sunny weather to lift our spirits we set the spinnaker sail for a nice sail into Victoria Harbor. 

That's us as we crossed the finish line.

We arrived in Victoria checked in at customs and at about eight in the evening and found a beautiful place to park Wave Dancer right in front of the Empress Hotel

 Once on the dock, we headed over for a restaurant meal and a to use a toilet that didn't want to move as you were trying to do your business. Our day was topped off with this wonderful view of the sun setting next to a couple of tall ships.

The next day we woke fairly early and cleaned and dried out the boat. As if the leak didn't soak it's share of the boat, the spray and rain coming into the cockpit along with the condensation of us sleeping down there finished the job. Drying everything out at the dock made us look a little like a thrift shop.

One of the lessons I learned on the trip is what the sink on the boat is really for! I thought having a beer named Canadian was funny, what if every county did that?  And if the sink doesn't cut it for you there are alternatives aboard a boat to stowing your alcohol, as demonstrated by our dock neighbors.

Since we beat last years time by over twenty four hours we had an extra day to sit around and enjoy the great weather in Victoria harbor. 

Oh, and that thought I had earlier, you know "Vowing to never step on a boat at sea again!" that was just temporary insanity. Now that I have my land legs back and have a full nights rest, I'm all ready for the Swift Sure Race coming up in a little over a week. 
~J~