A little extreme

Yesterday was week 3 of the Spring Racing Series. The morning was gorgeous - sunshine, maybe 15-20 knot winds. We thought we were finally going to have a decent day of sailing. We went out about noon for the 1:10 start. Wind kept picking up and continued to do so throughout the afternoon. We were out in 40+ knot steady winds. The highest someone saw on their wind indicator (when they happened to be looking rather than holding on) was 52 knots. Not to mention the swells that went over 2 meters high. We hit 10.6 knots at one point in our little MRX (~24'). We eventually brought down the head sail as we were overpowered despite it being a storm jib and having a double reef in our main and decided to call it quits. Bringing the head sail down was interesting as well as when we got it down, someone took off the halyard before we had it down the hatch and didn't hold onto the sail. It started going back up so then there were 4 of us up front trying to get her down. At one point we were all under water from the swells and someone was half out of the boat under the life lines. Interesting. The problem with heading back in was to get back into port required us to head directly into the swells. Despite going almost 6 knots, we weren't getting anywhere. Required the use of the motor full blast and the main to get anywhere. While foul weather gear is great, when the spray is that high, it just comes down inside the neck so everything was soaked.

While I'm all about challenging myself and going outside of my comfort zone, all I can say about yesterday was (excuse my French), "Fuck that!". I have never been as grateful to be on dry land as I was. After a few beers at the yacht club, took a hot bath with a dram of whiskey, said a few prayers of thanks for being alive and took a long nana nap. I'm still beat!

Crazy, crazy wind out in these parts!