Race 4 - Day 16
Crew Diary - Race 4 Day 16
02 December

Helming in the Southern Indian Ocean

While spending many an hour behind the wheel of our invincible vessel I have pondered how best to describe the feeling to non-sailing friends and family. Bear with me…

I could start by explaining that we sail using apparent wind angles (AWA). As a mathematician I quite often run numbers in my head as a I exercise but calculating the AWA is beyond me. Luckily the boat instruments calculate it for you so all you need to do is understand the meaning. If you stand in a field with a compass and the wind on your face the wind direction is easy to gauge. When you run directly into that wind it increases but doesn’t change direction, while if you run away from the wind it decreases, this is the impact your movement has on the True Wind Speed (TWS) and on the boat it is known as the Apparent Wind Speed (AWS). Now imagine you run at 90 degrees to the wind, the True Wind direction (TWD) doesn’t change but the AWA will be a combination of the TWD, TWS, your speed and your direction (imagine 2 vectors). Got it? The AWA changes all the time depending on wind, boat and waves and the wind instrument gauges are at the mast head which sways with every movement, so the display at the helm is slightly delayed. As a result, you can’t really use the numbers to “steer” but rather you must react to the boat feel and check the result on the numbers.

Of course, this does nothing to describe how it FEELS. So let me try again. Imagine now driving a long vehicle, with skates not wheels, down a steep ski slope avoiding boulders and potholes slalom style. You are standing at the back of the vehicle with an oversized wheel without power steering and have only a small margin of error in which to keep the thing on the track. If you accidentally veer outside this track you crash, crash tack or crash gybe: both are messy and dangerous for crew and rig. Scary? Exhilarating? Madness for sure.

Now imagine doing this in a dead black night, with maybe an occasional glimpse of moon and stars if you’re lucky. Now add, inexplicably, random buckets, huge buckets, of icy salt water being poured over your head or sprayed into your eyes while the whole slope undulates dramatically beneath you as if a giant were shaking a cloth. It initially seems an impossible feat but when you master it sufficiently to keep the boat moving at speed it is one of the best feelings, surfing at 24 knots down 20-foot waves in 45 knot winds, what’s not to like.

Most of us come to this race as novices, certainly of big ocean sailing, yet in a relatively short time, with direction and encouragement from Dan and Laura (Skip and AQP), we gain enough confidence and skill to take on this challenge and even enjoy it. Call us adrenaline junkies maybe but the sheer beauty and mastery of Mother Nature beats any man-made rollercoaster, Disney eat your heart out.