Action stations! (part 5)
Tuesday June 7th
This morning, in the last half hour of my dawn watch, I was on the helm through some fairly big waves (4 or 5 meters high) when all of a sudden…
BANG!
We were struck side on by a wave that to all intents and purposes looked just like all of the others we had floated over gracefully during the morning, but instead of lifting us gently and dropping us behind it, this one fairly smashed into the starboard side the boat and rudely woke the rest of the crew. It was all hands on deck pretty quickly to inspect the boat — we did take some damage and for a while the extent of it wasn’t clear, but it did seem serious.
Chris’s log entries later stated dryly ‘Hit broadside by large wave, starboard side’ and was followed after some further investigation with another comment ‘Mark found made by solid object in wave’. To say that these comments do not fully capture the excitement of the moment is to put it very mildly indeed.
Although we don’t know what it was — probably not a whale after all — Chris reckoned that there was something in the wave below the surface that caused the damage when we hit it. It bothered me that I had been on the helm when the incident occurred. How did I manage to crash into something, out here in the vast open spaces of the ocean. But, given a bit of time I managed to recast it in my mind a bit. Perhaps it was some rare grace that allowed me to avoid hitting whatever it was head on, and instead suffer only mild damage from a more glancing blow. Ah, perspective.
Back on watch later in the day, the earlier excitement behind us, I imagined I saw a mighty white horse galloping in the white crests of the waves in the evening light… it reminded me of Oisin on his way to Tír na nÓg and made me smile to think of my own lovely Oisín and where his name came from.
The voyage to Rapa Iti
- Part 1 — Introduction
- Part 2 — Auckland to Tauranga shakedown trip
- Part 3 — Leaving New Zealand
- Part 4 — Trying to get into the swing of things
- Part 5 — Action stations!
- Part 6 — Now we’re sailing
- Part 7 — A very happy birthday
- Part 8 — Action stations again!
- Part 9 — Whales
- Part 10 — A day with a bit of everything in it
- Part 11 — The sky is on fire
- Part 12 — Almost there
- Part 13 — Land ho!
