Welcome to the Roaring Forties

Sunday, January 27, 2019.
44 19.6S  145 01.0E

It was all going so well, but, we just knew it couldn't possibly last forever.  We were hoping to have made it all the way from Perth to Hobart without getting whacked by a nasty low pressure system and we almost made it. Almost... The first 80% of the passage was great, the last 20%, not so much. We knew we had to head down from 34S at Cape Leeuwin to 44S in order to clear the bottom of Tasmania. That ten degrees of latitude is 600 nautical miles. Each mile south would take us closer to Antarctica and deeper into the 'Roaring Forties'. Like the 'Furious Fifties' and 'Screaming Sixties' the names of these bands of latitude give you some idea of the conditions to be encountered there.

We monitor the weather once daily on passage and use our satellite phone to download weather 'grib' (binary gridded data) files. These can be used, in some cases, to avoid low pressure systems that are in your path. The low pressure systems found in the forties latitudes travel continuously from west to east, around the globe unimpeded by any land mass and usually very quickly. They had been staying down south, lower than 44S where we needed to get to and were only a few degrees of latitude in diameter. Just a few days left to go in the passage we opened a grib file to see that our luck had run out. There was a huge wall of wind coming right at us. It was 600 miles wide and there was no avoiding it.

Here's how the grib file looked just as we were on the edge of the coming low, a forecast of 40-57 knots and 8.1m waves right where we were going to be (see our little boat icon). A little further south it was going to be 47-60 knots and 9.5m waves. Gribs typically underestimate wind strengths and gusts will always be more than indicated.

We had thought we had enough time to outrun it, but, we had underestimated the strength of a smaller, local low pressure system that was forming near Cape Leeuwin which was also coming right at us, before the wall was going to hit. The seas got quite large and winds were in the 35-38 knot range. It was hard going so we hove-to for a while overnight, knowing that any delay increased the likelihood that we wouldn't be able to outrun the coming 'wall'. The winds from the small, but, intense low passed and we were back sailing again, but, only for a short while as the wind then died. We put the engine on to keep going. At this point, we were only about 135 miles from Tasmania's southeast cape and we were pushing to get there. If conditions remained the same, we were thinking our eta would be about 1300 the next day.

We turned the engine off and were sailing again, fast to the E in the increasing NW wind. Around 3 am, the wind backed W and we could then only sail mostly N, or S. We chose S to avoid Tasmania's western lee shore. After about three hours we were motoring again to try for a better course, it was our last chance. The wind was now into the high 30's and increasing, we were heading mostly S, when we needed to go  E. The wind started into the 40's and the seas were rising and starting to break. It was a disappointing decision, but, there didn't seem to be any other choice and at 0730 we aborted our plans to round the Cape, we just couldn't make it in time. With the wind forecast to be well into the 40's and more the only option now was to deploy our new, all-dyneema Jordan Series drogue to slow us down and wait for the low to pass over us before continuing. Before we did that we wanted to get as much searoom as possible, so, turned directly south. By 1100, the wind was gusting into the 50's and it was time to deploy the drogue. The launch went fine and the boat immediately slowed down, we started to drift at a rate of 0-3 knots. We were glad to head down below and close the hatch.

Right after launching the drogue, there was an incredible deluge of rain, heavier than anything we've ever seen before, it was a spectacular sight and flattened the seas for a short time. We were quite comfortable down below, warm and dry, the boat's movement was fairly gentle, with occasionally a wave strike that knocked us around a bit. As designed, the drogue let us rise on top of the waves rather than through them and they passed mostly underneath us with little drama.  The only anxiety we were feeling was how long were we going to be 'stuck' here, we had been so close to completion and now we had this unwelcome delay.

The first day we laid with the wind off the stern quarter, we're not sure why we were laying like this as both drogue bridle legs are of equal length, maybe it was wave vs. wind orientation. The second day we became stern-on to the wind which is what we had expected to happen. This caused a few severe poopings. Unfortunately, this allowed some water ingress into the engine room through a faulty gasket on its overhead hatch. This kept us busy bailing and wiping up for a while.

We hung off the drogue for sixty! hours before there was a forecast twenty-four hour lull which allowed us to start moving again. The wind had stayed consistently between 45-50 knots, with no sign of abating, for the whole 2-1/2 days, with gusts to sixty knots. It had seemed like it would never end.

We waited until we were sure the lull was going to be real, then retrieved the drogue as quickly as we could and we were off. The wind was now in the twenties. We passed Tasmania's South East Cape in the dark and started up the channel that leads to Hobart. There looked to be an easy-in/out anchorage partway up and we decided to try for that. When we got there, around two am, the wind had changed to the north and increased to 35 knots. There were breakers rolling down the shallow bay and it was a pitch black night, so, we quickly abandoned any plans to try and anchor, another frustrating disappointment.

We pointed our bow directly into the north wind towards Hobart, but, didn't want to enter the shallow, narrow channel that leads there in the dark as the chart indicated there might be fish farms and other obstacles in our path. Instead, we drove back and forth to kill time for a couple of hours until four am and dawn. At dawn, the wind died to nothing and it turned out that, in daylight, the channel was wide, unobstructed and very beautiful. We quickly headed to the anchorage at Barnes Bay. There were pretty hills on both sides of the channel, but, they were shrouded with smoke from the bush fires and the smell of smoke was heavy in the air. On entry to the Bay, we were greeted by a family of large seals cavorting off our bow. The anchorage was calm, the morning sunny and warm. We were so grateful to finally get the anchor down, it set first time and we crashed into our bunk. We had made it, 24 days and 2345 miles after leaving Two Rocks.