Rogue Wave into the Boat

The water had been rough today. We’ve been rocking and rolling. The winds are ranging from 17 to 22 knots with short drops and gusts from 12 to 28 knots. More than the wind however have been the incredible 12 to 15 foot waves that are swooshing us up and down like a roller-coaster. With the dip in the wave we are plummeting to the bottom of a wall of water which only seconds later we are sliding back up again. It can be rather unsettling for the stomach but it looks like this may be the case for the next four days!

This afternoon around 3 pm we were all lounging around enjoying some cranberry banana bread that Kirsten baked. Some of us were laying down with others reading when all of a sudden we heard Dailin at the helm gasp. He didn’t have time to say anything about the double wave that approached. As we started down the side of one wave, another was so close to it, that it  crested over the side of the boat and dumped its contents into the cockpit. I could see the wall of water coming as it sloshed around in the cockpit and approached the double doors to our kitchen and dining area.

There was so much water in the cockpit that it could not exit fast enough in the four inch drain-holes. It had nowhere to go but rush into the inside of the boat. Jaeden and I scrambled over to the entrance in an attempt to quickly drop down the hatch in the inside floor which was already filled with 2 inches of water. We carefully dropped it down to empty the water and let the overflowing pond outside flow down and out. The kitchen and dining area was covered in a coating of salt water by this time and for the next 10 minutes we were mopping up and drying out all of the objects that had been left on the floor. Some of the water had also found its way to the stairs on the starboard side of the boat and gone down the stairs.

It was an incredible witness that we can’t get too comfortable or complacent on the boat. It was just a good thing that it happened in the daytime because if it was in the night, I would probably have woken up to think the boat was flooding. But I guess that’s all in a day’s adventure.