So after spending most of the night awake again, I was back to the wheel and hand steering into complete darkness as we neared the tip of Cape Campbell. The wind seemed to be building and building and the waves doing much the same, it got to the point where we had 35+Kn 60 degrees off the nose and I was struggling to keep control so we turned around and started heading back south into the lee side of Cape Campbell until it got light and we could actually see. The wind was still building and the waves were probably at 2-3m high, I kept heading south but it was not a lot better so as soon as we had light we reefed up further and headed for the only opportunity we had which was Wellington again due to severe NW winds. As the morning went on the wind built to constant 40kn with gusts in the high 40's with 3-4m waves so I ended up spending about 12 hours at the wheel fighting every minute to point as high as possible to get Wellington. It was about 4pm and suddenly it went from 40kn NW to 40kn southerly in the blink of an eye which made for more pleasant sailing into Welly, I negotiated the entrance into the harbor making sure to give the reef a wide berth and we furled in the sails and motored the last hour or so into Seaview Marina. We tied up without issue and headed right below for enchiladas which dad had just finished cooking. After a good clean up, dinner and one hell of a good shower to wash off all the salt it was bed time and boy we all slept like logs!
deja vu
So after spending most of the night awake again, I was back to the wheel and hand steering into complete darkness as we neared the tip of Cape Campbell. The wind seemed to be building and building and the waves doing much the same, it got to the point where we had 35+Kn 60 degrees off the nose and I was struggling to keep control so we turned around and started heading back south into the lee side of Cape Campbell until it got light and we could actually see. The wind was still building and the waves were probably at 2-3m high, I kept heading south but it was not a lot better so as soon as we had light we reefed up further and headed for the only opportunity we had which was Wellington again due to severe NW winds. As the morning went on the wind built to constant 40kn with gusts in the high 40's with 3-4m waves so I ended up spending about 12 hours at the wheel fighting every minute to point as high as possible to get Wellington. It was about 4pm and suddenly it went from 40kn NW to 40kn southerly in the blink of an eye which made for more pleasant sailing into Welly, I negotiated the entrance into the harbor making sure to give the reef a wide berth and we furled in the sails and motored the last hour or so into Seaview Marina. We tied up without issue and headed right below for enchiladas which dad had just finished cooking. After a good clean up, dinner and one hell of a good shower to wash off all the salt it was bed time and boy we all slept like logs!
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