Atlantic storms and Rescue at sea

The last couple of days has been pretty bouncy. The winds have picked up a bunch, and the swells with them. But it is all downwind, so it feels very different than in the Mediteranean. It is also a lot calmer than the Med – we are not looking up at the waves from the helm station. That said, it is still not to be taken lightly. Last night a couple of storms went over us, and the second one had winds that I figure must have been about 60 knots. We were running downwind, and seeing 48knots on the guages, while doing at times almost 11kts through the water. So 48 plus 11 is 59kts of wind. Adiona handles it like a champ. The boat feels solid, and not like it is on the verge of losing control. We covered 166NM in a 24 hour period – which is pretty darn good!

 This morning in our usual check in with our friends on Wild Thing, they passed along some bad news. Another boat (SV Locomotion) that left the same marina they left from called a Mayday in the early morning. They had a rigging issue on their boat (the cables and stuff that hold the mast up). In the same storm their rigging failed, and in the heavy weather they were unable to cut away the mast from the hull. A Ship was on its way to rescue them. They were just a little off our course and less than 1 day away, so we relayed a message back through Wild Thing that we have altered course to their position, and we will stay that way until we hear that they have been rescued. They had indeed just been rescued by a MAV (no idea what that is, can someone look that up and let us know in the comments?), so we went back to our original course. It sounds like they had to abandon their boat as the mast had beaten a hole in their hull. So incredibly sad to hear and imagine how scared they must have felt.

So it was with a very sombre attitude that I did my normal inspection of everything that matters on a sailboat hundreds of miles from help. It has been a useful exercise as I have been finding things that need attention before they become serious problems. Most recently I discovered that the big bolt that holds the bottom of the sail to the boom, and is the hinge point for the boom to mast, was about to fall out because the nut had backed off. So tighten that up, and on we go. But in general, Adiona is holding up very well.

Weatherwise the next couple of days look like more of the same. Winds picking up at night, squalls going through, good speed – but having to brace yourself to stand still. We are on track to make landfall in 2 to 3 days. Looking forward to not bouncing off the walls to get anywhere!