Dodging the squalls

We speak to a very very tired Emma Richards mid-way through crossing the Doldrums

On the Around Alone website, moving slowly down the map are four innocent looking dots representing the competition at the front of the Open 60 fleet. The story this picture doesn't tell you is the living hell the competitors have been going through.

It has been two weeks now since the boats left the Devonshire port of Brixham on leg two of the singlehanded round the world race down the length of the Atlantic to Cape Town. In this time they experienced a gale 24 hours out, then the tailend of a hurricane, bringing with it storm force winds that peaked at more than 70 knots, as they passed the Portugese coast. While the majority of the fleet put into port to weather the storm, the brave four at the top of the fleet pressed on and are now some 1,500 miles ahead of the second group.

Now group A are in the throws of the Doldrums (see above).

With their alternating squalls and calms, the Doldrums are hard work if you are racing even with a full crew. In the calms the navigator is constantly glued to the radar looking for oncoming rain squalls and then monitoring their size and direction. On deck the sails flog as the crew attempt to keep some way on whilst maintaining a visual watch ready to reduce sail should a squall strike bringing with it a lot of wind. One of the delights of this is that it is hard to predict what each squall will bring - lots of wind, no wind, rain, no rain. It's a lottery.

It is easy to understand how in days of old crossing this stretch of water a few clicks north of the Equator could cause sailors to starve to death or go insane. While then the Doldrums could take weeks to cross, today with access to internet-based weather sites, satellite communcations and shore-based routing it is possible to be guided through the Doldrums where they are at their narrowest and some round the world record attempts have seen the boats pass through the Doldrums without missing a beat.

Singlehanded in Around Alone the competitors are not so fortunate. They have access to weather data over the web, but they are not allowed to use shore-based met gurus to spoon feed a route to them and the constant process of reefing and throwing out reefs is down to them and them alone.

Speaking to Emma Richards (who was at 9deg 11N 22deg 47W at 2200GMT) over the Iridium satellite phone a couple of hours ago, she sounded utterly exhausted. At the time she was monitoring two squalls that were threatening to give her Open 60 a severe pasting. During our conversation it was during a lull and she had to rush out on deck when Pindar accidentally gybed. She wanted to head due south but the boat kept veering off to the east.

So far her crossing of the Doldrums has not gone entirely to plan. "I was going to cross a bit further east," she told us. "But yesterday morning we were sailing along with the kite up in 10 knots when we got hit by a massive squall. Within 30 minutes we had 46 knots of breeze. I thought it was going to be an average squall, so I'd pulled out the Solent (a 100% jib), but then it came in massively."

Richards lunged for the tiller and bore away to reduce the apparent wind. "I couldn't reach the main sheet, because it was on the opposite side of the cockpit and I couldn't reach the autopilot. I was only wearing a thin jacket and shorts and I was absolutely soaked through. There was really cold air in the squall, so I was just freezing and hanging on. It was a horror show."

It took four hours of wrestling with the tiller on this unexpected rollercoaster ride before Richards was able to regain control and get back on course. During this Pindar touched 28 knots - the current maximum speed Richards has seen on board - and broached twice. She also ended up 100 miles further west than Richards had hoped to be.

Yesterday Richards had the fright of her life when she was spooked by a potential threat of piracy, something which she is little embarrassed about when we speak. At the time she was making just 1-2 knots on a moonless night after a squall had gone through. She had just got the boat back in shape and had climbed into her bunk and was beginning to relax when the VHF burst into life. Richards takes up the account:

"Not the usual crackle of something far off that you can't make out but a crystal clear whistle, like someone saying, Helllooooo, I'm over heeeeere! Nearly jumped out of my skin. Then I listened again, more of the same. I had a look on deck again. There was just one ship way on the horizon, a very faint light, but that wouldn't give such a clear signal. Then I went back to my radar and studied that for minutes. I noticed a very small blip inside my radar guard alarm, within a mile away. I looked on deck, no lights in that direction. Odd. Then more noises, whistles and expletives. Must be a small fishing vessel, unlit. Now at this point I was wishing I hadn’t read the Navarea reports that you get a few of a day, along with Met area reports. Today’s one was the piracy reports about ACTUAL AND ATTEMPTED ATTACKS and where they are. This part of the African coast is near the top of that list."

Richards decided to head in the opposite direction, although making 1 knot it was not a quick getaway. Thankfully the voice didn't pipe up again, but with her tired mind working overtime she found it hard to sleep. "It was horrible. I was just completely paranoid. It was so crystal clear and I didn't realise there were boats so close to me..."

She feels she may have over-reacted because she is so very very tired. "I’m absolutely shattered. It's quite funny, I always say 'tomorrow it’ll settle down so I can get some sleep then.' But I had a genniker round the forestay two days back. I tied it up in 30 knots of breeze so that I could sort it out when the breeze dropped. But when it did drop it still took me hours to get it sorted."

She says her body still aches from when the big squall came through.

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