Day 3 – Monday 6 January 2014.
By Grant Chapman.
The ever-resourceful Peter managed to fix the steering problem, made more challenging as the steering was permanently in use, so that the cables were running freely and we decided that we could proceed to Rio after all. We also discovered that we had lost our sailor satellite modem connection which meant that we were without emails and our all important GRIB files for the coming week and were still relying on the GRIB files we had downloaded previously. We did, however, have comfort in knowing that our SATphone was working well for communication to race control and Cape Town Radio as well as friends and family back home. We spent the whole day and night sailing entirely on only the genoa, furling it when the wind strengthened to over 30 knots. Fortunately the wind started to back to the west which allowed us to head in a more northerly direction now that we felt we were clear of the storm and we set our course for 3000M. Although we could start surfing down the swells now, the seas were still mountainous and Chris managed to beat the previous Rotary Scout speed record, set by Mark Jennings during the 2010 Governors Cup Race, by surfing down a wave at 24,7 knots. The boat hummed as her rigging whistled in the wind and her prop auto-rotated furiously. A call on the SATphone to Cape Town Radio and Mark Jennings reported how many other boats faired really badly in the storm with tragedy striking one with the death of a crew member on the Angolan yacht Bille when she was dismasted, seriously injuring two other crew members. Our thoughts were with the crew, family and friends of the person who lost her life. It would turn out that 10 boats had to return to various ports along the Cape coast due to damage inflicted by the storm, including a broken rudder, shredded sails, a swamping and a fire on board. One of the requirements of the race rules was that we needed to make a call to Cape Town Radio every day at 08:00 Zulu (UTC or Greenwich time) and either sms or e-mail the Royal Cape Yacht Club race organizers to give a report on our position, the wind and sea conditions and welfare of the crew and boat.
As the evening wore on we started to get warmer south westerly winds and we knew that we were now over the worst of the weather and could look forward to better sailing in the morning. The sky also started clearing and Sirius appeared ahead of us as the first star in the sky. We also then heard via SATphone that we were coming first in the division 2 fleet and that we had managed to out-maneuver the worst part of the storm. This lifted all our spirits immensely. Marcus bounced back from an earlier bought of sea sickness and having to sleep for over 24 hours and with his new-found sea legs he spent over 11 hours helming. Ashwyn and Cathleen baked us a somewhat flat but warm and tasty beer bread for late afternoon tea with jam and cheese. Ashwyn had cuddled the dough mixing bowl while waiting for the bread to “rise” but the poor chap must have been too cold for that to happen. Virgil prepared a delicious spaghetti bolognaise dinner for everyone which went down very well with some having theirs for breakfast as they couldn’t face eating. We all joked about hallucinating during our various bouts of sea sickness with Marcus seeing a mermaid and Cathleen seeing islands no one knew existed in the southern ocean. Lorraine heard a ship steaming up our stern and Grant confessed to seeing Dr Seuss’ Cat in the Hat cross the bows and a piano sailing past. Although the cabins were starting to smell very manky we were no longer getting drenched continuously and were able to go to bed fairly dry for a change. Each one of us woke up for our 2-hour nightly watch shifts in pairs. Peter with Lorraine, Grant with Ashwyn, Chris with Virgil and Marcus with Cathleen. We averaged only 5 knots over the last 24 hours and discovered that water had swamped the solar charger. Peter sent an SMS to Mark to ask for some expert advice on the charger which we received the following day saying that it would still be capable of charging which came as a big relief to us.