Discretion -- Indian Ocean Passage -- Part 2

Saturday came the rains, Sunday the confused seas, but by Monday the wind and seas calmed sufficiently for me to jump overboard and clear the tangled fishing line from the port propeller. The boat dipped and rose in the 8 foot swells, but the lack of wind waves atop the swells made it possible for me, tethered to the boat with a harness, to swim underneath the hull and cut the line free. It took about 30 minutes, with repeated dives to avoid being clonked on the head by the hull or engine. This is the third time we've inadvertently run over our own fishing line, and as Jennifer pointed out, "We just don't get it, do we?" We're working on a checklist approach to reefing that has, as Steps 1 through 5, "Bring in the fishing lines." In the interim, as a kind of self-imposed punishment, I'm no longer fishing.

That day, on our reassuring daily radio net with our friends on Second Wind and Pylades, we heard the forecast for the next few days, courtesy of Second Wind and its owner's son's regular weather updates from his Stateside location. I quote: "Tuesday afternoon - large choppy seas, winds ESE at 21-28 knots." You could have set your instruments and clocks by this bit of news. The next day, at noon, the winds picked up to the high 20s, and the seas moved from the rinse cycle to the spin cycle. Coming from every which way, east to southwest, the seas loomed higher by the hour as they combined their crests and troughs; we quickly reduced sail so that we were at the prescribed configuration: a triple-reefed main, and a 30% genoa. We began to skim over the wave tops, with a cresting wave every few minutes dowsing our cabin top with hundreds of gallons of sea water, or slapping our topsides with a bang and a crash.

The forecast indicated a gradual organizing of the swell pattern, even as the wave heights were projected to increase to 4.5 meters ... this is the distance from trough to peak, so, visually and viscerally, we were looking at - and sailing across - 30 foot walls of moving ocean, a relentless rippling of energy. Jennifer and I have each experienced these kinds of seas, but only on a monohull, with its heavily-weighted keel serving as a righting moment when the seas threaten to lay the boat on its side, and every additional degree of heel diminishing the sail area presented to the wind. Together, these forces -- the weight below the boat, with its righting force increasing as the boat heels (think about those tall blow-up punching toys you might have used as a kid, that are weighted on the bottom, and how they always -- improbably -- come up for another punch), combined with the disappearing sail area, as the sail approaches the horizontal - create a very stable platform for sailing - willows in the wind as it were, bending but breaking. In fact, there are hundreds of well-documented and even filmed cases where a monohull is "knocked down," laid flat onto the sea, and, relying on the force of gravity, as the keel seeks equilibrium, the boat lifts back up, however groggily, not too worse for the wear. Not something to seek out, to be sure, but I'm just saying ∑

Neither of us has had much catamaran experience in these wind and sea conditions, although, Lord knows, we've read enough accounts and heard enough stories to know that the one thing to avoid is to have too much sail up, since there is no forgiveness on a cat. More oak than willow, cats either sail upright or lay fatally awash in the seas. Without a deep keel, with its underwater counterweight (tons of lead in most monohulls), a wayward gust or wave can push the cat sideways to a tipping point of no return, and just like that, the trip is over. Against this factual background, we became a bit anxious as we gauged the response of now-triple-reefed ile de Grace to the large and choppy seas and brisk winds coming across our port beam. We reassured ourselves that we were sailing her by the book, with the sails at their recommended settings, designed to balance safety with speed.

And fly along we did, although the pitching and yawing of our rectangular floating raft was sometimes fearsome to behold. We are accustomed to relatively level surfaces when we sail our boat; its design promotes this, with two hulls astride a central platform. I can't remember a time when a coffee cup, placed on our cabin table, wouldn't still be there hours later, even in some of our roughest seas. For the most part, the wind and sea conditions on that Tuesday permitted this kind of casual placement, something inconceivable to monohull sailors whose boats, in these kinds of conditions, sail at a perpetual 30-50 degree angle to level. On their boats, every movement is an exercise in leveraged motion, and each utensil, book, and dish is wedged or secured against an often-elaborate arrangement of positioning and locking devices.

But by nightfall, with the seas continuing to gather strength and the winds picking up to the high 20s and low 30s, the normally serene interior of ile de Grace resembled that of our monohull sisters, with cups and dishes stowed away, and the usually-level interior surfaces emptied of anything that might slide. We found ourselves moving from handhold to handhold in the cabin - going outside was neither necessary (given our interior instrumentation and 360 degree visibility) nor especially enjoyable. Our monohull friends will smile perhaps incredulously as they read our surprise at having to hold on while moving about, but truth be told, it's an uncommon experience for a cat owner.

Catamarans also differ from monohulls in their reaction to crossing waves, waves that approach from the side. While both kinds of boats are vulnerable to the "sideslap," when a cresting wave slams against the side of the hull, a catamaran is also vulnerable to the "underslap-innerslap combo," as the wave passes underneath one hull, slams against the bottom of the bridging cabin, and then, as often as not, slams against the inside of the downswell hull before passing underneath and into the distance. The seas on Tuesday were sufficiently disorganized and large that we were experiencing the characteristic "combo" every few minutes or so. For those not used to it, the sound and sensation leads one to conclude that the boat has just struck a large and immoveable submerged object ... a sensation that is extremely disconcerting even if you know it's "normal."

Through that night, into Wednesday morning, both Jennifer and I harbored a growing fear that sailing "by the book" might, in fact, be too aggressive for these particular sea conditions. As we heeled downswell and downwind, sliding down a swell, our stomachs would occasionally churn, our muscles tense involuntarily, as we waited to feel the boat right itself. Combo slaps became the rule. I should note that the shallow design of cats in fact can work to its favor in these conditions, as they tend to slip and slide across and down the wave, unable to grip or pivot. It's a surfboard without a fin.

Were cats to have deeper keels, the hulls would, in fact, lock into the water, with the topsides and sails then able to tumble sideways, leading to a knockdown, from which cats, unlike monos, cannot survive. For monohulls, the keels do lock in, but the combination of weight and reduced sail away inhibit the tendency to be knocked down, and even if knocked down, monos will right themselves. For cats, they'd rather slide than tip, for the most part. Using a car analogy, monohulls resemble Subaru Outbacks, and cats are more like Ford Expeditions; both have four-wheel drive and purport to handle slippery conditions, but the driving experiences are extremely different.

Given this slipping tendency, we were not without intellectual recourse as we sought to calm ourselves during the evening's more gut-wrenching slides and slaps, and the accompanying sensations of heeling over uncontrollably. However, it's fair to say that in these kinds of situations, the limbic system takes precedence over any kind of intellectualization, and we spent the night in a state of palpable concern.

So through the night we fretted, and through the night we raced down and across invisible seas, making excellent time to our still-distant destination of Mauritius. There's a spirited debate among ocean sailors whether sailing through rough weather is scarier at night, when you can't see the approaching waves, or in the day, when their size and occasional fury is all too evident. I come down squarely on neither side of the debate, and would rather sail in calm seas, all things being equal. By mid-morning, after our daily check-in with our sailing companions, we decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and while heartened by our significant progress over the previous 24 hours, we doused the mainsail completely.

This required us to turn the boat into the wind, using our engines, and reducing our speed to a crawl, just enough to keep the boat pointed into the wind. The loss of forward movement allowed us to appreciate the magnitude of the seas around us ... standing atop our cabin, ready to furl the main, my eyes were a good 15 feet above the water line as each successive swell approached, and our boat lay in the windless lee of the trough, I would lift my eyes sharply and see a near-vertical 30 foot wall of water moving toward us. Just as it felt we wouldn't make it over, our boat would rise up the leading edge of the swell, pause briefly on its crest, and then slide gently down its backside. As the boat hung atop each passing peak, I could see all around me swell upon swell, a sweeping procession of triangular ridges, one after the other, south to north, carriers of invisible energy and unimaginable volumes of clear deep blue water.

Experience allowed me to appreciate the seeming contradiction between the almost-serene motion of these swells, and their awesome embedded power, strong enough, in the "right" conditions, to take a multi-ton boat or ship and slap it silly, drive it down, and turn it upside down. I knew these swells were more talk than action, lacking as they did any serious cresting waves. As surfers and sailors know, the water doesn't really move as the swell passes ... a cork will remain relatively stationary as the swell passes underneath. Thus, swells without cresting waves pose little danger to a well-designed boat, be it sail or power, monohull or catamaran. On the other hand, if the waves are cresting, the swell propels a wall of moving water that can drown surfers or capsize even the sturdiest vessel. These were large swells, but, in their essence, harmless. Not the grizzlies of the far southern oceans, whose dangerous wind-swept cresting seas blow horizontal plumes of smoke-like sea water across the decks of ships and boats foolish or brave enough to sail those waters. These were more like circus bears, large and capable of mischief, but usually harmless. Usually.

We are happy to have dropped the main, proceeding, as we have for the last 24 hours, on a tiny scarf of a genoa. Our speed over ground has dropped a bit, so we'll be at sea a bit longer than if we had continued to tempt fate, the seas, and our constitutions, but it's not a race. We slept easier last night, and in a drowsy state of almost wakefulness, I thought I heard our tiny boat whispering "Bless you - I was getting tired of all that slapping" ... or was that Jennifer ... or was that me giving thanks?