Safe but exhausted in St Helen’s, Tasmania, tonight… I motored in dead calm all day on Thursday. There was still a good 3 metre south-easterly swell with a long period – a bit like driving over long rolling hills – but basically it was pretty boring. My main concern was running out of diesel! <\/p>\n
Calm Seas in Bass Strait<\/p><\/div>\n
Then, half an hour before sunset, someone turned on 20 knots of nor-easter. Having been caught out with over-enthusiasm at sunset before, I decided to reef the main immediately – a decision I was very grateful for as the night wore on.<\/p>\n
After a long night, with Sunny Spells constantly surfing in a big cross sea (1.5m sea kicked up by the breeze on top of a 2.5m south-easterly swell) dawn found me 30 miles east of Flinders Island. The pain was not over yet as the wind was shifting to the west and I had to gybe unless I wanted to go on to Antarctica… <\/p>\n
The gybe was not too bad – the main had two tucks in and I just waited for a break in the breeze. The poled-out headsail was a pain, so I rolled it away first. Once the main was gybed and set out to starboard I first re-run the preventer to keep the boom in check and then re-set the pole to port. Then I had to re-run the headsail sheets as the working sheet had to be led through the lifelines to avoid chafe. Once the pole was set again, I rolled out about 75% of the headsail. <\/p>\n
To the foredeck and back three times on a bucking, rolling boat while trying to not get the tether\/jacklines tangled with the sheets, kicker, brace, preventer all snaking across the decks…<\/p>\n
Through all of this I was kept company by hundreds of albatross, soaring and swooping over the churned-up sea.<\/p>\n
Albatross over Bass Strait<\/p><\/div>\n
The breeze soon died and left me with no power and a confused sea state. The engine came on and I motored for St Helens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Safe but exhausted in St Helen’s, Tasmania, tonight… I motored in dead calm all day on Thursday. There was still a good 3 metre south-easterly swell with a long period – a bit like driving over long rolling hills – … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[100,102,101],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ocean-sailing-passages","tag-bass-strait","tag-flinders-island","tag-st-helens"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgewA-5R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Calm](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.svsunnyspells.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/calm.jpg?resize=490%2C489\" "\\"Calm")