One Stormy Night

At the twice daily radio roll call, there has been chatter about a possible squall that we may encounter overnight. For tonight my job is to wake up Joe if the wind exceeds 10 knots or I spot dark clouds forming to the southeast. The boat has a Garmin autopilot that uses GPS and a programmed route to adjust the rudders that maintain a set course. The person on watch must make sure that our heading stays true to to our set course and adjust the heading manually or the sails if the autopilot goes on standby or the wind direction changes

My 2-hour watch is uneventful. There are a couple boobies that seem to be hovering around our boat. We are hundreds of miles from the coast and the boat is a good resting place. The winds stay at around 5 knots and even though it is a cloudy night, there are no ominous dark clouds on the horizon. I end my watch thinking that the squall will not materialize tonight.

Two hours later, woke up when the alarm went off, and it was time for Swagata’s watch from 3 – 5 am. Usually I join her in the cockpit sleeping on the padded bench. That way any rookie issues can get solved among us without having to wakeup Joe, who clearly has a lot on his shoulders specially on long ocean crossings. But today, I had already convinced myself that it would be a calm and pleasant night so decided to sleep on. The radar showed scattered clouds ahead. Very soon they had consolidated into a solid mass overhead and we were right in the middle of it! Lightning and pouring rain with strong winds followed. Joe was already up and he had furled up the jib. We scrambled to close all the hatches. I struggled with the toilet hatch and got completely soaked. We changed our heading to a small break in the clouds to the east. About an hour later, Joe had navigated us out of the squall. Later we learned that the system was about 8 miles long and 10 miles wide with gusts of 25 knots. We were in it for at least 2 hours.

It’s 7 am, and it’s my rotation on the watch again. By now the storm had passed, the horizon looks clear. I look around and see a couple boobies perched on the starboard lifeline and bow. If it’s the same two from my last watch then they must have hitched a ride through the night. I feel good they found a place to rest. But there are more pressing issues like catching food so off they go. Soon I see many more birds in the air. Just with a few flaps of their wing they can soar and then effortlessly glide through the wind and swoop down on flying fish within inches of the water surface. They seem perfectly comfortable up in the air – I saw one scratching its head while flying.