dpstivers wrote:
I followed your tracker. I would love to hear how your race went. Looks like it was really tough out there.
Over a year later and am ready to report. This was the hardest thing I have ever done, on so many levels. Trained hard for the months leading up but was not prepared for the events as they unfolded.
The first hour and a half started with light winds that filled in nicely. Then they stopped. The following six hours was a slog through a windless soul-sucking patch of ocean. Nothing but leg power to get across a grey sea rimmed with fog. Leg power and the occasional loud angry curse. I went into survival mode not trying for speed but focusing on endurance. Literally head down only looking up to check my course. My fitness tracker showed me burning four thousand calories. I don’t doubt it. The last hour plus and the wind filled in from the west and did not stop filling in. Things got crazy fast.
I had lost faith in my Navionics on my phone mid doldrums and had aimed for the nearest land once I saw it through the low clouds. This put me well east of Victoria and I was getting cold, wet (inside my drysuit), and tired. At this point I was done and started trying to find somewhere to land the Tandem Island. I found a boat ramp on the map and then got a visual and steered towards it. Between me and the shore I saw what I thought was reflected wave meeting wind blown wave from the west. When I got closer I saw they were patches of exposed rock blasting the waves into plumes of spray. Between the map and eyeballing the situation I wound my way between and through and in one case (with the fortune of good timing) over the crashing waves, and rocks, and spray. Once clear of the rocks and in the lee of land I short tacked to the boat ramp, dragged the boat clear of the water and got on the phone to race control to tell them I had bailed and to contact my land transportation.
I spent a while waiting for my support team to track me down and pick me. I was happy to be on dry land and alive.
What went wrong was the six hours of no wind. Almost all of my training involved wind and mostly brisk wind. The weather forecast two weeks before the start showed a dead zone in the middle of the Strait and that did not change all the way up to race day. I saw it, feared it, and did not want to believe it. Now all the things meant to make me go faster, sails, amas, and such were there to slow me down. Lesson learned.
That is why next year I am entering the Seventy48 with all the extra weight and associated reliance on wind removed. Main hull, combined and upgraded Mirage drives only. My goal is to average six knots (on flat-ish water) for the distance. I aim to be first solo competitor across the line.
Although I did not officially finish I am proud of what I have done and have a better idea of what I can do. And that is so much more than I ever thought.
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