My timing for crossing the Drake Passage northbound hasn’t worked out very well. A weather system with high winds was forecast to move through the northern part of the passage on Friday, abating on Saturday. With that in mind, I left Deception Island on Monday thinking I would sail slow, north and west, and come in behind it and sail north on Saturday with forecast better weather.

Well, the weather system slowed down and doesn’t peak until Saturday. In addition, I neglected to take into account the wave forecast which has ocean swell heights peaking above 5 meters on Saturday afternoon. All this means I can’t really continue north until late Saturday. It also means I should have left Deception Island several days later, like Thursday or Friday.

So what I’m doing now is a sailing technique called “heaving-to”. Basically, I’ve stopped the boat by a reefed configuration of sails and locking the helm hard to port so the boat wants to turn, but it can’t, so it stops moving forward. It lies with the bow about 50 degrees off the wind and just drifts at 1 to 2 knots to the northeast.  If you’ve looked at the tracking map for the past several hours, that’s what you’ll see. Heaving-to is an old, time-tested technique for safely riding out high winds and seas. 

Part of the reason for heaving-to is that I really have no useful direction to sail. Going south gets me further from the bad weather but further from my destination. Going north me gets closer to my destination but closer to the worst of the weather. Going east or west doesn’t improve my situation. So, to paraphrase from a famous movie, sometimes doing nothing is a cool hand.  I’ll see how well it works out over the next 48 hours.