Location: Pacific Ocean
My day started this morning at 4, watch team 2 (love love love them) was awakened for our 4-8 shift (yes, in the am), and I had already decided upon waking up that I was going to brave the helm for the entire four hours (this might be a legitimate sign of me going crazy from passage). We arrive on deck, groggy and eyes still heavy with sleep (or lack thereof for Sadie, Kennedy, and Amy, whose hatch wasn’t locked and had a big wave pour into their beds during our precious and so so fleeting sleeping hours), we make our way to the cockpit, and I assume position at the helm. I’ve already done a Helmsona earlier in passage, but after I started wearing my sunglasses during the Storm (to shield my eyes from the onslaught of rain) and Nacho coined the phrase “Helminator” in reference to my glasses making me look like a Terminator special agent, well, I knew what I had to do. The title needed to be earned, and oh boy, it was.
The watch actually started pretty peacefully; it wasn’t actively pelting us with rain, and a sleepy but still pleasant banter had started among us. Then Julian was sent out, he volunteered (don’t think we forced him) to do a boat check–a totally normal and usually super quick and chill thing. We then hear Julian (who is normally quite calm, our King) yell out a thunderous roar in protest of one of the biggest waves I’ve seen come screaming out and above our bow. Thoroughly drenching him in his light raincoat, having not put on his full fowlies, a point that he would make very clear upon his soaked arrival back to the cockpit. This was only the apertif to what would be possibly the wettest, wildest, most storm-soaked, chaotic watch of ours yet. Not long after this, I notice storm clouds ahead that look ominous, but our radar isn’t picking up any squalls, so we should be fine, right? Wrong. The radar did not detect the buckets of rain that would proceed to supersoak us all, not even fifteen minutes later. Now, feeling thoroughly like wet dogs, or wet cats in Nacho’s case (he voiced this distinction), we continue our watch. Writing this, I’m trying and failing to recall which happened first, but I think it was our mainsail that went awry. We lost a batten on the mainsail (an actually super important little piece that holds our sail shape). This was our first oh no, I’m not very good” moment, so while everyone else goes to deal with that, Emma and I stay in the cockpit with the helm. We then see a squall forming on the radar. A big, like-filled-up half the radar with orange colors and heading straight for us, squall. Shane was already on board helping us with the mainsail, and once everyone is back in the cockpit, soaked and exhausted, and now alerted to this monster squall, our main staysail halyard comes undone. Now this, this, was muy malo. Especially with the added factor of monster squall starting to hit us and wind speeds picking up to 30/40 knots. I look to Shane, and I tell him to go deal with it and be Captain. I got the helm, and so everyone rushes off to the midships to wrestle in the main staysail. This is when I realized I need to have the most generational lock-in. Waves were crashing into our front and sides, and I knew if I messed up and let the rushing winds (now reaching 50 knots and setting off our max wind speeds exceeded alarms) push my wind angle off course, it could result in potentially really bad harm for my staff and watch team. I held the helm with every ounce and inch of might I could muster, and it was the most glorious feeling I’ve ever experienced. Was it mildly horrifying? Totally. But that’s what we came here to do. It takes our entire watch team and all three of our staff over thirty minutes to get the main staysail under control. By the time they do, everyone comes back to the cockpit with the largest grins, matching my own. It was electric. We had just survived two massive incidents in the middle of one of the biggest squalls to hit us yet.
Pretty much immediately after this, our watch is over, my helmsona title “Helminator” is earned with a final ten-second countdown, and we proceed to drink tea and watch some episodes of The Office in the saloon. To which I concluded with a nap before wrangling everyone up (because I was skipper today) for lunch, our final seamanship class, watch again, and then dinner. Hope you parents and people enjoy a warm bed, a standing shower, and cold beverages, knowing that we are safe and having truly the time of our lives (and yearning very very very very very much for all those things, most of all a cold class of chocolate milk).