Well where to start - first morning out I noted to myself, with out thinking it through properly, - mmm pink sky in the morning is a shepperd's warning. Didn't think it may apply to sailors as well, this was as we got our first Pacific Ocean sunrise. About an hour later we got buzzed by a US Navy plane. Don't know what it was, but four prop plane. It didn't look as big as a Herc, but you can never really tell. I said to Stu, "Do you recon' they want to talk to us" and he said "Nah just having a look at us on the way to Hawaii". I kept an eye on them and they banked around and did another fly by at about 100m. Stu went into the cabin and turned on the VHF radio to hear the tail end of a transmission. As they did there third flyby, Stu asked them politely if they wanted us?- they did! I saw on the chart plotter that we were in the Pacific Missile Test Range early in the night. The Pilot asked us our course, speed, number of crew, boat name and length and destination. He then told us that they were conducting a live fire exercise and we needed to divert 20 nm south, so we did. About two hours later we all heard and felt a massive explosion.
After the next day the weather took a turn for the worse. We coped a bit of a flogging with a constant wind speed of about 30 knots and 20-30 foot swells. It went up a couple of notches a few times with some massive 'monster tard' waves that looked like they towered over the yacht. The yacht has a mast that is 58 feet of the deck - so that is fucking huge (sorry for the expletive but there is know other way to express it) with peak gusts off around 50 knots. Two days ago we turned around and headed for Catalina again. The sea state stayed around the same until last night when it mellowed out and gave us a rest. We have all been in our wet weather and safety gear for five days - sleeping in it as well. At one stage we had about 4 feet of jib out for a storm sail and we were still touching 10 to 11 knots. Stu kept us safe and on the third we 'trailed a warp' which tamed the might of the ocean for us. Basically before we left Dana Point, Stu set up a second anchor line in one of the rear lazarette's (lockers) during the storm we took the chain of and let out about 100 metres rope one end secured to the port side rear cleat and the other secured to the starboard side rear cleat. We then tied a buoy onto the rope which floats (rapidly) back to the middle of the line and acts like a big brake, the change to the boat was instant. Stu says that he has never done it before and only read about but we can now attest to its effectiveness. The second last day of the bad weather gave us the worst problem we had faced yet. About 20 minutes before dark the furling line on the jib snapped and the jib unfurled and started going crazy. Claire had to take the wheel while Stu and I contended with jammed lines and crazy sails. Claire did an amazing job on the wheel keeping the yacht heading straight down the waves that were between 30 and 40 feet I can tell you she performed amazingly and kept Stu and I safe up the front of yacht pulling in and down the jib. From the up the on the pointy end the waves felt like they were a lot bigger! the wind was making it incredibly difficult but Claire was keeping it straight with no power (surfing effectively) there were a few moments that were really bad during this incident but we will tell you about those face to face. During this time Kym had to sit next to Claire and hold her in position otherwise she would not have been able to stay behind the wheel. There was a lot of back and forth up and down the boat it was hectic. When we got the sail down I had to lie on top of it because I was completely spent. I recovered shortly after we all had a sit down in the cockpit, everything kind of seemed OK.
Things are good now - they were not really that bad then, dogey but not evil. Heading to Dana Point tomorrow to get some repairs done. Oh and on top of it all tsunami's and a Tornado heading towards San Diego from where we were.... big sigh of relief. whats next! Claire is still in shock and has nothing to add for the moment. bye for now xx