Not another scary sea story
IT is the scariest things that provide the most interesting reading I reckon. Things beyond our control, our worst nightmares coming true.
I am no hero. At sea, at night, in the dark, alone: I have many nightmares. But the nightmares are not even the worst, it is the awake-time fears.
The worst case scenarios, those thoughts continously going through your head, those ‘what if’s’: “what if the forestay snapped? Like, right now? What would I do? What if the rudder broke?”
The boat was pounding into massive ocean waves, sailing due south into cold water towards New Zealand. Every day bigger waves crashed over the entire boat.
One week of continous storm conditions, got me 700 miles south of Fiji. I am alone, Sylvia has flown ahead, pregnant with our first child. Still tan from a tropical season of surfing, windsurfing and kiting in Fiji, I am hanging on through the days and through the long, long nights.
Every two seconds the bow lifts out of the water, for a moment it hangs ‘in dubio’; I tense my muscles, holding on while laying down. Then gravity wins and twelve tons of sailing yacht falls down into the next oncoming wave, ‘klabahmm’! The whole boat shudders, I breathe out.
While the mast is still shaking the boat picks up momentum, just to do it all again. Night and day, day and night. Terrified, not sleeping, listening, praying, looking at the rig, the mast, the sails. Trying
