Waiting for the off.

It was time to go out into the ocean again. The passage from Portugal to Madeira or the Canaries is, for most voyagers from north-west Europe, the starting point of real ocean cruising, extending beyond the range in which one can make dashes in fair weather windows, or line up a convenient list of refuge harbours if things don’t work out.

Cascais from the anchorage.

We sat in the anchorage at Cascais, just outside Lisbon, watching the weather. At first there were several fair days while we visited Lisbon and provisioned, but just as we were ready to leave there was a change. Each afternoon a brisk northerly breeze would spring up, rising to almost gale force by one a.m., and then abruptly stopping until the following afternoon. We hesitated. Although the anchorage is sheltered from the north, many of the yachts waiting to leave with us found their anchors would not hold in these winds, or were rolling too much in the swell, and they disappeared into the marina. Numbers waiting dwindled from 20 to about 5.

The daily weather-faxes were studied anxiously. A series of ugly depressions were marching across the North Atlantic, but there didn’t seem much happening this far south. One of our pilot books implied that the evening winds were a purely local phenomenon, and would not be felt offshore. Then bad weather was forecast a few days ahead. It was leave now or be trapped for at least five days more, so, on the last day of September, off we went.

Pooped!

We were counting on being clear of the bad weather before it struck. The first two days were very pleasant, in a steady northerly force 4 and barely a cloud in the sky. As usual we slept only a little the first night out, but that was made up on the second night. However, the easy life was not to last. The lunchtime forecast on the third day put out a gale warning both to the north and the east of us, covering almost the entire Portuguese coast. For our area, it was “northeast 6, occasionally 7”. Fair enough, but the sting in the tail was the sea-state forecast, “north-west swells, very rough to high”. High means 6 – 9 meters, and believe me, you don’t see many of those in the English Channel. It would be consistent with the very bad weather currently in the north Atlantic.

High seas off Portugal.

By midnight that night the wind was up to force 7, gusting strongly under heavy clouds. It was pitch dark apart from the phosphorescence in the breaking waves, and the yacht was going great guns under staysail and double reefed main. Our brand-new Aquair towed generator was not only putting out an incredible amount of power, but on its 50 meter warp was a steadying influence in the quartering seas. We watched the waves heaping up behind us, the stern of the yacht rising to the top and gently down again, or surfing down the wave keeping pace with the white water from the crest. This tended to push us round beam on to the next wave, not seriously but enough to give us a rocking and rolling ride. Every now and then a breaking wave would slop over the stern and run down the side decks. We were grateful for a centre-cockpit yacht with high coamings.

Pooped! This picture is faked, but gives an idea of
what we saw.

At 3 a.m. a control line on the overworked Aries frayed through. This meant hand steering until it was light enough to make a repair, and there was little sleep that night. The next day the winds gradually moderated to NE F5-6 by afternoon, though the seas were still high. That evening while Lyn was serving dinner, a roaring noise caught her attention and she turned and yelled in alarm. Through the open gangway we saw a giant wave pour over the starboard quarter, until the entire aft of the yacht was buried. It cascaded over the aft cabin and down into the cockpit, and with no washboards fitted, sprayed into the cabin where it ran into the bilges. Andrew, sitting on the port berth, was soaked. The yacht gave a shake and resurfaced. The cockpit was filled to the top of the bridgehead, and it seemed to take an age for the two 1½ inch drains to empty it. We hastily installed a washboard, but fortunately no more waves followed.

Andrew crept cautiously out to look around. Remarkably nothing had broken or been torn away. We had quite expected to find the Aries disabled, but it was continuing to steer the yacht well enough. In the event we escaped with nothing worse than a little water below decks. None the less it was a shock, and Lyn’s mind went into overdrive thinking about what if one of us had been washed overboard and how would she cope. Since the previous evening we had been wearing our oilskin jackets with harness and lifebelts, always clipping on when on deck.

Afterwards, the wind continued to moderate and we sighted the tiny Atlantic island of Porto Santo, 40 miles north-east of Madeira, just before sunset next day, arriving at midnight. We had covered just under 500 miles in 4½ days.

What is a pooping?

“Pooping” is defined as being “when a wave comes over the stern of a vessel”. This is the second time that Sentinel has had a wave come green over the stern. Adlard Coles, in Heavy Weather Sailing (4th ed, p17), argues though that pooping should mean something more severe, being overwhelmed aft by a breaking following sea that may broach the yacht: “a genuine pooping is very rare”. By this standard I am not sure if we were genuinely pooped.

We sighted Porto Santo just before sunset.

Moreover, in both our cases the circumstances were remarkably similar, but rather different from the text-book descripions of pooping, where a large following sea breaks directly behind the stern and sweeps over the aft half of the yacht, which is perhaps being restrained from surfing by a drogue. By contrast, both times we have been 'pooped’ occurred in the following circumstances when we were sailing downwind towards the south-west.

Cross swell can produce the occasional high crest.

The wind was moderating, and we had perhaps begun to relax our guard. The seas were higher than normal given the prevailing wind strength. And there was a cross-swell: one swell from the north-west, caused by gales far away, and one from the north-east, due to the recent local winds. Such conditions produce irregular seas and occasional much higher than normal waves where peaks of the two swell systems coincide. We were ‘pooped’ not directly over the stern, but more on the starboard quarter, the direction of the larger north-west swells. Interestingly, Adlard Coles (op cit, p75) also describes a pooping over the quarter caused by irregular seas out of proportion to the wind-strength. Finally, it may be worth mentioning that both times we were ‘pooped’ have been on the passage south from Lisbon.

Hurricane Vince

The bad weather we encountered on this passage was a precursor of , that passed close by Porto Santo three days later. "Vince" is the only true hurricane ever to occur in the eastern Atlantic, forming north of Madeira and heading towards the Spanish Coast. Porto Santo was lashed by 40 knot winds, causing a sleepless night but we were safe enough in the harbour. Three yachts arrived later that had taken a direct hit from the hurricane. A 60ft UKSA training boat with eleven on board had managed to keep sailing, though the skipper admitted how frightening he had found it, with his anometer recording 80 knot gusts. The other two had tried to take defensive action. One was a new Beneteau 441, being delivered to a popular charter fleet in the Caribbean. The skipper told us he had tried to heave-to but the yacht would not take it, and kept running off at 6 knots. Eventually the crew of three took all sails off, retired below and hoped for the best. I asked if they had considered trailing warps but was told it had been too rough in the cockpit - even if they had had any suitable. (It may not have been appropriate given they were in the 'dangerous' quadrant of the hurricane.) The other was Leveller, an old and battered Wharram Cat of about 30ft, being sailed single-handed. This had passed right through the eye of the hurricane. Again, the yacht had proved uncontrollable, lying beam on to the seas. With no true cabin, it is hard to imagine how bad it must have been. "I laid on the deck with one hand on the dinghy and the other on the tiller, and prayed not to be tipped over, at least until morning" said the exhausted young skipper.

However, all three arrived with only minor damage, and given the number of yachts that undertake this passage at this time of year, it is indeed fortunate that the hurricane is not believed to have caused any casualties. These cases confirm our previous observation that few yachts attempting the trade wind crossing have a well worked out and tested heavy weather strategy. However, the practice of lying ahull and retiring below, that most resort to, does seem generally to have worked.

Ironically this route is often regarded as one of the easiest of ocean passages. Jimmy Cornell in World Cruising Routes (2nd ed, p.50) describes it as “usually a pleasant passage … from June to September the Portuguese Trades provide excellent sailing conditions”.