Sunday 3 July 2011

Sea Anchor trials

The  weather in Ireland was not the best for where we were heading for. We had crew that had agreed to meet us in Baltimore but it soon became apparent that there was no way that we were going to make it for when we had said so in the end it was Waterford that we set off from.  George arrived as the first of the crew and the other guys made it over the weekend. The long range weather forecast was still not the best and the low that we were hoping would pass by just decided to hang around a little longer.However come Tuesday John made the decision to go for it the next low coming in looked as if it would pass to the North so the boys set off for Porto Sin hoping to make it there for Friday 17th. Every thing seemed fine and dandy or so I thought until on the Friday I received a phone call at work from a Spanish vessel that had been contacted by John and he asked if they would phone me to let me know that he had deployed the sea anchor and were now hoping to make it into Coruna some time on the Saturday. It was a bit difficult to understand exactly what the message was but Jo one of the office staff said I knew the call was for you as you 're the only person I know who owns a sea anchor!! The video shows the sea state though it doesn't do it justice and you can see the lines. The para anchor is a Southern Ocean 24 and John would now not leave port without it!
It appears that the low did not move as far North as we had hoped and realizing that there was no way that he would outrun the F10/11 winds John decided to sit tight and let the winds blow past . As we had owned the sea anchor for about two weeks it was a bit of a steep learning curve for John but he used mooring lines as pick up lines (it should be floating line) together with  the 100m of octoplait line that we had bought for the purpose but had been unable to prepare in advance.We also had to improvise when it came to the pick up but the crew were fantastic and after an uncomfortable 24 hours bobbing about 50/60 miles North of Finnesterre. John picked up the sea anchor and went on his way to La Coruna. We had chosen Porto Sin as it can be quite difficult getting around the the top corner if you go to La Coruna but by this time John was knackered and the crew deserved a rest. They had been checking lines every 15 - 30 minutes and deserved a pint!