Mistrals are fun.......not...

Well the plan was that we leave Calasetta, Sardinia and use the Mistral (a strong NW wind that originates in the Alps near the Spanish/French boarder)to blow us all the way south east to Malta, 350 nm, about 500 kms. I checked the GRIB weather information every day before hand and the prediction firmed up and looked like 15-25 knots for most of the required 3 days, fading at the end so that we would have to motor for a few hours. Close to perfect.

So what could go wrong with such a planed and well thought out voyage?

A continuous 25-30 kts gusting almost 40 kts makes for a bloody uncomfortable sail, that's what.

One feature of the Med is that there is a very small tide (around half a metre), smaller currents and no big ocean swell. When the wind comes up the wind waves come up and when the wind stops the sea state calms quickly. So 15-20 knots behind us should not really be a problem....right? Well when the wind gods get a little carried away and keep puffin up to 40 knots the waves in the Med do get large. When we had a constant 30kts for a day, it was NOT a good idea to look behind the boat to see what was coming!

The wind was blowing directly in the direction we wanted to go, this might sound great but there is a problem. We can put out 2 sails at the front of the boat (goose winged jibs) and this can work well when the seas are slight, not so well with big seas. We were rolling from side to side furiously....not a happy crew! We eventually found a combination that worked, a very small main sail, a very small jib and sailing at an angle of about 30 degrees off our course. So we zig zagged down wind for two and a half days before the wind finally calmed down and here we are now no wind and motoring for the last 20 nm.

That was what really happened....here is the Admirals side of the story....

Quite scary, huge seas with the wind whipping the tops of them into frothy whitecaps. Most of them Sunflower surfed down (best not to look down from the the top of a multi storey wave at the rest of the ocean below!)Occasionally a rogue wave would hit the side of the boat with a huge thud knocking us all sideways and even dumping a large quantity of sea water over the deck and cockpit. We were both tired and battered from being knocked around the cabin, unable to sleep and trying to keep the boat on course. At times I asked myself what on earth I was doing, and why couldn't I live in a nice dry house that didn't keep lurching all over the place. Then as soon as things calmed down, the seas returned to a nice gentle undulating motion and Sunflower was purring along, I forgot all the bad stuff and was enjoying the joy of being underway again,..... until the next time anyway!

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