Have you read Day One of Gulf Crossing – The Journal? If not, click here…
Day Two: ZZIINNGG!!
[FYI… We have zero pictures from Sunday morning because, well, we were still recovering. So, here’s a cool pic that Matt took of our compass.]
Michelle: Early morning, we contemplated every scenario… we can’t keep going if the weather is going to be this bad. I can’t keep puking. Do we just head to Louisiana coast? Do we keep heading to Florida? Will the storms ever go away? Is Matt wishing he had internet so he could start looking for a new first mate. 🙂
Matt: Emotions were running pretty high this morning. At this point, I think all of us were getting close to a breaking point. I needed more sleep. I had not mentally prepared for a single-hand trip. I’m pretty sure Michelle was beyond ready to stop being sick. And the boys, well they were handling it in their usual fashion. Zach, being the optimist that he is, was all, “I’m good.” He just focused on the various distinctions of the waves and the behavior of the boat. I’m pretty sure this was his coping mechanism to help him deal with, or at least distract from, the situation.
Austin, on the other hand, kept it all inside. Despite saying that he was fine when asked repeatedly, you could see his dismay with the situation in his eyes. He was tired. He was hungry. This wasn’t what he signed up for. And after a long conversation we both kind of broke down. He was upset and didn’t like the trip thus far. But didn’t know how to handle it. I was upset because he was upset. I felt like I didn’t help them prepare for this mentally. I think both of us just needed to get it out, take a breath, and hope conditions would improve.
Michelle: Feeling at a loss as to what to do, we used our precious minutes on our satellite phone to text our favorite marine meteorologist to get the scoop on the weather. With scattered storms everywhere in the Gulf, she gave us hope that things would clear out in 100 miles or so. Great. But considering we were more than 100 miles from the LA coast, we decided to just keep heading to Florida.
Matt: I’m glad we decided to keep heading to Florida. The sun came out. The wind eased off. The seas calmed down. I had a nap.
Michelle: I was so happy when the seas finally started to calm late morning. No more storms. I could manage to sit and stand for periods of time. I was still a little woozy and didn’t feel like eating much, but Matt was able to take a nap here and there while I took watch.
Because I was still trying to recover, and Matt was trying to catch up on sleep… we didn’t have time to check out the shroud to see what caused it to act so crazy the day before. So, we were still motoring.
By mid-afternoon, I was walking. And the sun had come out. The waves were really starting to calm by then. Matt threw out the fishing line and ZZZIINNNGGGG! Not 15 minutes later. He caught a tuna! The boys were flipping out!
Matt: We actually caught two fish. The first I thought was a tuna but after consulting Z’s fish poster, I discovered it was a Little Tunny or False Albacore. By this time it was filleted and in the fridge. The second was during a nap and it was (I think, I’ll have to check the picture and reference material) a little bonito. So little in fact that we tossed him back before he got too stressed out.
Michelle: Good thing for me, I didn’t have to do much for dinner. Just tossed some coconut rice into the solar oven, while Matt made tuna sashimi for the boys. They were in heaven. Austin wouldn’t shut up about the tuna. He basically said he wasn’t eating anything else this trip except fish that we catch…
Matt: The rest of the day was spent napping, hanging out watching the boys enjoy sitting on the trampoline and dolphin seats and just really enjoying the nice weather and calmer seas. Just before dark I transferred some more fuel from jerry cans while we had good weather and then went down for a nap.
Michelle: From the “dolphin seats” on the bow, the boys watched hundreds of HUGE jellyfish float by. They are actually gorgeous creatures. Very majestic. The boys would scream when they saw one… Usually, the loud shrill screaming is one of my biggest pet peeves (right after whining) – but their voices were drowned by the vastness of the ocean. They screamed for so long and so loudly that Zach eventually said to me, “I don’t think I can scream anymore. I hurt my voice.” Hahaha
We started entering “oil field alley” which initially made me extremely nervous. I was worried about night time and there being an oil rig platform not lit that we would end up crashing into. Turns out, the oil rigs were not what I needed to worry about…
Night watch #2: Watch Out for Boats!
Michelle: Matt took a nap until 11 pm, so he took the 11 pm – 2:30 am shift while I slept. We were in a minefield of oil rigs and platforms the whole night. They were all lit up! It actually made the night go by so fast. We would plot the coordinates for the next platform, watch it go by, and then wait for the next one.
Matt: I ended up getting a few hours of sleep and when I woke up we were in the middle of a farm of offshore platforms. I could see offshore platforms for a full 360 degrees around us. So we’re dodging them as they pass by on each side. Seas were a little rolly but not bad at all. I watched some storms off on the horizon with lightning. Zach was in his cabin reading. Austin was asleep in the cockpit with the dogs and Michelle.
Michelle: When I woke up for my next shift, there really hadn’t been any boats on the AIS system, except for the boats docked at the rigs – and they weren’t moving. I had scrolled off the AIS page on our instrument panel, to keep it on the coordinates panel so I could see how close we were to the next platform.
That’s when the scariest moment of the whole trip happened.
About 45 minutes after I went on watch, Matt was already asleep in the cockpit. Keeping an eye out for the next platform – some were on right (starboard), some were on left (port.) The next one was going to be on port side, but all of a sudden I see lights REALLY EFFING CLOSE on starboard side. I couldn’t tell what it was. Was it a platform I totally missed? Was it on the chart? Where did it come from? It wasn’t there five minutes ago!
I panicked and scrolled back to the AIS system and there it was… a boat headed straight for our path at 9 kts! No alarms went off, no calls on the radio… no warning whatsoever. And he was well within the two-mile “danger radius.”
The lights were so close, and so I tried to think quickly of what to do. With no clue which way to turn our boat to avoid their boat, I just killed the engines. That woke Matt up immediately, and I yelled, “THERE’S A BOAT!!” He looked up, still half asleep, and said, “Nah. That’s just a buoy.” NO IT IS A BOAT HEADED FOR US! And not a minute later, the boat crossed right in front of our bow… maybe a quarter mile ahead. I was so freaked out. I almost had a freaking head-on collision with a boat in the middle of the freaking ocean! I’m a million times grateful I saw the lights when I saw them. I just can’t even imagine.
So, yeah… I stayed WIDE AWAKE for my shift until the sun came up at 6:30 am.
Matt: After a good series of night shifts I awoke to Michelle dancing around that she was feeling human again. I guess that means that I have to put my ad for a bikini clad crew member away. Seriously though, I can’t imagine being seasick, but what I can’t imagine even more is the feeling of relief and renewal that comes when seasickness goes away. The closest I can come up with in my mind is like you feel after you’ve had the flu for a week. That feeling of normalcy that returns when you can function normally again. Anyway, glad she is feeling better. I think all of us are.
Ready to see what’s in store for the SV GIRO crew on Day Three?! We’ve already battled storms, seasickness, and close calls… what else is there? Muhwahahahah…. Click here!
Glad to hear things have eased up for ya’ll. Are you worried about heading to Florida at the same time a wandering Matthew is? It sounds like the track after the Bahamas is uncertain.
We are here in St. Petersburg, FL now… on the west side of FL… I think we will be okay here. Probably get lots of rain though.
Hopefully just enough to cool you down and wash the decks. Enjoy St. Pete!
That works for us! 🙂
The good news is that the other boat was most likely a crew/supply boat. They saw you way before you saw them. The crappy part is that they are terrible at communication.
We are in Houston and just found your blog. I was hoping to come track you guys down, but then saw that you had left. Good luck with everything!
Hey! We just missed you then… we were there for about six weeks. We should be in Florida for awhile. Heading down to the keys after hurricane season is over. And then up the east coast next year.
Thanks for finding our blog! 🙂
Did you get your shroud tightened
Matt sent the video to our riggers and they said it is supposed to be like that?! When we finally sailed the boat (not in storm conditions), it looked normal… soooo…. I don’t know. We were going to get another opinion just to be on the safe side.
Love reading about your adventures! I’m so jealous!
Thank you for reading!!