{"id":2246,"date":"2008-05-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=2246"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:52:36","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:52:36","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew491","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew491\/","title":{"rendered":"Towards Lunenberg Day 4 – Back to School"},"content":{"rendered":"
Bahamas towards Lunenberg, Day 4. Wind Horse gets a reality check in the Gulf Stream.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

We’ve been complaining about the lack of a push from the Gulf Stream (be careful what you wish for as you may get more than bargained for). <\/p>\n

Yesterday was mainly sailed in southwesterly flow, a dead run, which we used to hate under sail, but which Wind Horse <\/em>very much enjoys. The weather models, faxes, and written forecasts were all calling for a mild frontal passage.<\/p>\n

\"pre-frontal<\/div>\n<\/p>\n

With relatively calm seas, a gray (and lowering) sky, we declared a movie in order. It was towards the middle of the second feature (first was Strictly Ballroom<\/em>, followed by Beverly Hills Cop<\/em>) that the frontal bar began showing up on radar.<\/p>\n

Under sail this would have been cause to reduce sail, until we saw what sort of winds would be involved, but now that we are stinkpotters, we continued watching Eddie Murphy.<\/p>\n

There was the usual abrupt wind shift – in this case from SW to N, then NE – and the breeze rebuilt to 25 knots. No big deal except for the following seas colliding with the new head seas.<\/p>\n

A couple of hours later the water temperature started to climb, from a steady 72F to 74 then 77, and finally 80F. At the same time the wind picked up, now gusting 30, and speed over ground built to a knot and a half faster than what had been the case. All to the good, except the Gulf Stream was stacking up the waves, now running at 6 to 10 feet (1.8 to 3m) with the occasional 12-footer (3.6m) thrown in for fun.<\/p>\n

With waves having no backs and almost vertical fronts we eventually slowed down to 1600 RPM, dropping speed over the ground to 9 knots. Still amazingly fast considering the sea state. We were pleasantly surprised that while there was lots of spray flying off the bow no solid water came aboard, and none of the forward hatches leaked (it is a good thing, though, that we adjusted the hatch dogs before departing Turtle Cay!).<\/p>\n

The accelerations and decelerations, or in laymen terms the banging and crashing, was the most violent we have experienced in 30,000+ miles on this vessel. Worse than going uphill in the Molokai Channel with 35 knots of wind against us, worse than the north end of Cedros Island in equally strong conditions, and and more violent than heading out the Golden Gate with four to five knot ebb tide against a big Pacific swell.<\/p>\n

Everyone in the marine business should periodically have a reality check like this. In fact, NMMA, ABS, Lloyds, and NMEA should postulate a regulation that every few years marine professionals must spend a night in the Gulf Stream with a Norther howling. Yachts would then be designed and built to a much different standard.<\/p>\n

Even we need this sort of periodic reminder of why we do things the way we do. Take hand rails for instance. Wind Horse<\/em> has so many handrails that some folks have questioned the need. The same goes for the extensive use of high fiddle rails. 98.75% of the time the majority are not required. But last night it was two hands moving about the boat any time we changed position. <\/p>\n

In these conditions our minds sometimes wander to "what if" scenarios. Under sail it was, "What if we have a sail problem, or what do we do if we lose a piece of rigging?". Now, under power, those issues are gone, but we still think about what happens if the steering drops out, or there is an exhaust failure, or a myriad of other things that could go wrong. Which is why every systems and engineering detail has to be carefully done, with an eye on longevity, ability to absorb repeated accelerations, and ease of maintenance. <\/p>\n

Next time we are sweating in the engine room on our pre-departure check of bolts and equipment, we’ll think back to last night and what it would have felt like to be disabled, lying beam to those seas.<\/p>\n

To be brutally honest, we have become just a hair laid back about our checks, preventative maintenance, and general approach to crossing oceans. That is the result of those mostly easy 30,000 miles which Wind Horse<\/em> has bestowed on us. There is no question we’ll tighten up now!<\/p>\n

In the meantime we continue to watch the weather. Another light front is forecast for tomorrow (and brief switch to lighter headwinds). The big question is the deep or maybe not so deep low pressure forecast to come off the continental US Saturday or Sunday, The present take is that this will be delayed and the SW winds not as strong as yesterday’s models suggest. We don’t mind closing with an unfamiliar lee shore and shallow water in brisk SW winds in daylight, but a strong gale would encourage us to duck in early.<\/p>\n

Nobody said this was going to be a boring trip weather wise.<\/p>\n

Rereading the comments above we can see how some might think of this as a "horror story". However, that is not at all the case. Sure, we were mildly discomforted, but we always had the option of slowing right down, easing motion, and waiting for the frontal winds to pass. We continued to cruise at 90% of normal speed because the distance covered was an acceptable trade off for the motion, and because we knew Wind Horse<\/em> would stand the punishment.<\/p>\n

Post Script: Gulf Stream Northers have played a fundamental part in the maturation of our concept of the proper cruising yacht. Our first Norther was a hard beat from Florida to the Chesapeake in the early 1980s. While off Cape Hatteras we were surprised to see ashes from our cousin Jeff’s cigarette being sucked from the transom forward<\/em> through the cockpit and into the interior. That wind flow discovery changed a variety of details in our approach to ventilation.<\/p>\n

The second blow was a month later, this time running south in a Norther, blowing 60 and gusting higher, again against the stream – a potentially lethal combination. It was our first experience with what we call "skid factor" with hull skidding to leeward under the impact of a breaking sea. Skid factor is the reason we survived that night (where several other yachts in the same storm did not).<\/p>\n

At present we have light head winds, a dropping sea, and a lovely blue sky. Water temperature is down to 65F and the bunk quilt is out, as are our long sleeves. We are 530 miles from Lunenberg, somewhat closer to Shelbourn, with the US coast under the beam if the need arises to duck out of the weather for a few days. We are still ETAing Lunenberg Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bahamas towards Lunenberg, Day 4. Wind Horse gets a reality check in the Gulf Stream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}