Day 10 (Wednesday, part 3)

That wind taking me in on Wednesday was not enough. It was not more than 5 knots where I was, which, would you believe, is easier to sail to windward in than down wind. I was pretty close to raising the spinnaker, but it was on the starboard quarter and I expected to turn more to the right when I passed Baring Head.

I drifted slowly in, and then the wind got even lighter. Just my luck to arrive in Wellington during Earthquake Weather. Wellington is so notoriously windy, that when it's calm, no one can really believe it. How can it be this good? there must be something up? So the locals call this earthquake weather. Wellington is also directly on a fault line. Look at a map of the harbor - there is a straight bit on the north west side, where both the highway and the train track goes, that is the fault line.

I made maybe a couple of miles of progress, but then what little wind there was just got shaken out of the sails. I dropped the Genoa, and made lunch... half way through that, I noticed a northerly coming in. Finishing lunch, I packed away the Genoa. It felt like the wind was rising fast, so I set the heavy jib and a reef in the main. After a few minutes, the boat was heeling over dramatically, and there where whitecaps everywhere. The sea was positively churning. I put another reef in. Looking at the chart... I was actually still quite a ways from wellington. It was gonna take a few hours to sail in, especially since when the wind is strong I can't sail into it quite as well.

I started to experience a sense of foreboding. I hadn't really experienced much fear on this trip. A few moments, or times I realized that I had done something stupid and it was a close call. But this was proper fear that something bad was gonna happen. But I wasn't afraid of the wind or the waves, specifically. I was fearful of the narrative arc. A man sets out on a journey, it progresses, with a few challenges which he surmounts without too much difficulty - a bit of an ordeal to reach the final objective. But then he celebrates victory prematurely. I only have to do this one little bit, my goal is right there! No. It's like that bit in a video game when you think you've defeated the end level boss, but it turns out you only broke off a bit and made it more angry. It had been foreshadowed. I had written my plan for what to do in the potential gale in both my log book, and shared it on an immutable log. My fear, was that I was in an epic drama see: Rule of Drama

My plan A, was "just sail into wellington anyway" which was what I was already doing. Ideally, I'd make it in while the tide was rising, because it would make transiting the entrance channel easier. The entrance channel is quite serious. It's actually only half as wide as it looks on a land map, because there is a very nasty reef in the middle. In 1963 the Wahine was wrecked on this with 53 deaths, while attempting to enter the harbor during a storm. After high tide, the current would be against me, so I'd need to sail further to get through.

High tide was 2135, and sunset was 2037.

Sailing on, the wind picked up a bit more. I reefed again, now on the 3rd reef and the smallest jib. I couldn't reduce sail any more and still make progress. I didn't feel like I was over canvased yet, so I still had a bit of spare capacity, but if it got much windier than this I'd have to switch from making progress to just holding steady. I'd have to ride it out.

At 2000 I noted in my log "gonna have to change into some dry clothes soon" at 2124 I was very close, in behind island bay. I was close enough that the next step was to actually sail through the passage, but it would be to windward, with many tacks. Normally, Cleo tacks very well, and rarely do I miss one, but with the wind this strength it's a different story. With 3 reefs in the main, but without the jib, I can't tack at all. So I'd have to keep the jib up. If it suddenly got to strong for the jib, I'd have to turn down wind and come back out. I'm not sure if I'd actually ever done a gybe in these conditions, but I also need a bit of room to turn down. If I didn't have room to tack, or the wind got to strong, I'd have to sail back out, and would I have room to turn down?

I made some practice tacks - It was much harder in these conditions. If you didn't get the sail in quickly, it would flog like crazy and pull the lazy sheet through and wrap it around the working sheet. This might take several minutes to undo, okay if you have plenty of space, but definitely not good if you are about to hit rocks. I tried tying the ends of the sheets together, so the sheets couldn't get too out of hand - but it was still difficult in these conditions.

I hove to, with the jib dropped and the tiller lashed to lee, off the wellington south coast made some food and debated my options.

A complicating factor was the cook strait ferries. Auckland ferries are relatively small, fast catamarans and can easily sail around you. But in wellington, the ferries, which are the only way any road traffic can get from the north island to the south island, the ferries are great big ships. The rules of the road at sea are that power gives way to sail, except, over 500 tonnes - might is right. Small gives way to big. If they hit me, it was my fault. I was currently close enough to the shore to be inside the path they take, but drifting out. Doing a quick look around, there was suddenly about 5 ships looking like they wanted to enter or were leaving.

Right where I was would have been a good spot to just wait it out, being hove to here was currently quite comfortable, but I was drifting backwards into the ferry path. I'd seen one go outside of me already. The path the ferries take is marked on google maps, but I couldn't trust that they followed it exactly, especially not in a gale. I couldn't stay where I was, because I would drift back to where they were. The ferries run all hours of the day and night.

It would have been nice to just anchor on the south coast somewhere, but the chart just says things like "numerous sunken rocks" and names "the sirens rocks" and a marked wreck! Also there was still a southerly swell. Bumping into a rock is something you could easily survive in gentle conditions, but with swell, you'd get lifted and dropped on it again and again. The boat surely being a wreck.

I didn't like the idea of trying to tack through the entrance channel right now. I didn't sail all this way just to take a dumb risk now. It wasn't just a matter of getting into wellington, I had also brought everything I owned with me (except for a box of junk and some tools at hackland), including my home itself.