FOLLOWING SEA?
Don't You Wish That on Me!
Decades ago, Crosby, Stills & Nash made Following Seas famous, being the sailors that they were. The lyrics to their timeless croon ‘Southern Cross’ begin:
“Got out of town on a boat for the Southern Islands,
Sailing a reach before a following sea…
We got eighty feet on the waterline, nicely making way…” (Daylight Again, 1982)
There is a lot of romance in that song along with a resonating love of being on the water, and of course we feel that with all that we are. However, we don’t agree with those three talented hippies about ‘nicely making way’ under those particular circumstances. That’s not exactly how following seas work. Here’s a great image of why it is a rather unwanted situation. (image from BoatTEST.com) This doesn’t illustrate exactly how your stomach can drop when this happens, but it comes close!
If one more person wishes me ‘Following Seas’ I may have to get completely exacerbated and tell them, “Don’t you wish that on me!! Don’t you do it!” Following seas are, here on Steadfast, our least favorite point of sail, or in land dweller’s terms, our least favorite set of circumstances with which to travel on our sailing vessel. It is a fact that big downwind waves are not just fairly inefficient, but always uncomfortable and sometimes downright awful, like they were yesterday. And there’s no romance in that.
Our twenty-five hour passage from the Northern Bahamas to Florida was all following seas. Mother Nature’s winds clocked around and went east, the forecast for North-North-East, which was what we wanted, was not to be seen or believed. What direction were we headed in? Straight west, which creates, in sailing terms, a downwind run, and in our case, with a following sea. In shallow or protected waters such as the Bahama Banks, it was no problem and we were rewarded for our patience with these two amazing Mutton Snapper. We switched our sail configuration to wing and wing and loved the first fifteen hours in clear green water and low waves.
Just after dark, fourteen hours in, loving our life, we hit the deep blue waters of Mother Nature’s magnificent current, the Gulf Stream. From twenty feet of depth to somewhere around three thousand with one of the strongest northern currents on the planet.
Big, irregular waves were traveling and cresting in the same direction we were and it was, directly quoting my husband, “F#/&ing Rolly.” A washing machine is an adequate visual of what the seas look like, but it has to be one of the newer models that goes in both directions, randomly changing actions to get the most turbulence, the most churning power. And, Mother Nature’s activities were, “Right on the ass.” The boat’s ass, of course, in sailor’s terms the transom or the stern. This is what the sea sees. It’s a big boat to roll, and Mother Nature has no problem.
Rolly is not a word in Webster’s or Wikipedia or Google, but it should be. I think I can appropriately describe it for you, not just how it looks but how it feels. Ready? The vessel you have your feet planted on, much farther apart than usual, is in forward motion of around 5 knots (6 mph) in twelve-to fifteen knots of wind. But the motion is not just forward, it is also, simultaneously, side to side, rail to rail. Our rails are five feet above the waterline. In order to go rail-to-rail we drop into the ocean on either side (yes, into) five feet, and then her seven foot depth swings in the other direction, you guessed it, five feet. Remember the diagram above? We are surfing down the back crest of these big waves, increasing to 9 knots (10.5mph) on the down side, making the motion even more irregular, unpredictable and disconcerting. Most vessels have an inclinometer somewhere near the helm. That nifty device tells you what the angle of the floor beneath your feet is currently calculated to be. We call that heeling. PredictWind warns us with little danger signs and exclamation points (!) about anything over four degrees. When we go all the way over to the rail Steadfast heels closer to thirty degrees, or seven times what is considered ‘comfortable’ on a boat(!!). To give you an idea, some of the steepest mountain highways anywhere (with lots of warning signs) are not over eleven degrees of grade.
So, we spar. With each and every roll we spar. We joust, we practice simply staying upright as the floors drop from beneath us and whatever you were reaching for is no longer there. It’s tough on the rigging, it’s tough on the crew. My stomach dropped as we entered the stream and I do not eat; the Captain dug pre-made burritos and sandwiches out of the fridge, and ate them cold. Our original estimated route time of twenty-two hours grows to twenty-five, and the extra three seem interminable.
But you know what? They never are. And in due time we entered a protected harbor and dropped our anchor and went through all the comforting routines of living on a boat and ending a passage. I could somehow still feel the roll even though it was completely gone as we turned off the electronics and had the very conversation that inspired this story. “Who in the hell decided to wish people a following sea?” we asked each other, exhausted because you can’t sleep in such circumstances, either. ‘Fair winds’ is the other portion of that commonly used expression, and we’re fine with that. Fair winds are fabulous, and what we’d always really like is a reach, of course, the point of sail where there is no roll, no ejection, no drama, no struggle, just propulsion. CSN was on a reach with a following sea, and we were completely downwind, we get that… we do also understand that the following sea is better than beating to windward, which is exactly what it sounds like and is the one thing that we always try to avoid. But, to the next individual who wishes us, “Fair winds and a following sea!” I simply must reply, “Don’t you wish that on me!”
Interested in more sailing stories? Please see my post ‘DARK DARK; A New Kind of Faith’ about the (nearly) indescribable reality of the moonless ocean at night. And all the other tales of SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE.
Right?? FOLLOWING SEAS is just not something that one might wish on a friend; now, an enemy, perhaps....or someone who simply thinks they know too much..... !! Thanks for following along!
SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE continues....
Excellent points. I believe that when making ocean passages in small sailing vessels first began seriously to grow as a "sport", the concept of running before the wind and seas in a storm included deploying a drogue or even a bight of heavy line to slow the forward movement of the vessel to less than that of the seas that were over taking it. This would enable the vessel to rise and allow the sea to overtake and pass and avoid the danger of surfing down the face of a big wave (with the danger of broaching or, worse, burying the bow in the trough and maybe even pitch-poling). See some of Eric Hiscock's books and others from the 1950s. The only counter-opinion I know of was, as I remember, from Eric Tabarly who recommended running at speed -- which he had done in a couple a bad storms in Pen Duick. Somewhere along the way, this critical proviso for running before the storm was lost from common consciousness. I personally would choose to heave-to before the storm and let the seas pass as quickly as possible, but I have never been in conditions which forced me to run before it.