I was interested to read again recently an account by David Lewis, written some years ago, of a series of gales he encountered in the course of a voyage in Cardinal Vertue from St John’s, Newfoundland, to Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. He experienced winds of gale force or more on six occasions and on each found that both the wind and boat behaved differently.
In one gale of Force 10, for example, he streamed 20 fathoms of warp in a bight and ran before the storm. The ship at once became unmanageable and ran across the seas in the trough. ‘When I did succeed in steering before the seas’, he wrote, ‘each breaking wave would carry the warp alongside’. So he lay ahull, when the yacht gave before the breaking seas, although many crashed over her. The boat on this occasion tended to fall off. In another gale, a Force 9, a few days later, after running for a while under bare poles, he lay ahull once more, and this time the boat tended to luff, although later on in the same gale she began to fall off before the seas.
This all fits in with my own feeling that every gale is different, and it is extremely difficult to lay down the law about what to do in very heavy weather. There are too many variables, not only the size of boat and wind strength, but the wave length and steepness of the seas, the velocity of the wave train and so on.
Certainly in survival storms one wonders whether the hapless mariner can do much more than hope for the best.
I think one reason David wrote the article was that at the end of it all he was never quite sure whether he had survived because or in spite of the action he took. This strikes me as a healthy attitude, hesitant rather than didactic.
Nevertheless, there are, I suppose, certain broad principles based on experience that can serve as a guide. It used to be held that in severely heavy weather there were roughly three courses of action open to small craft: to heave-to and lie in moderate comfort with the seas on the bow, perhaps drifting to leeward at about 70 degrees to the heading; or to lie ahull, presenting the greatest buoyancy to the seas but with the threat, in storms of extreme severity, of a roll-over; or to run before the gale under bare poles, towing warps, preferably in a bight, to slow the boat down and prevent broaching when the seas become too menacing. Each has its champions, although it seems to be the consensus view that in winds above Force 10 the boat has got to run for it. Much, of course, will depend on the circumstances, for in any serious situation there are bound to be over-riding considerations why one course of action will be preferred to another. Singlehanded, sheer physical exhaustion can be a factor.
During his circumnavigation in Suhaili Robin Knox-Johnston normally lay ahull in storms, but in the Southern Ocean the seas were, on occasions, such that he feared the boat would be battered to bits. He took to streaming a bight of warp, both ends made fast to the king post forward, and setting a 40ft jib strapped hard in amidships; this seems to have enabled the boat to look after herself, and he reports coming through one Force 10 storm with the decks dry forward and no fear of being pooped.
Things seem to have marched on a bit, and nowadays it is common practice, at least in races, to maintain enough speed to keep the seas fine on the quarter. I am told that in Eclipse, at the height of the blow during the Fastnet Race in 1979, it was reckoned that 7 knots would be the safe speed to maintain, although her navigator thought that, with the quality of helmsman they had, they could have kept control at an even higher speed. Mike Plant, whose Airco Distributor was knocked down several times during the Cape Town to Sydney leg of the BOC Challenge Around Alone Race, put it thus: ‘You can’t heave-to in 40ft seas. You have to stay at the wheel and drive, and if you don’t it’s just a matter of time before the boat will roll’.
It is many years now since Moitessier sailing Joshua from the Society Islands to Spain was caught in a vicious storm in about 45°S. He ran before it towing warps weighted by iron pigs but found they merely made the boat sluggish and unresponsive to the helm. Fearing for her safety and remembering the experience of Vito Dumas, he cut the warps and ran the boat with enough speed to skid down the wave slopes, keeping the seas at about 15-20 degrees on the quarter. From that moment, he felt the boat to be in danger no longer. This was I think the inauguration of that philosophy.
Adlard Coles, a great chronicler of ocean storms, was impressed with the doctrine but shrank from advocating it in case it led to loss of life. More recently, Dr C A Marchaj, in his book Seaworthiness, has subjected the two techniques to mathematical analysis and suggests that both might profitably be used in the same gale; slowing down by streaming warps in the early part of the storm, and sailing at speed to maintain manoeuvrability when the wave system has developed sufficiently.
Shiphandling remains in the realm of judgment rather than measurement, and it seems likely that the prudent mariner will simply bear all these things in mind before deciding how best, in the prevailing circumstances, to weather the storm.
Copyright © Mike Richey (Yachting Monthly April 1987)
Jester Challenge 