24 August - Behind the Front

0600 position 23-59S 163-28W. Twenty three hour run 153 miles.

The morning gribs showed that we were as far south as we needed to be, so
we turned left fifteen degrees and set the jib on the pole. We screamed
along to the east for twelve hours, surfing with the following sea in
winds that ranged from fifteen to twenty five knots. We got some great
Gopro video of Moku pe'a at her best. Just before the 6PM watch change
we started getting headed, and what looked like a massive squall was
approaching. Matt noticed that the air was noticeably warmer. That
should have been a sign. We decided to get rid of the pole and jib reach.


Just as the dust was settling from our rig change, everything went wrong.
First the spinnaker pole, which was still clipped to the mast in case we
wanted to use it later, came unclipped from the mast and started shooting
around the boat like a spear. As we were dealing with that, the squall
hit. Turns out it wasn't a squall at all. It was a massive weather
front. The wind went from twenty to forty knots and the boat rounded up.
Matt was trying to hang on to both the boat and the pole on the foredeck.
I was trying to roll up the jib and get the boat under control…. After
securing things we realized what we were dealing with. Behind the front
the wind was shifting over forty degrees randomly for nearly five hours
and puffing from fifteen to thirty knots. We put a third reef in the
mainsail and left up just a scrap of jib to deal with it. Breaking waves
were hitting the boat. It was not fun. Conditions started to improve
about 10PM, and I rolled out a little more jib on my midnight to 6AM
watch.

Matt got the worst of it again on his evening watch, so I decided to give
him an hour off by setting the clocks ahead an hour before the end of his
6PM to midnight watch. Clock resetting has to be done sometime during the
trip so we might as well do it when someone has earned a reward.