night sailing – Have Wind Will Travel

Bombs Over Baghdad!

November 18, 2014November 18, 2014anniedike

May 5, 2014:

Shrimpers. That’s what they were. Those strange looking UFO ships out on the water.

They were huge shrimping vessels with massive football stadium-like lights flooding the deck. No red or green for port or starboard, so you couldn’t tell which way they were going (or coming!), only that they were getting closer and closer and closer. Super annoying when you’re cruising at night and not sure if the shrimp boat is going to come across your bow or cut behind your stern. And, what was worse, when they finally passed us about 100 yards off of our port stern, it looked like there was no one on deck or at the helm. They were probably all below playing poker and smoking cigars or something, just trudging blind across the Gulf, blissfully unaware of any other potential vessels in their path! Stinking shrimpers! We were cursing them all night. We probably “encountered” four or five of their “kind” that night and had to stay on constant watch.

Sadly, too, there wasn’t much wind that night. We had to motor until about 1:00 a.m. when the winds finally picked up to about 3 knots. It wasn’t much, but it was the most we’d seen in 12 hours, so it was enough for us to throw out the sails. I will say the Hinterhoeller is an exceptional lightwind boat. Favorable seas and any breeze 3 knots or greater and we can usually achieve hull speed about 2 knots less than the wind, if not more. So, if it’s blowing 5 knots and we’re not beating into big waves, we can usually make around 3 knots, which is great. A typical wind of 7-8 knots, and we’re often making 5, easy. Like I said, an incredible vessel that still never ceases to amaze us. Thankfully, with a light 3 knots of wind that night, we were able to finally kill the engine for a bit and sail! Until about 4:30 a.m., when the wind died out again and we had to crank back up. Dag nabbit! But, we did cruise right on into a beautiful sunrise over the Gulf.

May 6, 2014:

And, have you ever had one of those perfect Saturday mornings where you wake up, lounge around in your PJs, make a big weekend-morning breakfast like french toast, or pancakes, and then fall back asleep till like 10:00 a.m.? Ahhh … Isn’t that the best? Well, this morning was kind of like that. We watched the sun rise, made some piping hot coffee, sipped it, devoured two heaping bowls of steaming oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar and then …

took a nap! The morning chill was still in the air and we were both a little tired from the two-hour shifts the night before, so we eased into the day nice and slow like, taking turns napping in the cockpit. But, the sun finally started to ease up and so did we. It was a gorgeous day out in the Gulf.

Unlike the crystal green waters we had encountered around Clearwater and Tampa Bay, the waters here were a deep, rich royal blue,

and just as stunning in their own way. We even had a sea turtle come and visit us!

I know, looks kind of like a grainy alien photo, but I promise, it’s a turtle. I finished a fun, quick suspense read that morning – Lee Child’s 61 Hours – and the joke was we had been motoring about that long, too. 61 hours, huh? Not quite that long, but it felt like it. About 12 hours the day and night before, and add another 6 or so since we’d cranked around 4:30 that morning. So, 18 hours so far, which is a long time to keep that engine going. We decided to turn her off and bob for a bit so we could let her cool and check the oil.

You know what they say — “Diesels love oil like a sailor loves rum.” (And, by “they” I mean Captain Ron … naturally)

There you go girl … Drink up!

The wind was still mocking us, gracing by our boat at a light 0.5 to 1.3 knots. 1.3?? Look out! It’s getting gusty up here!! It was amazing to see the waters of the Gulf, which we have seen many times brimming with 3 foot, 4 foot, even 6 foot waves, look like solid … glass.

There would be no sailing for this vessel anytime soon. So, we cranked back up and decided to heat up some of our broccoli-less broccoli crappola (also known as sweet potato chili),

and throw together a great cucumber, tomato and feta salad for lunch.

This salad is great because it’s super easy. It’s literally cucumber, tomato, a little bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and feta. A great way to throw together some random vegetables you may have on the boat or some feta that needs to be eaten. With water like glass, a nice lunch spread laid out before us, and nothing but easy motoring to do, we thought we were in for an tranquil day. But, that’s when it struck …

You might recall me asking you all, in jest — What’s the Worst Thing You Can Have On a Boat? And, no, it was not the “busted mate”

(although that was close). For us, it was the LEAK!

Our stupid dripping dripless. That was the worst thing we’d had on the boat … up unto that point at least. But recall we ran through some possibilities then – fire, lightning, etc. Now, it seemed we were about to have something new. Phillip and I had just curled up in the cockpit with our chili and salad and were ready to kick back for a relaxing lunch when

>> BOOM <<

Out of nowhere, with nothing out of ordinary in sight. We both jolted upright and starting looking around. And then again

>> BOOM <<

It sounded like bombs were exploding over head. I’ll never forget how quickly Phillip put his bowl down and jumped behind the helm, scanning the horizon. In military mode. Of all the things that we could expect to happen on the boat. A bomb?!? You have got to be kidding me. When another BOOM came with no sign of an explosion or threat near our boat, we started to run through the possibilities. Phillip said he knew they often used the northern part of the Gulf as a testing zone for bombs and other detonation devices. They would fly out of Tyndall or Eglin Air Force Base and drop in the designated zones. Tyndall AFB is just south of Panama City.

Assuming they had a drop zone about … yay … big (give or take)

and assuming our projected path of about … here’ish (I know, real technical stuff),

it was wholly probable that we were either in their testing zone or at least close enough to hear it. While Phillip knew they often did testing in this area of the Gulf, he said they usually issued some notice or warning to mariners over the radio to advise of the bombings. If they were bombing anywhere near us, he would have expected to have heard an advisory go out over the radio or to have seen marine vessels or air support checking to make sure the testing zone was clear. He clicked on the radio and listened for any advisories, but we didn’t hear anything. Either the testing was occurring much too far away to constitute any potential threat to us (although I can assure you it did not sound like it), or the ole’ Rest had gone rogue and done slipped through their barriers! Flanking them on the inside! We didn’t see any action on the horizon or hear any advisories on the radio, so we figured we were at a safe enough distance, but that didn’t stop us from standing up and doing a 360 every time another bomb went off! BOOM!

It was the wildest thing. As cruisers, you prepare for a lot of contingencies when you start doing overnight passages and Gulf crossings – you pack spares for every single piece of equipment, and then spares for those spares, you have a ditch bag handy and rehearse man-overboard drills, you keep a knife, a flashlight and a gaff near the cockpit in case someone or some thing goes overboard – all kinds of safety precautions. But, a bomb plan?? I can tell you we certainly did NOT have that. But, like I said, they seemed to be no real threat, so we let the bombs drop all around us all afternoon while we continued to motor toward Carrabelle. As the sun started the drop, the wind laid down even more (it was blowing — if you can even qualify it as “blowing” — between 0.3 and 0.5 knots) and the water began to look like a smooth satin sheet laid out before us.

Eventually the two became one and there was no discernible horizon.

It was incredibly beautiful and humbling, to know that a body of water so dangerous and deadly at times could lay down and spread out like a smooth silk path for our passage. Even more awe-inspiring was the friend who joined us for dinner. A tiny, lone sparrow flitted around our boat twice before finally coming to a shaky halt on a lifeline and heaving little pants of exhaustion from his overwhelming flight.

Where did he come from? Where was he going? How did he make it all the way to our boat, more than a hundred miles offshore, in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? We didn’t know, but we didn’t need to. He was welcome regardless. He closed his beady little eyes and stayed right with us until the sun set and we could no longer make him out.

It was Phillip, the bird and I, motoring into another night on the Gulf, with Carrabelle awaiting us, on the other side of the sunrise.

“I’m Okay!” … sort of (Viewer Discretion Advised)

September 18, 2014September 18, 2014anniedike

April 28, 2014:

The first thing I remember seeing after the fall was the big, white meat of my arm. Between the time I hit, opened my eyes and blinked several times at it, it had grown twice the size. I knew it had hit, something, and I knew it hurt, but to see it so swollen, so suddenly, just mesmerized me. I really thought it might be broken. In all of the wild antics of my youth – gymnastics, barrel racing, cheerleading, jello wrestling and other numerous, countless stupid decisions in college – I had yet to break a bone (knock on wood) and I was thinking this might be the end of that lucky streak. I clenched my first a time or two and rolled my wrist and, while my entire forearm was numb and throbbing, everything seemed to be working fine, so I decided the bones were at least intact.

“I’m okay … I think,” I said. “I, … I think I’m okay.”

I heard Phillip set the auto-pilot so he could come on deck to check on me and I noticed the main halyard (that bleepin’ thing) was now dangling at about his waist-level on the deck. Before thinking about how it got there, I grabbed it (that bleepin’ thing) and began to surmise that I must have pulled it down, at least in part, during my fall because it was now so much lower. But, I couldn’t recall exactly, grabbing it or letting it go. But that got me thinking about the fall. Why had I fallen? What had snapped?

As if hearing my thoughts, Phillip said “the lazy jack snapped,” as he stepped up on deck. I didn’t even look up (assuming I even could turn around to see it), I knew exactly what he meant. We had busted the lazy jack line for the stack pack on the starboard side during our passage to Port St. Joe.

That time it was because of rough wind and weather that had caused the sail to put too much force on the starboard lazy jack line, causing the rivet on the spreader to rip clean off.

And, what we gathered from that incident was that the lazy jack lines are not intended to hold extensive weight. We have since learned (from our trusty rigger, Rick Zern) that this design is intentional so that the rivet for the lazy jack line will fail before excessive strain is placed on the spreader. Makes sense. But, clearly this riveting (no pun intended) fact somehow escaped me as I was doing my circus act up on the boom, reaching with all my might, one strained, out-stretched hand to the halyard, the other with a mighty death-grip on the port-side lazy jack line.

And, then SNAP! I’d done ripped the one on the port-side off, too, and suffered a mighty fall as a result.

Dad-burnit!

It all made sense–now–as I lay in a crumpled heap on the deck. But, what’s done is done. At least I hadn’t broken anything, or so I thought. As I started to stand, though, to re-secure the halyard, I discovered a new pain–my knee. It seems it, too, had hit something and it, too, was already swollen. Phillip frowned at me and laid a sturdy hand on my shoulder, which told me to sit tight for a minute. He secured the halyard then helped me to my feet so I could hobble back to the cockpit. Like my arm, my knee was numb and throbbing, but it appeared to be working. Phillip seemed to be comforted, slightly, by the fact that I was somewhat satisfactorily mobile, but I hated to see such a look of worry and anger on his face. While I had managed to get that bleepin’ halyard down, it was at a serious cost, and it was clear the Captain was not impressed with my … heroism.

We set me down in the cockpit for a good once-over (I warn you, this is not pretty):

The arm had developed some gnarly purple streaks where (I can only assume) it sheared down the lifelines on the way to the deck.

It was fat and painful, but, like I said–working.

The knee had developed this very strange ping-pong ball-shaped lump on the left side of my kneecap:

I wasn’t sure what to even make of that. Why the perfect round lump? Why swelling in such an isolated spot? I had injured my knee before–well, this knee (the left) actually, years and years ago. I tore my ACL while tumbling in high school and had it surgically repaired back in 2000. But, just last year, I sprained the MCL in my right knee during my first attempt at skiing. It had swollen then, too, almost instantly, but it was a global swelling of the whole knee–not just a perfectly segregated ping-pong ball lump–and it required a massive needle and surgical suction for that swelling to eventually dissipate. (You may recall the removal of the spawn of Satan from my knee!). This lump was strange … We did all we knew to do at the time–ice everything and see what developed.

As I sat there, looking back on it, I can’t promise I wouldn’t jump back up on that boom to try and retrieve a swinging halyard–it is such a monstrous chore to retrieve it once it inches its way out of your reach–but I guess the best I can say is I hope to never let go of the halyard again. We already knew this lesson, we’d learned it several times, but it just happens, sometimes as a result of rocking waves or other hazards, but other times just as a result of a senseless human error (it’s entirely possible to just accidentally let go of something). I mean, you have hands to hold things, but they’re human hands, so they err. I am hopeful, at least, that we have now sufficiently modified our halyard-shackling procedure to eliminate the frequency of the latter.

We always secure our halyard away from the mast while at anchorage or the marina so as not to be “that guy” at the party.

Yes, that one. If the sun’s just starting to set at the anchorage, folks are just starting in on their second cocktail or dinner, kicked back in the cockpit for a quiet evening on the hook and you’re the one whose halyard is banging, trust me, you are that guy.

And, to make sure my internet scouring for the perfect “that guy” images does not go to waste, do know that there are various websites on the web devoted entirely to helping you NOT be “that guy”:

1) “Avoid Being that Guy (or Girl) at a Party” (you gotta love Wikihow’s gender equality – no one wants to be “that girl” either); and

2) “Office Holiday Party – Making a Good Impression”

Rather, we like to come to the party real quiet-like, nice and smooth and subtle. The svelte gentlemen in the black attire, if you will, the guy that everybody likes.

Yeah, that guy. So, when we drop our main sail before dropping the hook, we have made a habit of securing the main halyard to one of the lazy jacks that holds up the stack pack. Here:

After this incident, we decided to snap the shackle back to the sail before leaving the dock or anchorage, but we found this occasionally allows the sail to start bouncing up a bit, particularly in rough seas, putting slack in the main halyard line which may cause it, if the wind is on your stern, to get wrapped around one of the arms of the spreader. Recall, this is exactly the incident that caused me to climb up on the boom in the first place. And, this is true even with the stack pack zipped closed as the rocking and bouncing of the boat can cause the sail to inch the zipper open and try to climb. This does not happen often, however, so we chose the lesser of two evils–that is, securing the main halyard to the sail before leaving the dock/anchorage so that we are not doing it up on the deck, while underway, potentially in rough seas.

But, we have since learned an even better trick from a trusted boating friend and the knowledgeable fellow that did our bottom job back in May of last year (thank you Bottom-Job Brandon with Perdido Sailor). We still remove the shackle from the stack-pack line and attach it to the main sail prior to leaving the dock/anchorage, but we now bring the line down and wrap it around the winch on the port-side of the mast so that the tension is pulling the sail down (not up) to prohibit any slack from forming in the line.

See? In sailing, you learn something new every day. And, trust me, you will find a way–every day–to do something you’ve been doing for years in just a little better way. It’s all about getting out there and doing it, making mistakes and learning, but continuing to do it. A fine example is our stack-pack lazy-jack fix! If you recall, when the lazy-jack line on the starboard side busted, the Captain came up with an ingenuous way to raise it back up using a somewhat-of-a spare line (the staysail halyard), so that we still had a functioning stack pack for the remainder of our trip to the Keys:

He’s kind of smart like that sometimes!

But, since we had had to improvise and rig up a busted lazy-jack line before, we now knew how to do it again. With another somewhat-of-a spare line on the port-side–this time, the topping lift for the spinnaker. But, as it seemed we were running out of “spare” lines to hoist broken things, we vowed – “no more lazy-jack snaps!” – for the rest of the trip and hoped it would stick. For the time being, I was numb but not broken. We decided to hold the ice on for the first hour or so to attack the swelling, then we would remove it and have me move about a bit later in the day to assess the real damage. I was sure there was going to be some (potentially severe) soft-tissue injury to my knee–and what an annoyance on a boat!–when it’s always up and down the companionway, kneel down here, squat there. I couldn’t imagine losing the full function of such a crucial joint. I was nervous and anxious about my limbs and my ability to fulfill my duties as First Mate for the remainder of the trip. I mean, we had just left the Keys. We still had 500 nautical miles to sail …

But, what’s done is done. I had fallen, and I couldn’t change that. And, we were still on the best sailing voyage of our lives. I laid back on the ice, the Captain handled the sails and we set out for a beautiful day of sailing across the Gulf.

April 17-23, 2013 – The Crossing: Chapter Three – By the Moon

June 9, 2013May 23, 2014anniedike

After a beautiful sunset and a warm meal, we settled in and sailed all through the night on Thursday. If you’ve never done it before, never felt that feeling, it will be hard to conjure. I don’t know if I can really capture it but I, of course, am going to try. I remember before the trip I had asked Phillip, “How do you see at night?” Now, understand this question came from the same, silly girl that asked him when we bought the boat, “So … how are they going to ship the boat to us?” So I would have completely understood if Phillip had tilted his head to one side and patted me on the head slowly like I was a lame dog while he answered, but I really felt like this was a legitimate question. How could we travel across the Gulf in total darkness? What if another ship didn’t have their lights on? Or what if there was some other inanimate object out there – an unknown land mass, a whale … an iceberg?? Okay, an iceberg was very unlikely, but I was ready with my big one-line acting debut if it did occur (Brittish accent and all: “Iceberg, right ahead!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TAX0bgWIps). But, I really was unsure how we were going to be able to see to sail at night. And, while the answer Phillip gave me seemed impossible at the time, I now know it is true: by the moon. Without all the glare and reflection of city lights, the moon and stars and their reflection on the water, illuminate everything. You can see the entire boat, all the way up to the bow, and for miles out across the water. And, you can hear the boat, harnessing nothing more than the wind, gliding through the water, making way in the darkness. It’s incredible.

This may give you a glimpse, but it will never do it justice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG4zR46RpZE. I will never forget my first night sail.

Mitch shone that night, too. That night he taught me how to “sight sail.” To understand, I’ll have to give you a small sailing lesson. When you’re making a passage from one point to another (usually one marina or anchorage to another), assuming it’s a straight shot, you have to find your heading. Without highways, street signs or land markers of any kind, it’s kind of hard to know exactly where the heck you’re going when it’s just you and the horizon. Hence, your heading. This is a number, a degree between 1 and 360 that you need to hold to travel a straight path to your destination. Now, you can calculate your heading the old-school way with charts and a parallel ruler and compass rose, which would make you about as exciting as this guy:

Or you can new-age it by plugging your destination into your fancy, schmancy GPS and it will spit out your heading. Now, how exactly do you hold that heading? (Much like a reservation – it only works if you hold it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4jhHoHpFXc). Forgive me but I just love that bit and have been dying to find the perfect place to use it. And, if you don’t think this was the perfect place, I’m eager to hear your comments. Please be sure to properly log your complaint in my newly-created complaint box at www.idontcare.com).

So, holding your heading. It’s fairly easy. Every boat is equipped with a great big compass right at the helm. You’ll see it here in this pic just behind the wheel.

The compass has North, East, South, West on it, with the accompanying 360 degrees (North is 0, South is 180 and you can figure out the others in between – if you can’t, know that I thought much more of you and am thoroughly disappointed. East is 90 and West 270). One great big circle. The aforementioned GPS also tells you what “degree” you’re traveling on. So, you can watch the compass or the GPS to make sure you’re staying at or near your number. While this is great and very efficient, it can often make holding the helm seem like a bit of a chore. The boat is agile and eager to follow the seas. Much like a two-year old in Toys-R-Us, you turn your eyes for one second and she’ll slip right off in another direction. You have to constantly hold the wheel and make small, minute adjustments to keep her on course. This can seem particularly tiresome when you’re night sailing and your eyes are glued on the compass for hours on end (and these are the wee, early, you want sleep more than anything else on the earth hours). Unless you know how to sight sail. Sight sailing is probably how they did it in the old days. Think Christopher Columbus and his voyage to the New World. It’s sailing by the stars. You hold your heading and find a star in the sky that “rides” on some point on your boat, say near the edge of one of your sails or right on top of a rail, just some fixed point on the boat. Then, rather than stare at the compass or the GPS, you simply watch the night sky and keep that star on that fixed point on your boat and voila, you are now holding your heading my friend without use of a single instrument. Something about it made me feel connected, to the stars, to the night, to the old sailors that did that way hundreds of years ago.

It certainly freed me, from squinting and focusing on a number and, at the very least, from staring at the orange, aging glow of the compass and I will forever thank Mitch for it. It was a long night but we made it through our first night’s passage without any real issue. We toasted the sunrise Friday morning with steaming cups of coffee and made plans for getting into Clearwater.

The wind began to pick up mid-morning and we watched with excitement as the sails filled and pulled taut and powered us through the water. But the wind continued to build so we decided to reef them in a bit. While I was pulling in the furling line to reel in the Genny (the genoa sail up front) Phillip and I heard a loud “ping” in the cockpit. We both looked at each other sternly, asking without saying: What was that? And it was clear neither of us knew. I began looking around the cockpit for some kind of clue and there it was: a bolt head lying on the cockpit floor near the helm. And, I say a bolt “head” because the bolt had sheared right through, just below the head. The stem of the bolt was nowhere in sight. I held it up for Phillip to see and we again exchanged the same question in silence: Where the hell did that come from? I began looking around the Genny cam cleat and the winch and where I had been working when we heard the ominous ‘ping,’ but nothing. Every bolt seemed to be fully in tact. We were confused, not yet concerned, but without the luxury to worry about it at the moment. By the time we made it into the pass she was blowing about 20 knots, and our primary concern was finding the marina and getting docked.

As soon as we had signal, Phillip told me to call the marina and get directions. I got on the phone with a man named Lou. His voice was thick and garbled like he either weighed 300 pounds or was talking through a mouth full of marbles. I assumed the latter and it turned out to be true. He was the dockmaster, and I swear they must all be cut from the same cloth (at least down there in South Florida) because I talked to many during the course of this trip and they all had similar one-syllable, car mechanic names (Jim, Bob, Lou, Joe), spoke with the same garbled dialect and looked something like this:

Minus the goggles. Wait … scratch that … some of them wore goggles.

And, they gave directions just like my Dad would, not with precise streets to turn on and miles to travel before you’ll see your exit. No, they use obscure, only locally-known markers like “take a left after Briscoe Hill and head toward Johnson’s barn and then she’s just right up the road on the right.” Thanks Dad, big help. These dockmasters were exactly the same. Lou told me to: “Come in through the pass until you go under the ‘big bridge,’ then hang a left and you’ll see our marina there with the fuel sign.” Yep, that’s as clear as it got. And, I even asked him, like a dumb blonde asking for directions, “the BIG bridge??”

Lou said “Yeah, honey, the big one. There’s only one big one.” I knew I wasn’t going to get anything else out of him, so I did all I knew to do. Relayed the message exactly as it was told to me and hoped Phillip could make sense of it. Thankfully, there was only one “big” bridge (although I don’t think it required the “honey” prefix), but it was huge and noticeable and we went right under, preparing to “hang a left.” I know, now, how stressful docking can be in a new marina, but I did not know at the time. I just knew Phillip was tense and stern, all business, and focused entirely on the GPS and the depth readings. I knew our primary focus was not to ‘run aground,’ but I didn’t know what else to do to prevent it other than shout out depth readings periodically to Phillip. Mitch was up at the bow looking out for the “left” we were supposed to be hanging and he saw a marina just off the portside of the bow, but it was far more “dead ahead” than left. He swore to Phillip: “That’s it. That has to be it. That’s the marina – head that way.” But, thankfully, Phillip wasn’t satisfied. He turned us around and had me hold the helm and make a few circles while he checked the paper charts and, sure enough, the “marina dead ahead” was just on the other side of a very shallow shoal that would have run us aground for sure and wreaked havoc on the boat. Phillip eventually found the inlet we needed to get into to get to our marina (the “left” we were supposed to hang) and we headed that way. But, the marina certainly wasn’t protected and we had 20 knot winds coming off our stern as we headed into the slip.

We tried to toss a dock line around a pole near the stern but we couldn’t get it around. And when I say “we,” I actually mean me, and I’m still mortified by it – but I did try very hard and know, now, that is not an easy thing to do – even for a salty sailor. Without a line to keep the stern in place, there was nothing Phillip could do in the cockpit to keep the boat from moving forward. The wind was just too strong. Thankfully, Dockmaster Lou apparently had a brother, whom they called Red, and he was even bigger than Lou. With those big boy hosses holding the bow, it looked like we had two sumo wrestlers pushing the boat off of the dock.

They held us off while we scrambled to tie dock lines and drop fenders and get her secured for the night. We were all exhausted at that point and in desperate need of a shower, shave (yes, me too) and, most of all, sleep. Our sail groupies (Phillip’s parents) met us at port and engaged in a fun photo op.

Thankfully they had also rented a hotel there near the marina and we unapologetically took advantage of the facilities. We dipped in the pool:

And commandeered the shower and finally made our way back to the boat for an easy snack dinner in the cockpit and some wine.

We were ready to get a good night’s sleep but we certainly had some decisions to make. The 20 knot winds we had faced in the pass were the beginning of a nasty front that was coming in. The sea state on Saturday was predicted to be very rough: 20-25 knot winds and 5-7 foot waves. Phillip was inclined to wait it out but he knew that might take days and we all, unfortunately, had jobs and deadlines to get back to at some point (and that was putting it lightly – Mitch’s magazine was actually scheduled to go to print the day after we were going to get back (Tuesday), and I had a jury trial starting the following Monday – it was just hard to take any more time off). It was already Friday evening and we were still a good four days away from home. But, this storm looked bad. Phillip knew better than the rest of us how rough the passage would really be and I could tell he was struggling with the decision. We decided to rest up for the night and make the call in the morning. The crew was tired and in need of a solid eight hours of sleep. I put the sheared bolt head in the companionway tray and we shut her down for the night.