E35-2 Singlehanded - LA to Kaua'i - Part III

After a week of profound serenity, monotony began settling in: the same sapphire-blue ocean; a steady 15-18 knot wind driving gentle, predictable waves; night after night of luminous stars, and a Milky Way I’d never seen without obstruction, or with such brilliance. The days grew warmer, and I began finding ways to pass the time. I stared aft from the cabin often, studying carefully the back-and-forth movement of the rudder head, which protrudes through the cockpit sole on the 35-II. Mostly I was looking for erratic movement that might signal potential issues. The rudder post head resembles a sort of metal helmet, and I began to imagine that figure as a lone sentry-helmsman silently keeping watch and standing to his duties while the crew slept. “A sentry needs eyes to fulfill his obligation,” I thought.



Then the character of our days changed. The clear skies of our earlier sailing were replaced by alternating days of partly cloudy to fully overcast. At times the sky and sea simultaneously turned various shades of slate and charcoal.



Around July 2nd I began getting hit with squalls at night. The first night I experienced one was intense….the wind suddenly increased around midnight with no warning from the ~15 knot trade winds to ~30 knots apparent wind, perhaps more (just estimating…don’t have a working anemometer on board, but I know what 25 knots feels like downwind since we get this routinely in the Bay Area). The effect this had on my racer/cruiser E35-II was immediate, and so the boat responded instantly. As I described this to someone: It’s like a crazy person just took the wheel of your car, hit the pedal to the metal, and then moved the wheel from side to side like a kid pretending to drive. This would last maybe 30-45 minutes, more or less, and was followed by a period of calm. The calm lasted 15-45 minutes before the trade winds would fill back in and we were off again. I had been asleep at the time, possibly in REM sleep when it happened. I woke up groggy, but managed to get my foul weather gear and harness on, and reduce sail to two reefs in the main and a barely a handkerchief of a jib rolled out to provide some balance.

I was still somewhat groggy when I went below…just enough for my hand and footholds to be looser than usual. The boat rolled wildly as I was standing at the bottom of the companionway ladder facing forward. I fell sideways to port into the nav desk and hit my head on the GPS mounted above on the underside of the deck while the rest of me wanted to continue falling further sideways. The initial impact itself wasn’t significant, but judging by the angle my head and neck were forced to take, I immediately recognized that this may have been a serious neck/spine injury. I sat for 10 minutes assessing my condition. Prior to this voyage, I took a wilderness first aid course, and began systematically assessing for back and neck injuries. And then nausea overtook me. While I was sitting there recovering, I thought about the number of times I’ve read about singlehanders sustaining injuries offshore, and couldn’t help laughing thinking that I was now headed to be in company with Sir Francis Chichester and Vito Dumas (at least as far as injuries go). I waited a few hours before going back to sleep and tried to keep my mind occupied; but when I finally got comfortable in the quarter berth, I decided I had had a rough night, the boat was adequately reefed for the night, and it was time to get some real rest. Morning would bring us fresh eyes and perspective, and a better idea of the extent of our injury.

I awoke at 4:30 AM to find the boat becalmed on a starboard tack beam reach in a 2 knot breeze, and to find us on a course of ~0 degrees true. It was only later that I saw how far the night’s squalls had taken us off course. I also got a question from Phil M. on my InReach Explorer: “What happened this morning?” referring to a strange track line my device posted to the tracking page, with course directly north. Piecing together my recollection and the posted track, this happened:



I recorded this clip that morning – and pardon that I'm a bit incoherent here (well, more than usual anyway) … injury + exhaustion will do that.



By the third night of squalls, I was an old pro. I realized that reefing before nightfall needed to be standard procedure, since the high winds can damage sails, and that I needed to prepare to gybe often. That night, I got hit with another high-wind squall at 3AM, which woke me. Annoyed, with hand signal in the air, and with the best choice words from my Northern Mexican Spanish lexicon (which I resort to at times like this), I gybed onto port tack and exited the squall within 20 minutes. Pinche squall.

Squall Passing

This is a relatively mild squall overtaking our position. You can see some of the falling rain behind our position here. Note the confused seas resulting from the squall-driven shifts in wind. The most intense squalls came at night.