One very bumpy Sail

One very bumpy Sail 

Friday 11 September 2020

 

You’d think it would be quiet and peaceful on a mooring, but Cotinga had other plans as she spent the whole night trying to sail in the ever-changing currents of York Harbor. I lost count of the number of times the mooring ball smacked into the hull of the boat. We set the alarm for 6 am so we could get an early start on our journey south, but I didn’t need the alarm clock. We motored out of the harbor at 7 am immediately encountering very choppy conditions from the strong north-east winds meeting the ebbing tide. We knew that the wind was going to be strong but we figured it would be behind us and how bad could it be? Well it turns out pretty bad! During the first two hours the wind was pegged between 23 and 27 knots and the waves were 5 feet or more and really short (4 second) period. We both got doused with spray in the cockpit on multiple occasions and we had to seriously hang on as the waves twisted and pivoted Cotinga in quite a violent way. Gloria felt quite queasy, but we were both able to slap on an old scopolamine patch (which we had used on our overnight passage north - they are good for 3 days) and managed to hold on to breakfast. Later in the morning the wind dropped back a little and the seas seemed less intense, which was a relief. We weren’t convinced the autopilot would handle the conditions well and so with the exception of a couple of minutes we hand steered for 6 hours without a break. I was keen to try out our new “Windpilot” self-steering system, but within two minutes the “dedicated breakpoint” (~3mm paracord designed to break if the there are high-loads that could damage the steering) snapped and put the system out of action! I have to say that we have not yet mastered the self-steering or generated much confidence that it can be trusted.

In the end we decided to cut-out to our fall back destination, Gloucester Harbor, rather than continue the additional 20 miles to Scituate. We arrived just before 1pm having covered 40 nautical miles at an average speed of 6.9 knots (all under sail with a single reefed main and part-full genoa). We did plenty of surfing and our log recorded our maximum speed as 11.5 knots!!! This might have been the hardest single day of sailing we have ever done.

We are now comfortable anchored and resting before we continue south tomorrow. I think it’s highly unlikely there will be any photos today … there was zero chance that I could have taken any shots today whilst trying to sail.

 

Mike

 

42 35.766 N, 70 39.532 W