In the morning I could see the clouds zipping by overhead which indicated that the winds outside of the protected North Sound anchorage were still pretty strong. I used the SSB to get my GRIB files and weather reports and they, too, were not particularly encouraging. As a best least-desirable option I thought I’d leave at about 15:00 to get the least strong winds on passage but in the end I chose to leave earlier because I was tired of waiting around. I lifted up the anchor and motored out of the North Sound, setting just a little bit of mainsail as I went up the channel between Neckar Island (Sir Richard Branson’s private island) and Prickly Pear island. The wind was as forecasted but the waves were sub-optimal and the closer I got to open water the bigger they grew. Waves are classified by several aspects – wave height, direction, and period. I knew that the wave direction would be just north of east, identical to the wind direction. The wave period was much shorter than I’d thought, later I saw it was 6-7 seconds between the waves. This, coupled with my boat speed of about 5-6 knots, made for extremely uncomfortable sailing with the boat frequenting slamming into an oncoming wave which sent shudders throughout the hull and mast and basically stopped the boat, then the sail and engine would bring the speed up again only to be slammed by another set of waves. I wasn’t going to submit the boat or myself to this torture and only continued onwards until I’d reached deeper water (wave shapes change in shallow water, usually getting bigger). But even in deep water and with various angles to the wind/waves it wasn’t getting better, so I turned back. Going back saw me zip along at up to 10 knots compared to the 4-5 knots average I was getting against the weather.
I pulled back into the North Sound and anchored at roughly the same location and had a celebratory glass of wine for having endured an ocean passage of a couple of hours! The SSB Weather reports were not promising at all for the next week, and I am in a hurry to get back to Europe and cannot wait that long anymore. In addition, I want to see a doctor there as my back is not mending and I’d been getting nerve twinges in my leg during the day’s sailing – that hadn’t happened before…
