A bit after sunrise the winds started to creep up, once Carl came up we immediately raised the sails. The wind gave us a knot of extra speed over the engine bringing us to 6.5 to 6.7 knots. A much appreciated speed bump. For another hour things were pretty chill. The wind started to creep up and with it an increasing swell the hull banging began. Not terrible but a brutal reminder that life isn’t all champagne sailing (or champagne motoring) we had been experiencing the last two days.
The violent bangs became more frequent and the water more frequently washed over the bows, onto the sails, and across the hatches. Yep, it was going to be a grind into Brisbane. The wind is forecast to clock around to our beam which will likely settle things some but we prepared for a few days of aggressive conditions. I relaxed in my berth trying to finish a movie which was interrupted last night to reef the main sail. The apparent wind had come up to 23 knots. Carl and I efficiently got the sail reefed without the use of the engines and everyone settled in. With the waves slowing us down, we still managed to keep mid-sixes.
Around 11:00am with 443nm miles to the entrance of Moreton bay and our speed between 7.5 and 8.5 knots, the decision was made to move down to reef 2 in an attempt to slow down and hopefully improve the ride. Everyone worked in unison and we soon had the lines cleaned up when Carl noticed a rip in the main sail. Fuck. Okay, we re-reefed down to reef 3, again excellent teamwork and we made it look easy. Even down to reef 3 the speed held in 6.5 to 7.0 knot range.
Dinner plans changed since the rough conditions made it difficult to take a lot on in the galley. I used the pressure cooker to make pasta (the cook time was a guess and I overcooked the pasta) mixed with a really nice sauce I made a long time ago that had veggies and ground beef mixed in. A salad was the only other thing on the menu. But it filled our bellies and would keep us powered overnight.
We are using John Martin as a weather router for this passage and each morning he requests a bunch of information, one piece of which is the conditions; there is a 1 to 5 scale (1 – This is hell, get me off this boat to 5 – Am I on a sailboat?), early morning continuing through the rest of the day it was a 2.
The conditions did not settle as expected and we rode out the rough seas through our watches. During my 9pm to 11pm watch our speed dropped into the low 5 knot range. When Carl relieved me, he made the call to fire up the engine to keep us moving at a clip that should get us in on Thursday. This was important because a near gale (25-30 knots) from the south was forecast for Friday morning – a terrible wind angle and more wind than we wanted to deal with.
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