Mon, 2 Jun 2003
When its black outside, really black, your world is reduced to the little pool of light you bring with you. You don't know what terrors there are beyond your little pool of light, but you imagine plenty, or else you shut it out completely and just focus on what you can see within the range of the light you provide.
Sailing up the Queensland coast we had some of those black nights. The full moon was long gone, and what moon there was came up close to dawn. There were some stars, but clouds too, and the clouds choked off the feeble light the stars had on offer.
So you're left with the light from your running lights, one in front and one in back; a little pool of light which races along with you. Standing in the cockpit looking over the dodger, while the boat is racing northward, wing on wing with the jib poled out and the main prevented, in 30 knots of wind, what the bow light illuminates is thundering white water. You can see the white deck, and then, in red and green tint, the bow wave spreads out like a giant bow tie then sweeps past, down each side. The rest is blackness, total blackness. No waves, no land, no islands, no sky, no horizon. Just inky blackness.
So you run on north through this blackness, and you check your charts and electronics, radar if you have it (we don't) and you hope and pray and count on the fact that there is nothing in front of you. You watch the depth sounder for any shoaling of the water, and you look for lights or shapes in the blackness, and you hope. This is nerve wracking. We prefer to sail when the moon is full.
Judy is more nervous than I am in this. She thinks she hears breakers ahead, which aren't there. I convince her that there aren't any, but really, am I sure?
In the strong winds when the boat is pushing hard, you can feel the force of the wind; it rocks the boat and sends it in little jerks and swerves and the sails are hard with the strain, the lines tighten and creak, which you can hear over the sound of the rushing water, the roaring water if you're going fast enough, and you can feel it as well. The wind vane does its job, never gets a sweat up, but it has to conteract the swerves and rocking, and it is constantly steering, working the tiller back and forth. Looking at the windvane, in the light of the stern lamp, sometimes you can see a white breaker coming up behind you. Mostly they subside before they reach you; waves never stay constant at sea for even a second, but sometimes the face of the wave lifts you with the white water still all over it and you are surrounded by the white, which makes its own rushing, surging sound, as the boat races down the face.
At these time you wonder what is ahead and sometimes you wait tensly, expecting any minute to hear the sound of the keel hitting coral, and you wish for enough light to see with.
At anchor, on a black night, it is the same, yet different. In Refuge Bay on Scawfell Island there were eleven of us cruising boats waiting out some strong wind for a few days, all hanging on with our anchors stuck in little patches of sand, through the black nights while the wind roared outside and swirled, due to the mountianous island, and the boats rocked and spun, and heeled when a gust caught them sideways. It was stormy enough that most of us stayed up one night keeping a lookout, not able to sleep anyhow. In a quiet period you think the wind is finally dropping, then it comes back with a howl and the snubber on the anchor chain groans as it stretches, and your boat jerks at the end of it. You throw open the hatch and look around at the ten other tiny lights flickering and dancing and you are satisfied to see that you are still holding in the same position relative to them. Someone shines a light your way and you know that they are just checking to see how close they are to you. You point your flashlight astern where the dingy should be and it is still there, serene and happy. You back down the hatch into your pool of light and try to read, and you listen to the wind, and you wish it to be over, or at least daylight again.
Then, after a few days, it is all different. This morning it was nearly calm in Refuge Bay, the sky was patchy blue and the air had a fresh coolness that was invigorating, only a gentle breeze was left. We set sail at 7:45, after the weather report, and headed north again, directly downwind. Three boats left an hour ahead of us, and a fourth joined in from some other shelter, all of us heading for Shaw Island in the Whitsundays. We hoped to catch them.
Out in the open waters the waves were a still there, and we rocked and rolled a bit, sailing wing on wing again, but it wasn't too bad, in the daylight, when we could see where we were going. We set out some lines and caught a nice Mackerel which we cut into steaks and had two for lunch, poached with garlic and butter.
By noon we caught all but one of the other boats, and we were closing fast on him. We sailed just high of the rhumb line, outside of Blackcomb Island and then jibed for Shaw. The wind shifted in our favor and we reached across the bow of the last boat as he sailed lower and much slower. By 1:15 we were past Silversmith Rock, where we raced on Icon two years ago, and we were back in familiar waters.
We rounded the head into the bay at Shaw Island at 2:30, a bit ahead of our schedule, and dropped the hook in another bit of paradise. Everything looks better when its not a black night with a howling wind.
Fred & Judy