By Adam Loory | Cracked Off and Reaching to Retirement
On August 23, we danced with Hurricane Erin and had a great passage skirting her northern edge. We originally planned to hide in the Bras d’Or Lakes until the storm passed, but all the forecasts started showing her further south, giving us 20-30 knots of northeasterly winds to blow us to the west. With Halifax being 150 miles away, and upwind at that in the prevailing southwesterly winds, having a downwind run towards Halifax was too good a chance to pass up. If we waited until Erin passed, we would have had wind on our nose all the way to Halifax; therefore, I made the decision to sail the storm.
Keven, my only crew member, was not totally on board with my plan. She felt the whole reason we sailed 30 hours straight from St. Pierre and Miquelon to the Bras d’Or Lakes was to avoid the hurricane. She also saw forecasts showing a solid 30 knots of wind between 2-4 pm. Keven was worried that those strong blasts would be the result of bands of rain spinning off the hurricane. I acknowledged her apprehensions, but I knew the waves wouldn’t be too bad because the wind had not been in the northeast for long. Additionally, we also mapped out a few harbors we could pull into along the way should the conditions prove too rough.
When we left the St. Peters Marina, Gerry, the well-known yardmaster, agreed it was a good opportunity to get west to Halifax – if we were up to it. As we departed, we passed many boats hunkered down at the eastern entrance to the St. Peters Canal locks who were not going anywhere that day.
As we blasted our way west down the coast, we noticed that there was blue sky to the north over the land and there were angry grey clouds to the south over the ocean. As we were jibing downwind, I made sure not to get too far offshore in order to avoid the meanest looking clouds. We had to jibe several times because our destination was dead downwind.
I should note that in this breeze, in those seas, and sailing doublehanded, all of our jibes were “chicken jibes,” where we tacked through 290 degrees up into and past head-to-wind rather than passing stern to wind. In a chicken jibe, you tack instead of jibe so that the boom comes across the boat slowly. Having the main come across in a controlled fashion is much safer and easier on the equipment than having the boom fly across with force. With the reefed main, we could leave both runners set during the turns. Thank you, Rich du Moulin, for the idea to move the runners aft.
Soulmates ended up having a great, fast sail down the south coast of Nova Scotia. We averaged 9 knots for the 95-mile 11-hour passage from the exit of the Bras d’Or Lakes to Beaver Island Harbor, which is more than halfway to Halifax. The wind blew a mild 10 knots for the first hour-and-one-half, but the breeze came up after passing the Canso Peninsula. After that, we were off to the races.
We started surfing over 12 knots. Figuring it was better to reef before the “fecal matter hit the wind generator,” I went immediately to the second reef. Soulmates has a huge main, so when the breeze comes on, we usually skip the first reef and go directly to the second. Our speed dropped for a short time, but then we were even faster as the breeze built. I think the wind was in the mid-20s with some solid gusts into the 30s, but since we were on a very broad reach, heeling was minimal. Our highest speed was surfing on a wave where we hit 20.2 knots and had an uncountable number of surfs over 15 knots. There were hour-long stretches that we averaged 11 knots.
As the day went on, the blue skies won out and the grey angry clouds pulled away as the hurricane moved in the opposite direction. We had “danced” her out and Hurricane Erin went looking for some other dance partner.
When we got in, we found text messages from boats we had been hanging out with in different harbors since Newfoundland and the Bras d’Or. Everyone was happy we were safe and could not believe the speeds we had made. I emailed Gerry that we made it safely. He said he had been tracking us and was a bit worried but was glad to hear from me. One friend sailing a CS36 said that going that fast was not cruising. I had a different perspective: going slow and bashing upwind for 150 miles is not my idea of fun sailing.
Being comfortable in and prepared for high winds allowed us take advantage of these conditions. My decision to sail bore fruit, as the day after the storm, we had to motor the remaining 60 miles to Halifax because the prevailing southwesterly had returned. Comfort and preparation are the result of years of sailing in incrementally stronger winds and learning from those experiences. All sailors would do well to expand their sailing skills. I can still remember a letter to the editor of Scuttlebutt that I wrote in 2002, that started, “Race Committees on Long Island Sound are fostering poor seamanship by not starting races in winds over 20 knots.” That letter was written because races in two major regattas that year were cancelled because of strong winds.
