Renewing My Membership to WASNT– By Beth Tally
I’ve found that there are only two conditions under which I will even consider overnight sailing – 1) when my desire to get somewhere overrides the anxiety of night sailing, and 2) when we have extra crew. So far, we’ve been lucky to get the extra crew every time we’ve attempted an overnight. I’m not sure how the desire will stand up against the anxiety when it’s just the two of us.
Recently, we were in Lucaya at the end of a wonderful two month stint in the Bahamas. It was the latter part of May and we needed to be back in Charleston by the first week of June. We really didn’t have the time to cross over the Gulf Stream to south Florida and make our way up the coast. It was obvious that we would have to make a more direct route entailing multiple overnights to get home.
Our friend, Paul Malvey, flew into Freeport to join us for the sail home. Paul has helped us on several other occasions and is a seasoned sailor. It was great to have him on board.
We provisioned for an estimated three day/night trip to Charleston. With luck, we could catch sufficient wind to sail, then use the 3-knot boost from the Gulf Stream to make the trip in that time frame. “With luck” is the operative phrase in that sentence. The only sailing we actually did was for about five hours the evening of the first day. We picked up a nice breeze, making around 6 knots, until a pretty hefty storm crawled across the Atlantic southwest of us. We had to turn the engine on to outrun it.
The engine stayed on fulltime for the next two days. Uncharacteristically, the Gulf Stream lay down like a docile lake. There was absolutely no wind to be found. We still enjoyed the steady push of the stream, but the mainsail was up only to give us some stability.Around midnight on the second night out, I was on watch. John was dozing in the cockpit, but accessible to me if needed. Paul was asleep in the bow berth. To help pass the time, I was reading a book with the assistance of a small clip-on light. It was completely pitch, black dark. There was not so much as a hint of a moon. The only light came from the soft glow of the navigational instruments above the helm.
Every few minutes, I would look up to see what was going on around me. I noticed a ship of some sort in the distance off of our starboard bow and decided to check it out on the radar. My skills with the radar are yet unperfected, and my remarks of frustration roused John. He came over to see what the problem was. All of a sudden, as we stood there together looking at the radar screen, everything went totally blank. Everything – the radar, the autopilot, the chart plotter, depth gauge – out. It took a couple of seconds to realize what had happened. Because of the degree of darkness, neither one of us could see anything.
John went down the companionway to the nav station to figure out what might be wrong. I fumbled around with my book to find the reading light. I clipped it on the helm and turned it on so I could at least illuminate the compass. We were holding a 330-degree course with the autopilot before it went out. When I finally managed to see our heading, we were at 150 degrees. In the matter of less than a minute, Up Jinks had stealthily made a 180-degree turn without making a sound. It was such a slow, undetected move that the boom hadn’t even creaked crossing through the tack. I was utterly amazed at how quickly we could be heading in the opposite direction without even noticing the motion.
Slowly, I pulled the helm around to steer us back to the original course. It was disorienting at first because the compass needle moved constantly over its points. The reading light was barely sufficient and I had to manhandle the helm to keep it steady. John yelled up to me to cut the engine which I did. The sudden, eerie silence that now accompanied the darkness added another layer of stress to the situation.
Don’t ask me how, but John figured out a solution. When he did, the pedestal holding all of the equipment lit up like a Christmas tree. I reset the autopilot at 330-degrees and turned the engine back on. John relieved me on the helm.
As I made my way down the companionway to our berth, I pondered what had just happened and what I had learned from it. First, you can’t rely solely on electronic instruments. Secondly, always log your course so you’ll know what it is. Also, at night, it’s important to have some sort of light readily available. Most importantly, RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP TO WASNT!! Don’t ever forget why you joined it in the first place.
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