Specail Sailing Op

On Thursday morning at 06:00am, Eric, myself, Makyla and Jared cast our lines off from Port Owen Marina setting sail for Elandsbaai,  this being unchartered territory for us. Approximately a 7 hour sail, only to discover the weather is deteriorating rapidly, the sea had become extremely choppy and a northerly wind straight on the nose. So it turned out that we could not use our sails. so motors it was to be.

After more than 7 hours, of being bashed around on the water, we finally arrived at Elandsbaai, realising that the mist is extremely thick and we are getting thrown around by the very choppy ocean. We decided it was not a safe or suitable anchorage today, considering both the weather and how unfamiliar we are with the area and clearly unfamiliar with bad weather sailing.  We then opted for plan B to sail further up north towards Lamberts bay another 3 hour sail,  in the hope of finding an anchorage that was a little more sheltered. Spoiler alert!!  that did not work out either, so the Captain and I made the decision that we needed a serious course correction and a plan C. The decision was to do a long night sail all the way back to Paternoster which is actually passed our marina, so another 9 hours, in heavy wind, with very confused seas. Keeping in mind by now we are pretty tired as the total sail with no rest would be 19 hours.

So what does this mean ? We will arrive in Paternoster at around 02:00am in not very easy weather and have to anchor in total darkness and heavy mist. There was another option, we could just head back to Port Owen the Marina that by now we know extremely well and could probably sail in there with our eyes closed. Keep in mind that we would have to pass Port Owen to get to Paternoster 😂 Of course that was certainly not going to happen, it was really time to test ourselves and our ability to cope when things get rough, as the reality is we will be crossing an ocean in just a few months.

The great news is that we were able to have the genoa out for a full 9 hours as the wind angle was just perfect for that, this of course made it much more pleasant not having to listen to the motors, with the exception of very heavy mist and zero visibility.

Finally after 2 in the morning we arrived at Paternoster exhausted and wind battered. Well holy sh1t !! Anchoring at that hour, in that weather with zero visibility was a mini sh1t show, with heavy wind, swell and a big current, it was a long struggle but finally we got the anchor to hold. Through this little drama we did discover that our chain counter was out of commison, which you will later realize simply never worked again. With this we had absolutely no idea how much chain was out 🙈 Needless to say all feeling a little edgy it would be anchor watch all night. We did drag ever so slightly but the anchor somehow managed to re-hook itself, and we were thankful for small mercies.

We were expecting more bad weather coming our way, however I think the man above had a little mercy on us newbies and gave us a much easier Friday. When sunrise came we realised that we had thankfully anchored with great caution and very far from land as with a northerly wind in this area you have the risk of getting blown onto land. Needless to say with the good fortune of improved weather we decided to stay an extra night. We were so pleased we decided to do this as Makyla had the crazy idea to have a swim in this incredibly cold and rather rough water which she absolutely loved and seemed to get an emense amount of pleasure out of it.

Great bonus of the day, some of the fisherman came passed and we were able to buy some fresh out of the sea crayfish for a steal of a price, and an absolute feast of a lunch was had.

A Very experienced sailor Allan Ward, told us we need to get out of our comfort zone and go sailing in weather that is not perfect cruising weather, as we need to become comfortable with the challenges that weather can bring for sailors, although I am pretty sure he never meant anchor at 2am in mist, however we took this opportunity to do just that, we certainly learnt a lot about our boat and our own ability to deal with a very different kind of stress than what we are familiar with , so we were really pleased that we had this experience. I would certainly recommend this to anyone that is new to sailing before going on a major passage