Final Broach
It’s our last night at sea. I come up on deck for our midnight to 4am watch. Conditions are colder than previous nights and the wind is starting to pick up again. We’ve gone through 5 sail changes over the past 3 hours trying to make the most of whatever wind there is and are now doing comfortable speed under our Code 1 (largest) spinnaker with the wind slightly behind our beam (i.e. if the boat is a clock and the bow is 12, the wind is coming from around 8).
I hear a clanking sound and recognize that some of the halyards are banging against the mast. I go up to the mast to help straighten them while Viking grinds them on tighter in the cockpit. Su is at the helm and as I’m standing at the mast, I feel the boat heel over a bit more than usual and notice a crescent shape line in our wake. Su usually helms pretty straight so I’m surprised to see our course shift so much. In retrospect, I should have realized it was a sign that weather conditions were changing and it wasn’t Su falling asleep at the wheel.
I make it back to the cockpit and am sitting on the low side ready to grind the spinnaker sheet. Fred is across from me on the high side holding the spinnaker sheet and telling me when to grind. That’s the last thing I remember before all hell broke loose (ok, maybe an exaggeration, but that’s what it felt like). We start to broach again, the spinnaker is making loud whip-like cracking sounds as the boat heels over and the boom drags through the water making the whole boat shake. I’m grinding like my life depends on it trying to help regain control of the sail, but it’s taking too long. I’m out of breath, the boat is tilting further and further behind me and I’m calling for someone to hop on the other grinder to help pull in the sail.
I look up and see Fred holding onto the guardrail and wriggling his feet trying to get a foothold on a winch to stop himself from falling to the low side of the boat. If Fred loses hold of that spinnaker sheet, we’re in big trouble! I see Viking engage the 2nd grinder to help me grind, but because the boat is so heeled over, he’s fallen underneath the grinder and is using 1 arm to hang onto the boat above him and one arm to try to grind while his back is on the deck (which now feels like it’s almost perpendicular to the water).
Seumas comes running up on deck and takes the wheel from Su shouting “Dump the vang, dump the vang". I go to dump the vang (i.e. release a line that will allow the boom to bounce out of the water and help us depower the main sail), but realize that the previous watch had not left the vang on a winch and there are no available winches. In short we weren’t going to be able to release it as quickly as we needed to. I recognized this right away and luckily so did Vad!
We quickly worked together to do a series of maneuvers that involving, grinding, jamming, transferring, reloading, etc. to be able to finally release the vang. All this while being soaked with water, having our crewmates dangling above us and Seumas shouting “The rudders are stalled. I have no control. I have no control.” (note: rudders need to have water running over them in order to be able steer. If the rudders are stalled, it means you aren’t moving forward and therefore can’t steer the boat).
After what seemed like a small eternity, we finally regained control, the boat flattened out, and we all took deep breaths in between lots of panting. Looking at the GPS later, we realized that we had basically moved sideways for about 0.8 miles while trying to regain control. In our debrief, Seumas explained that we had had our spinnaker ground in too tightly which made it less forgiving when the wind started to increase and shift forward, and that by easing the sail out and slightly adjusting our wind angle (i.e. course), we could have prevented the broach from happening. Luckily all this excitement happened around 3:30am which meant by the time it was over, I was more than ready for my sacred 8 hour sleep.
It was a scary experience, but I was really proud of myself for keeping my cool and doing what needed to be done. I think the fact that I was on the low side, and therefore couldn’t see how much of the boat was in the water behind me, helped me keep my focus. All I knew is that I was standing on parts of the boat that normally are perpendicular to the water and that I was one of the few crew who could actually work to fix it (i.e. not hanging from the top guard rail). Also note, we were all tethered on, so no one was going overboard, but we still try to avoid falling from one side of the boat to the other because you can get hurt.
It also reminded me how quickly weather can change. It’s really so impressive and something we don’t experience as much on land. You can go from calm seas and bright stars, to dark clouds and a wind increase of 30 knots in less than a minute. You always need to be paying attention, always need to know what lines are on what winches, and (as I had made sure to do for 99% of this trip) always know where the vang is!
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