Wet Boat (or why Gentlemen don't go to Weather)

We are three days out and totally wet. I have even changed my foul weather gear as the first set got too wet. There is a saying (and may be a book by that name) that gentlemen don't go to weather. Going to weather is sailing towards the direction the wind is coming from. You can't sail directly in to the wind but you can sail some that way and it depends on the boat and the sea state how much. Maggie Drum is not a great weather boat with her full keel but there are times when you need to go that direction. Well, this is one of those.

The down side is that it is hard on the boat and crew. Why? Because the waves normally go with the wind and that means you are powering in to waves which tend to then break on top of the boat and pound the living daylights out of the hull, crew, fixtures, bulkheads, other stuff. It is noisy down below. In fact it sounds exactly like the boat is breaking up in to little, bitty, teensy weensy pieces. It shakes, booms, groans, grates, squeaks, etc. You get the idea. Outside you have mountains of water hitting the hull on the nose and on the sides. This water tends to cascade in to the cockpit and descend on the hapless crew on watch trying to stay dry. We have a dodger to give some protection but when a big wave comes over it goes over the dodger and then dumps behind it in to the last half of the cockpit and then the backdraft of the wind sucks the drips in to the front half of the cockpit. Like I said, very wet. The other reason gentlemen don't go to weather is that it heels the boat over so much that life is pretty miserable down below but I think we have mentioned that before.

We are making progress though although motoring a lot. It costs a hundred dollars a day to motor so we don't do that lightly but if we actually want to get to NZ before Christmas we need to some. We are hoping that a high pressure system will fill in on the west and move this way, bringing more favorable winds, but that looks like two days away. So the plan for now is to try and make as much good towards NZ (i.e. not go backwards) and wait for the easier sailing. To top everything off, it has been raining since we are in the middle of a low pressure system. At least it is a weak one but one of the other boats out here had to hove to last night because of 50-60kt winds. Yikes!! We have never seen that kind of wind and really don't want to. We hope they made it. Must have been a little localized cell of high wind.

If all goes well we will be in port by the 16th or 17th.
P.S. I wrote the above earlier in the day and did not send it. Since then we had the water pump belt break and the engine overheated setting off the alarms. I spent several hours up and down getting a new one on. I won't go in to the miserable details but it was a lot of fun. I will start it up in a second soon as my stomach settles down. On a good note, the winds have died down but still in the wrong direction.

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