Facing Open Ocean Alone, Part 3

BY ADRIAN JOHNSON

November 2nd. Third day at sea. The clouds are lighter, but it's a gloomy and showery morning. The excitement of being on the ocean is gone. I'm wet and cold, tired and bruised, and really want to turn the boat around and head home.

I've been calculating a new turnpoint that's less upwind of my current position, but still meets the 100NM requirement. I tack on a shift and my boat is pointing straight at the waypoint with only a couple miles to go. I hear a splash in the water. Half a dozen dolphins are playing around my boat. They’re a species I’ve never seen before.

I do a quick position check and find I am 101NM from Amphitrite Point. Finally, time to turn around! I bear off onto a broad reach, with the swells right off the stern. The dolphins have followed me through the turn and keep playing with the boat for a couple miles before disappearing. Unfortunately, the wind has died down and I can't quite get the boat to surf. I think about putting up the genoa to eek out a little more speed, but I'm just too tired. I make some oatmeal instead.

The sun has come out, it's getting warm and I start shedding layers and laying clothes out to dry in the cockpit. Reaching in the sun is so much more pleasant than beating in the rain, I feel like I could do this for weeks!

Click to see a video Adrian took during this point in his trip!

The dolphins are back, splashing around the boat. I ignore them until I hear an unusually loud blow. I turn around to see a ten foot spray plume hanging in the air about two boat lengths off the stern, and a whale breaks the surface and disappears. I'm a little nervous about having a creature the size of my boat this close! I almost ran it over! The dolphins are bow-riding the whale the way they've been playing with the boat. A little further, off to port another whale surfaces with its own pod of dolphins. Soon our paths diverge and they disappear in the swells.

I pull out my $15 plastic sextant and take a sun sight, then slip out of my foulies, pull out my sleeping bag, and put my timer on 30 minutes for my first real sleep in two days. It's hard to let go of the anxiety, but when the timer goes off I feel like I've had a bit of rest. I do a quick check of the sails and horizon and restart the timer. I do this a couple more times before deciding I've had enough sleep. I make lunch, then take another sun sight and run the calculation. It looks reasonable, but I don't have a sheet to plot my position, and I'm off the chart, so I'll have to wait til I get home to see how accurate it was (8 miles off).

The wind is lightening up, the swells are dying, and my ETA at Flattery is slowly creeping towards tomorrow morning. About 60 miles out I'm starting to receive the VHF weather. Sounds like I'm going to be facing a decent breeze at the entrance, and variable winds in the Strait. In the late afternoon I put put my damp clothes back on so my body heat will dry them out fully.

I take quick sights of the moon and Sirius between the clouds. The horizon is easily visible in the full moon, but I have trouble reading the sextant in the dark and my position comes out a couple thousand miles off. I'll have to be more careful. The wind is now NNW and I've had to sheet in quite a bit. If I'd known I would've aimed further west instead of sticking to the rhumb line. The weather forecast is now 15-25 knot easterlies in the west part of the Strait in the morning, variable 15kts in the rest. I hope I can get there early enough to cut through the easterlies before the chop builds up.