Our first storm at sea...

Many friends asked for more detail about the storm that over ran us on our cruise from Seattle to San Francisco so I thought I'd add this addendum.

I know many experienced sailors are wondering from the get go: "why did you get caught by a storm in the first place?" Didn't you listen to the weather reports before leaving the dock? Didn’t you have NOAA weather reports?; Could you get weather condition information from sea buoys?  Did you have Garmin weather satellite?  Yes, we had all of that and more.

We had a crew of three: Alex, my 17 year old son; Bryan, a good friend and experienced offshore sailor; and myself. Before leaving Port Angles, NOAA weather reported an intense low pressure cell in the Gulf of Alaska heading south at 26 knots. It was packing a real punch with seas of 30-feet and winds in excess of 50 miles per hour.  I put the information somewhere back in the recesses of my head, I didn’t really think that we had to worry about a storm thousands of miles away. Besides, we had  a schedule that we wanted to keep.  Do you know what’s the most dangerous thing you can have on a boat? Answer: a schedule. We know that now.

We fueled up at Grays Harbor on Tuesday, when we crossed the bar on our way out to sea the swells were picking up. The wind was out of the northwest at 10 – 20 knots and we sailed “full-and-by” (main sail and genoa full and sailing with the wind off our starboard aft quarter)  for the next 24 hours.   Wednesday’s log shows our watch schedule, position and sea conditions. We were keeping 4-hours watches during the day and 3-hour watches at night from 9:00PM to 6:00AM. We turned on the engine to charge the batteries for a few hours. We were making good time and I was thinking about hoving-to to give the crew a few hours of extra rest but decided to continue on. Periodically, we checked the sea conditions ahead of us. Sea buoys reported favorable winds and seas as far south as San Francisco. I never queried the sea buoys to the north to see what was behind us. If I did I might have freaked out.

The only entry in my log for Thursday is a questionable lat-long position. I entered “ N 40 23.2, W 125 15.0 “ It was probably N43 23. We were about 50nm offshore of Coos Bay, Oregon.  Sometime in the early hours of Thursday the storm caught us and entries in the log book went to hell, we had our hands full managing the boat and couldn’t spare the time to make log entries.  Sometime on Thursday morning we rolled up the last bit of the genoa and set the staysail.  Alex and Bryan went forward to deploy the staysail while I steered. It was dangerous work and they were both tethered into the jack lines. While they worked my attention was drawn to a deep trough that was opening up to starboard: it must have been 20-feet deep! As I steered to avoid slipping down into the trough I was amazed to see a whale as big and wide as our boat surface in the bottom of the trough. It took one deep breath and disappeared into the dark water. The crew came back to the cockpit and I told them about the whale they missed. Bryan said while he was on the fore deck he saw two porpoise jet out of the vertical face of a wave and dive down the abyss into the trough 15-feet below. They were playing top-gun in the storm and if there was a control tower somewhere certainly they would have buzzed it.

After that excitement we settled back into our watches.

The main sail had already been reefed as far as possible. We were sailing with the wind and exceeding hull speed and doubling hull speed when we surfed up the backs of the waves. During Alex’s watch we had hit 16 knots surfing one wave. The wind was blowing a consistent 40 knots out of the NNW. The barometer had been falling for the past day and showed no signs of hitting bottom. We changed our watch schedule to 3-hours on day and night, but as the weather conditions deteriorated, Bryan suggested we set watches to 1-hour on with two crew members on watch at a time and only 1-hour off.  We doused the mainsail and continued sailing with only the staysail.  Steering took so much concentration that you couldn’t keep it up for more than an hour at a time. When you got off course the staysail flogged so violently that we thought the stay would be ripped right out of the deck. Late at night when you had only the illuminated compass dial to watch it mesmerized you and despite the noise, breaking waves sending cold water into the cockpit and banging motion of the boat you could fall asleep.  At one point I was so tired I told Bryan that I didn’t think I would be able to stay wake during may watch. He and Alex both took an hour of my watch so I could get some sleep. I don’t remember that I actually fell asleep but the two hours rest set me up for taking my next watch. Later, I returned the favor be taking Alex’s watch earlier so he could get some rest, and I let Bryan sleep later too. I’m pleased to say that crew cooperation and morale never fell with the barometric pressure.

We had been taking the odd wave into the cockpit by now and more than six times the cockpit filled up with sea water. The crew on watch were now clipped into 2 tethers to hold them steady.  None of the crew had any dry clothing left.  Thursday evening I put on my last dry shirt and socks and went on watch. My foulies were zipped up to my eyeballs and clinched at the sleeves to keep the water out, but an errant wave blasted over the rail sending gallons of water into my face and down through my hood into my jacket and down to my toes. I was now literally, soaked from head to toe. My last dry cloths soaked.

Sometime between Wednesday and Thursday the bronze hanks on the staysail began to break. Bryan called me on deck during his watch to tell me that one hank was gone. I found a stainless steel carabiner and crawled out to the bow to cut off the remains of the old hank and put in its place the carabiner. It seemed to hold.  But, later we lost three more hanks and decided to stike the staysail and motor under bare poles.

The VHF radio periodically broadcast warnings from the Coast Guard about dangerous sea conditions that night. No kidding? Really? Later, we heard a DSC message about a ship that was sending out a distress message.  The DSC function on our new VHF radio was unfamiliar to me and I asked Alex if he had pushed the DISTRESS button by accident. “No dad, why do you think I’d do that?” Some crew on another boat somewhere where giving up the ship. Their position showed they were quite a ways north of us, a direction we could not go without running head-on into steep seas, so we continued south.

Before dawn on Friday the winds were exceeding 50 knots, swells were huge but the breaking waves at the tops of the swells seemed flatter now. The wind must be leveling the tops of the swells. In these seas, we reached maximum speed when a wave would start to lift us, then at the top of the wave we’d slow down and the wave would pass us. At the top of the wave you could see down the deep canyon at the face of the wave.  At that point the wave would always pass us and we never slid down the front face of the wave. This was a good thing because we’d probably burry our bow in the trough and pitch-pole stern over bow if we had gone down it.

I began wonder how long our stamina would keep us going. The storm was showing no signs of letting up. We hadn’t eaten much of anything for a day. Hadn’t sleep a wink, unless you count the seconds of sleep induced by the compass light while on watch. I started to question why I had not heeded the warnings that NOAA had given about the storm in the Gulf of Alaska?  I realized that we were in survival sailing mode. This was very serious shit.  All through the storm you think about what you would do if another system failed? We had no reliable staysail now, what if the engine stops? This thought pattern is useful in survival conditions. It gives you time to plan your next step before your faced with a dead engine, or broken hatch, or a leaking through hull valve. You make a mental note of you strategy to cope with each event. Now you’re prepared as best you can be if it should come to pass. I knew that Bryan was going through the same mental exercise that I was. He’d been out in these conditions before and his actions during this cruise gave me great confidence that he was one-step ahead of the next situation.   I asked Alex if he was scared or concerned about the storm. He said he wasn’t but he was getting tired and the watches were starting to drag on too long for him. He was ready for the storm to be over: we all were.

Sometime before dawn on Saturday the barometer hit bottom and remained steady. By dawn it actually began to rise slowly and we noticed that the winds were dropping to 35 knots, then 30 knots. The storm was finally winding down, we were very relieved. But the storm had a surprise for us. The barometer began to drop again, and the winds grew steadily to 35 knots, then 40 and finally to 45 knots. The crew’s mood changed. We zipped up our jackets again and tightened our hoods and resumed our grim determination to fight the battle. Survival sailing 101, honker down and get through it: manage the boat to keep it safe, try to reduce stress on the rigging to prevent damage, hold on tight and be careful you don’t injure yourself and you’ll get though it safely. The storm is not finished with you.

Finally,  the barometer began its slow journey up the scale to normal weather. By 10:00AM,  Saturday the winds fell below 20 knots and the seas began to subside. We were approximately 170 nautical miles north of San Francisco and began thinking about passing under the Golden Gate bridge. We made something to eat but I don't recall what it was that we ate. The crew returned to normal watches, the storm had finally ran past us. We successfully completed Survival sailing 101.

You learn a great deal about people when you go through a difficult time like this, it tests your mettle and brings out your best or worst qualities: you can't hide them at times like these, they're out in the opened for all to see. I'm very happy to say that my crew showed a great deal of tenacity, courage, and cooperation. Their actions during the storm did them much credit and did not blemish their character one bit. I was proud of how my son worked his watches throughout this leg of the voyage. When Bryan left the boat in San Francisco to return to Seattle, I felt fortunate that I had the opportunity to get to know him better on this cruise. I found him to be a solid-reliable friend and steadfast sailor. In the style of Patrick O'Brian, "I'd share a mess with either of you again and I'd be all the better for it".