Captain's Log

January 13, 2003

Hello All,
 
The last 3 days have been hard work. I feel as though someone is pushing me around out here. First there was a strong northerly that was correctly forecast and I went somewhat North East for a day to hedge the fact that this blow would send me south. Well it worked well, I caught up 150 nm on the middle pack of Class II and was headed right at Tasmania. It was hard work as keeping an Open 40 at 55 degrees apparent wind angle in 35 kts and in these seas that is a ' bashin and crashin ' lifestyle !!
 
BUT then the next weather evolved very quickly and right in my path was a deep low pressure that with each forecast was getting stronger yet its location not definite. My course was straight through the middle. SO, after being blown south and being in just the right spot I headed north to get around the top of this system. Now remember that I have had 35 kts from the North the day before and the new breeze is filling from the South. 25 - 35 - 40 - 45 kts solid with gusts to 50 kts. You can not image the sea state. The old Northerly swells were running right into the building Southerly gale in the Southern Oceans which always has a prevailing Westerly swell !!! Ouch. No choice but to steer the safest sea conditions and this was for a time almost due North.
 
The waves. We have all seen some awesome waves down here this past month, including ones that have given every boat at least 1 knockdown. These seas however were amazing. Breakers from different angles and coming at different speeds. Sometimes a line of froth from a breaking wave would come at BTC Velocities stern and partially fill the cockpit from behind while I am doing 12 - 17 kts of boat speed in the opposite direction. Othertimes the wave train infront would be so short that my bow would get pushed into the wave and the bow would dip under for a few seconds and pop up and off we would go surfing. You don't get those conditions every day !!! Again my autopilot performed flawlessly. Every few hours or so I would crawl into the aft compartment to bail out some water coming through the upper rudder bearing and tell my autopilots how proud I was of them, well it can't hurt talking to your pilots can it ??
 
Now the blow is over with winds only 28 - 30 kts and seas still a little sloppy but should be down in the next 12 hours and my position has again tightened up with my friends Tim, Derek & Kojiro as they are battling headwinds and I still have following winds and seas. Only issue after the storm is that leak coming from a hose ( I think ) in the engine compartment is getting larger, so today's goal, again, is to try and find the source of that leak and also to relax a little, it has been a stressful few days..........
 
Alan
BTC Velocity