Rants & Musings, Passage Planning
Index
Watch Out For Whales
Don't Get Caught in the Gulfstream
Coastal Overnights—They’re Tough But They Get The Job
Done
Watch Out For Whales (Colin Speedie, 12/2009)
Another race, another whale collision, yet again ending in the loss of a boat and injury to a whale. Thankfully no loss of life, although one day that may not be the case. What is happening out on the oceans? Pirates everywhere, climate change driven hurricanes, and now homicidal whales?
Well, the first and most obvious cause is that there are far more of us out there, so the odds of collision have gone up. Whales seasonally inhabit many sea areas that are also cruising waters for yachts, such as Tonga, Hawaii, New England and the Azores. And as more yachts start cruising in higher latitudes where whales have always been more numerous, the odds of a close encounter increase again.
Equally, some species of whales are estimated to have increased their numbers dramatically after the cessation of hunting. According to International Whaling Commission statistics, humpbacks have increased by 13.9% in some Australian waters. In the North Atlantic, minke whales have increased by over 8%, possibly through taking advantage of the ecological niche vacated by the great whales after centuries of overexploitation.
Whales obviously don’t spend all of their time in the depths feeding, being mammals they have to spend at least part of their time at the surface, breathing. But they also sleep at or near the surface for part of their day, usually at night when they are least likely to be spotted. And although they ‘sleep with one eye open’, there is some evidence that many whales have suffered hearing damage due to exposure to the extraordinarily loud noises in the oceans caused by military sonar and seismic activities. And there is so much more background noise in the oceans today—an estimated increase in background sound of 15db over the last fifty years—that only really loud sounds might now be heard by a snoozing whale, and the quiet approach of a sailing vessel may simply be undetected.
Working in marine life research has meant a lot of time spent in company with whales, dolphins and sharks, and for 99% of the time it has been nothing but wonderful, although we’ve always been very careful to remember that we’re around wild animals. Do whales approach boats? Yes, certainly, sometimes for hours; one minke whale repeatedly dived underneath, rolling upside down, examining our beautiful Frers-designed underbody in a manner that might easily have been construed as amorous. Thankfully, whales have excellent spatial sense, and it never touched us. Can whales be aggressive? Well we’ve been buzzed at close range by a bull pilot whale when a tiny calf approached us, so I wouldn’t doubt it. And there have been well documented reports of whales damaging boats, usually after a collision with a member of a pod.
And collisions can occur all too easily: In bad weather or an ocean swell it is far from easy to see a whale until it’s very close indeed. Heading out into a big Celtic Sea swell in the first light of dawn, we were suddenly shocked out of our torpor by a volcanic eruption of fetid air and water less than 10 feet away, followed by a shiny black freight train going in the opposite direction—our first fin whale. And basking sharks, which can hardly be described as intellectual giants, generally won’t even try to get out of your way, so fixated are they on scooping up plankton.
Is there anything we, as sailors, can do to minimise the risks? Well, most whale grounds and seasons are fairly well known, so advance research when planning a passage may help. If a passage involves crossing a continental shelf break (where whales and other sea life gather), doing so in daylight might help. Groups of whales might best be avoided, especially as calves are likely to be present and any perceived threat to them might easily be construed as aggression and be met with the same in return. Most experts agree that the best course of action is to slow down and make a gentle course alteration away from the animals. Running the engine may warn the whales of your presence, which might help. And if your yacht is approached, try to maintain your course and speed to minimise the risk of a collision. And cross your fingers!
There may even be a technical fix coming at some stage. Dr. Michel André has developed an electronic approach called the Whale Anti Collision System, that employs an array of hydrophones to listen for whale echolocation clicks to establish the presence of whales in an area. They believe that at some stage in the future they will be able to provide advance warning of the presence of whales to yacht races passing through such areas, and so, hopefully, reduce the risks to both whales, yachts and their crews. Perhaps such information might even be available to cruising yachts one day.
In every area of the oceans there are research groups such as the Sea Watch Foundation (UK) in the NE Atlantic who actively solicit whale sightings from yachts that venture offshore. Not only is this a valuable resource from a research point of view, but the patterns of distribution that emerge may be useful to all of us cruisers in the future when planning routes across the oceans.
French skippers over here look at our white antifouling and laugh, saying
that big whales just love white underbodies; who knows? Lou says that
the white has got to go, and we’ll go for ‘stealth’ black. Oh well, better
safe than sorry!
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Don't Get Caught in the Gulfstream (John, 10/2009)
It’s the time of year when many cruisers turn their eyes south and start planning a fall passage to Bermuda. I started sailing to and fro between Bermuda and the U.S. East Coast some 35 years ago. Back then we often took lumps and did not even know why. These days with more accurate weather forecasting, the chances of getting really trashed are lower, but even so it is a rare autumn that goes by without one or more boats being abandoned on their way to Bermuda. Most often this happens when a boat gets caught in the Gulfstream, or one of its eddies, with a strong wind blowing against the current. It does not take a gale either—a steady 25 knots blowing against a two knot current can raise a sea that will challenge the strongest boats and toughest sailors, particularly if they have to beat into it.
I was taught this lesson some 20 years ago when crewing on a strong and well-found boat racing to Bermuda. The Stream had a big meander in it with a two to three knot current heading straight toward Bermuda. The wind was south at 20 to 30 knots. We beat down that meander with the current under us for 20 hours. Sails got ripped and the crew got battered. When we got to Bermuda we found that the hull to forward bulkhead, and forward cabin furniture attachments, had failed due to the pounding we had taken—thousands of dollars worth of damage. We took this beating intentionally—just proves that people who ocean race are not that bright—but this can also happen inadvertently to a cruising boat if it gets trapped in the Gulfstream, or one of its eddies.
I was reminded of this on our way north from Bermuda this summer. Due to the unseasonably complex and potentially active weather system—ask anyone who did the 2009 Marion Bermuda Race about the fall-like pattern—we had hired a weather routing company to help us plan the trip and most importantly to monitor the weather for an unexpected deterioration at the time we would enter the Stream.
Click for larger map
The router suggested we stay well west of the rhumb (black) line heading for a waypoint at the red dot on the chart, even though it meant close reaching into the WSW wind and bucking a current from a cold eddy for the first half of the voyage, so as to exit the Stream set up to be on the west side of Eddy A (see chart); a strategy that I agreed with, particularly since any rapidly developing bad weather was likely to be worse to the east.
However, I set our Gulf Stream entry waypoint at the green dot, two full degrees of longitude further west than the router’s, even though it put us hard on the wind. Here is why: The router’s waypoint breaks an important rule of crossing current streams: always set yourself up far enough up current before you get into a stream so that you don’t have to buck the current once in it. This was particularly critical in this case since a cold front passage was expected to coincide with our crossing of the Stream, causing the wind to veer briefly northwest and putting us hard on the wind, even from my waypoint. From the router’s waypoint we would have been beating to windward into 20 knots, gust 30, and a two knot Gulf Stream current; very uncomfortable but not dangerous, since the wind would have been with the current.
But look at the chart, a dangerous trap was lurking: Even in our powerful 56’ metal boat motor-sailing hard, we would have been pushed east to likely end up in the light red area where the current of warm Eddy A was running near three knots against the wind. In this case the best strategy might look like letting the Stream carry us east so as to head north up the west side of Eddy B. And in fact this had originally been my fallback plan. But not so fast; the router had been counseling against that since we left Bermuda, and with good reason, since the weather was likely to be heavier to the east and we would be in an area of strong and unpredictable currents because both eddies were rapidly changing position and shape. Worse still, the area had not been observed for some days due to cloud cover, so who knew what was really going on there?
Even entering the Stream at my waypoint and motor-sailing hard we barely made four knots good toward our desired exit point (blue dot) during much of our transit of the Stream. From further east we would not have had a hope of making it. Our only option to stay out of the red area would have been to go about onto starboard tack and head WSW right into the current. But even that would not have worked for long since the wind backed into the west 12 hours after the frontal passage. All in all, not a lot of fun options from the red dot waypoint.
I tell this story not to beat up on the router—if that was my purpose, I would have named the company—but to emphasize, once again, that we voyagers cannot be safe if we forget that routers are advisers only, and often advisers with very little, if any, offshore sailing experience. This router was bang on with the forecast, much better than I could have ever done, and saved me from a potential mistake in trying to thread between the two eddies. But the router also suggested that we motor-sail upwind into a two to three knot current and a steady 20 knot wind, gusting higher. I know that does not sound like a lot, but try it sometime and see how much headway you make to windward. A router that had ever tried it personally would not, I think, have suggested it. Having said all that, I need to make clear that it is unlikely that we would have had a big problem by entering the red area in our tried and proven offshore boat in the summer’s comparatively benign weather, but add a strong autumn cold front to the mix and a scenario like this is how tragedies happen.
If you want to go to Bermuda, particularly
in the autumn, by all means hire a weather router, but you still need to
learn on-the-water routing skills, know your boat, and most importantly,
not forget who the skipper is.
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Coastal Overnights—They’re Tough But They Get The Job Done (Phyllis, 11/2008)
After spending much of the last four winters in Maine and Nova Scotia refitting Morgan’s Cloud, John and I agreed that a winter in t
he Bahamas would be just the ticket. So when the blazing fall colours and chilly temperatures of early October indicated that Penobscot Bay, Maine wasn’t going to remain the balmy summer playground we had enjoyed since mid-July, we started thinking about heading south.
It was hard to leave our favourite Maine anchorage at Somes Sound, Mount Desert Island, but chilly nights reinforced the message that it was time to go.
Phyllis and a friend enjoy a last hike at Acadia National Park.
Our original plan was to sail direct to the Chesapeake Bay, about a three-day passage. But just when we were ready to leave, the weather patterns turned fall-like with only short windows between gales or near-gales. That left us with several options:
- We could do the trip in day sails, but the days are so short this time of year we felt it would take too long.
- We could wait in Maine for a longer window, but we wanted to take advantage of the gap right then in Atlantic hurricane formation and we didn’t want to get any colder while we waited.
- We could do the trip in several coastal overnights which, as far as we are concerned, is the toughest way to make miles.
Why do we find coastal overnights so tough? First, being close to land requires constant vigilance due to traffic and navigation, so there’s no catnapping during watches like we do offshore. Also, it takes a few days to get used to sleeping at sea due to the noise, the motion, and the watch schedule, and a short coastal passage doesn’t give us long enough to make this adjustment. In addition, the seas are usually more chaotic and steeper because of the shallower water, making everything more tiring.
A pleasant evening on Block Island Sound.
And a blustery evening reaching in near gale conditions toward the New York skyline.
Before we set out on a coastal passage, we make sure to have a lot of high protein, easy to serve food on hand—stews, “bullets” (hard boiled eggs, which John says make for great ammunition when he’s seasick), bacon, peanut butter, protein bars, and fruit. We keep a bottle of water up in the cockpit—when it’s busy and the motion is uncomfortable, it’s hard to get enough to drink if you have to go below each time. We start a watch system as soon as possible after we leave port—even if we don’t sleep much, at least we are resting. And finally, we try if possible to avoid two-night coastal passages—staying up for one night is bearable but we both find that our stupidity levels go up exponentially after a second night of little or no sleep.
After a very early morning start to catch the tide, Phyllis navigates the East River with a sharp eye out for vessel traffic. They have rush hour on New York Harbor too.
So after three coastal overnights interspersed with stops to wait out bad weather, we dropped the hook in the Sassafras River, Maryland, seven days and six hours after leaving Rockland, Maine; tired and ready for a break from coastal overnights, but happy to be in t-shirts again.
It's fall in the Chesapeake Bay too, but it's a lot warmer
than in Maine.
Morgan's Cloud together with her fellow refugees from winter.
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