How did I get here? by Emma Watt
I have done a fair bit of ocean racing … in the past. It’s been about two years since I sailed with any sort of regularity, and I worked out that I hadn’t done a Hobart race since 2009. In my time, I’ve done two Sydney to Hobart races (2004, 2005) and I’m pretty sure it’s now five Melbourne to Hobart races, plus numerous other ocean races and trips. In late 2013, I decided that I’d like to get back into sailing, and particularly, I’d like to do something at Christmas that would be a complete and relaxing break. So I put my hand up to do the delivery trip on Addiction, bringing the boat back from Hobart to Melbourne after the race. To ease myself back into sailing.
I recertified my Sea Safety & Survival with Yachtmaster Sailing School – ocean racers must undertake the course every 5 years to be current, and mine had expired a couple of years ago. Even though I wasn’t going to be racing, I figured it was still prudent to recertify because the information is relevant to everyone, not just racing sailors. Plus, it involved a wet drill, getting into foul weather gear, jumping into the water and remembering how to get in and out of a liferaft. Can’t hurt, and in truly unspeakable circumstances, it might even help.
Early on Boxing Day, as I was starting my planned two days of preparing food for the delivery home, I received a phone call from Richard, who co-owns the yacht Addiction with PJ. Apparently PJ was too sick to race – in fact, later that morning, PJ was carted off to hospital by ambulance with a dangerously high temperature. The full complement of crew for racing on Addiction is 10 people – they can race with fewer, but it’s difficult, and the Westcoaster was going to be a rough race. So Richard asked me if I would step into the breach. With trepidation, I said I would, and went into emergency race preparation mode.
As it turned out, my help (and my ute) was needed on the day of the race to transport two spare mainsails down to the boat, after the brand new sail, fitted the weekend prior, broke after the race on Boxing Day. Delicate logistics ensured … parents needed to take ute back from Blairgowrie, Mum needed to drive ute to Hobart with crew gear and food that wasn’t going to fit into Angie’s car. All I can say is, when booking spots on Spirit of Tasmania, get the flexible fare!!
So there I was, bundled onto Addiction, most of my gear with me (some items forgotten), about to race the Westcoaster. Talk about mentally unprepared!
Weather
I had seen the weather forecast for 35 knots, and knowing that could mean gusts an extra 40% higher, did the maths and thought, hmmm, 50 knots (I rounded up OK) – quite a lot of wind! But as I hadn’t raced in four years, perhaps I’d forgotten what that really meant. I knew we would be in for a tough time on Saturday afternoon, but I did not then factor the Southern Ocean into the equation. A south westerly wind in that part of the world has hundreds of kilometres of ocean to cross, building up truly awful waves.
The weather hit late on Saturday afternoon, after we’d been racing for about 24 hours. The wind started building, and soon we were seeing 35-40 knots on the wind instrument as a matter of course. The height of the waves grew, and as we were reaching, we were side on to the wind and waves.
It got to the point where I’d feel the wind abate, and think, “We must be in a lull”. But when I stuck my head around into the cockpit to see the wind instrument, it would still be over 35 knots. So you know it’s bad when a lull is anything under 40 knots. Overnight into the wee hours of Sunday, the wind intensified to the point where we saw 55 knots on the dial, and then nothing. The jigger on the top of the mast that measures the speed of the wind had actually been blown off. But another boat in our fleet reported experiencing 63 knots that night.
It’s really hard to describe how that much wind feels. A knot is equivalent to 1.8 kilometres per hour, so 55 knots is about 100km/h. The closest I can think of, imagine you’re driving at 100km/h and you need to get up on the top of the car, move around, work, raise & lower sails. Bit of a strangled metaphor, but it works. And you need to stay on the boat and relatively uninjured. The wind buffets you and tosses you around. You work on your hands and knees (oh my poor knees, after 12 hours of that I couldn’t move without pain) and the Golden Rule is “You are tethered on to the boat At All Times While On Deck”.
The helmsperson needs to look forward to the compass, and where the boat is going. It is almost impossible to actually look into the wind, which is what the crew on the rail are supposed to be doing, keeping an eye out for rogue waves. In that much wind, the tops are being blown off the waves, so the air is full of stinging spume and spray.
It’s also noisy – the wind shrieks and howls, the boat crashes through the waves, when the waves break over the deck it is with the power and sound of the boat hitting something solid. If you want to communicate with someone you have to shout in their face, and probably repeat yourself several times. In those conditions, the normal course of events is “roll, pitch, roar, smack, yaw, shriek, douse … “ and repeat.
The swell was forecast to be around 4 metres. In fact, the wave buoy off Strahan (about halfway down the west coast of Tasmania) recorded significant wave height of 6 metres, and many hours where the maximum wave heights were between 8 and 12 metres.
Imagine you’re sitting on the side of a yacht that is roughly 11 metres long, travelling up (and down) waves that are as high as the boat is long. The yacht seems tiny and quite fragile in those circumstances.
The waves also broke over the side of the yacht, seemingly about once a minute. Many times, enough water came over the side of yacht to pick almost every single crew member up and dump them further back down the boat – without tethers keeping us attached to the boat, most of the crew on deck would have been overboard. That much water is powerful, unstoppable. Staying on the rail requires every muscle to be tensed and working for hours on end – fatigue kicks in early, but giving up isn’t an option.
My wet weather gear was a little old, but still good – I thought. No one’s wet weather gear was doing a great job of keeping all the water out though – nothing can withstand regular dousing with tons of water. My legs and arms were soaked, my socks saturated (I kept trying to wring them out between watches), and even my torso was wet because water will find its way in anywhere. At least the water was relatively warm! The wind was cold and nasty, but the water itself seemed warm … perhaps because I was so cold?
Moving is dangerous – at one point I stuck my head around the cabintop to vomit into the cockpit. My guard was down and I had my back to the waves – a massive wave picked me up and threw me into the air, I jerked to a stop at the end of my tether and thumped to the floor of the cockpit, arms around my head and legs curled up to try to avoid breaking any bones.
Ladies don’t spew in the cockpit
And yes, on the topic of seasickness … when I was racing regularly, I would occasionally get a little seasick. You know, feel ordinary, have a chuck, feel better, get on with it. Nothing to worry about, a minor inconvenience. On this trip, I suspect a lack of mental preparedness and ‘match fitness’ combined with extreme weather conditions to unleash the mother lode of seasickness on me. I was seriously ill for about 15 hours, unable to keep down even a sip of water. I still stood my every watch though!
Early in the evening I was still making the effort to get to the low side of the yacht to chuck, and Anthony said, “just chuck where you’re sitting, that’s what I’m doing”. I turned to him, as I sat sprawled on the low side of the cockpit, and said in the gravelly voice of someone who has been upchucking for some time, “Ladies don’t spew in the cockpit”. And promptly spewed in the cockpit – proving that, without doubt, I am not a lady.
So I gave up and spewed where I clung to the boat on the high side – enough water was going over the boat that all evidence was washed away in a few minutes anyway. Throughout the whole ordeal, other crew were taking bets on how many waves it would take to wash away the spew of those of us who were ill – and there was quite a few of us who succumbed to seasickness this trip! I distinctly remember leaning around the cabin top to spew into the cockpit, and ending up spewing right in front of the compass – which is backlit and at night is one of the only sources of light in the cockpit. I can only imagine the view the helmsperson had of me spewing bile by the light of the compass. Such are the niceties of ocean racing.
Moving about below and sleeping …
Sitting on the rail and working on deck are only one part of an ocean race. A race that takes days requires a crew on a watch system. When Addiction has ten crew, we run a watch system of 3 hours on / 3 hours off with ¾ hour between each for getting ready for deck / ready for bed. This involves moving about the boat, difficult to do safely at sea in rough weather, and especially difficult on Addiction for short people as the boat is wide & flat and handholds are few and far between. Many’s the time I’ve resorted to dropping to the cabin sole and crawling to where I needed to go – at least then if I get chucked around, I’m less likely to end up physically broken. But it is funny to be kneeling on the floor and involuntarily sliding to the other side of the boat – inconvenient but funny.
We keep our wet weather gear and lifejackets in the forepeak, at the front of the boat. This is also the part of the boat that gets tossed around the most at sea. So we make our way to the forepeak (crawling / lurching from handhold to handhold / pressed up against one bulkhead or another) to disrobe after a stint on deck or to dress in preparation for a watch, and perch on the sails that are stowed there. While we are disrobing or donning gear, we have no hands left to hang onto the boat, so when the front of the boat launches off a wave, we become airborne inside the boat. And slam down onto the hull again. I swear the bulk of the multitude of bruises I sustained were forepeak bruises!
If I’m about to go off watch, then it’s time for a wee. The head is just aft of the forepeak, and right next to the keel-stepped mast. The seal around the mast doesn’t keep all the water out, particularly in very wet conditions such as reaching in 40-50 knots, so there’s a lot of water sloshing around the head. Mmmm mmmmm, never go to the head without your ocean boots on. You grip the mast with both arms as you try to lower yourself onto the toilet without missing, then you try to relax enough to wee, without relaxing so much that you fall off the toilet, all the while keeping a tight grip on the mast. Ha ha, good luck with that!
Then the dash for bunk … assuming there isn’t an intervening dash to the hatch to spew out the slot between the storm board (trying to keep water out of the cabin) and the hatch cover. Bunks on racing yachts are small – I may well be buried in a larger box than the inboard bunks on Addiction. But this is a good thing – when the boat is rolling, pitching and yawing all at once, if you want to get any sleep at all, you need to be reasonably certain that you’re not going to be unceremoniously dumped on the cabin sole at some point. So you want to be snugged up tight up against a lee cloth.
The normal rule on Addiction is that you don’t go to bed wet, otherwise the bunks are wet for the rest of the race, which is very uncomfortable. However, everybody was saturated despite their wet weather gear, so no one had any choice. Every crew member was going to bed and trying to catch a few zzzzz’s while wet – which naturally leads to everyone shivering while trying to sleep. Add seasickness and general misery into the mix and no one was comfortable. If I were to ever race again (and I’ve sworn off it after this race!) I would take bulk supplies of Hotteeze with me, to stick on my thermals for both on watch and off watch, so at least my torso would be warm, if not dry!
Have I put you off yet? I’ve put me off.
It would have been some time about 2am on Sunday 29 December 2013, in the middle of the horror, that I swore to myself that not only was I never racing again, I wasn’t doing ocean again. So much for easing myself back into sailing!
I know that there are many good things about ocean racing, and being at sea in general. It’s a wonderful environment, it presents challenges that we don’t get on land, and we get to see amazing things, like pods of phosphorescent dolphins cavorting about the bow of the boat. It’s a wild and untameable environment, and it requires skill, knowledge and caution to survive it. The west coast of Tasmania is incredible viewed from the sea – and I made sure to drink it all in when we rounded Maatsuyker Island this time, as my personal ‘last chance to see’.
But I broke myself as an ocean sailor on this trip, to the point that I couldn’t face the delivery trip, and escaped from Hobart like a scalded cat fleeing from a thousand slavering beasts. I’ve sat through the Critical Incident Stress lecture often enough to know that particular malaise when it strikes, and I’ll be honest, it struck hard last week.
This post has mixed tenses and pronouns, and frankly right now I don’t care :-) I’m just getting it out there, thanks for reading, sorry about the poor quality of the writing.
