Perseverance

The southernmost part of the Southern Atlantic Ocean is a tough place. To be on a 350’ research boat in the roaring forties was one thing, but to be alone on a 60’ foiling sailboat in the roaring forties, and 1,200 miles from the land was totally another. That happened to be just where Alani Moorhen was when she realized something was wrong. The boat wasn’t sailing correctly, something was off, something bad, and just the thought of that made her sick. She was, in fact, near Nemo point, the farthest point from any inhabited land in the world. Being one thousand two hundred miles from land made rescue a slim prospect. To be in the Vendée Globe and get anywhere you had to be a pro. Alani had been sailing her whole life and training for years. Her boat, Fly High, was five years old, modified for this race but not built for it. Alani had sailed across the Atlantic, around Australia, and from Portugal to South Africa on three separate solo trips. She had more than the necessary experience to qualify for the Vendée Globe, an around the world sailing race starting and ending in France. She knew that the ocean’s emotions wavered and that it could have severe mood swings from calm to raging and back again. However, nearer to Antarctica, the ocean was always raging. It could toss a boat about and snap it in half like a toothpick if it felt like it. The Roaring Forties had been named by sailors a long time ago, but the nicknames stuck around. The forty degrees area was named the Roaring Forties, followed by the Furious Fifties and the Screaming Sixties, each 10 degrees in latitude farther south than the last. They all deserved their names. Alani remembered Vendée Globe ice limit only let sailors go into the forties and partway into the fifties because after that there was too much risk of hitting an iceberg, and the line was on her charts. However, you wanted to sail farther south because there is more wind for faster sailing. Alani had been sleeping for an hour when she was woken by something. In her lethargic state, she couldn’t make sense of much or know what had woken her. After a yawn and rubbing her eyes, she sat up and listened. At first, she heard just the endless crashing of waves and felt the rocking of the boat, up and down, side to side, back and forth. Then she heard the slight tink of metal banging on metal. She sat up and checked the wind speed on the navigation computer. There were 32 knots of wind, but the boat was only going seven knots, rather than 18 or 19. For a confused second, she sat there wondering what to do. Soon she leaped into action, pulling on her foul weather gear and cinching it firmly around her wrists, ankles, and neck. Howard Keeler As she wrenched open the hatch to the cockpit, water sloshed inside and she slammed the metal hatch shut again. She waited until the boat was going up a wave to try to climb out again and burst into a very wet, salty world. As the water cleared off of the forward-facing cockpit window, Alani saw a large white and blue piece of the mainsail being thrown around by the harsh wind on the deck of the boat. A low moaning “no no no noooo!” escaped Alani’s lips as she took in the sight. The 60-foot tall mainsail had torn in half diagonally, and not along a seam, but jaggedly, with a few dangling pieces. The clinking noise she had heard was the small metal pieces in the sail banging against the boat. The metal pieces were meant to help the sail hold its shape but were now useless. As Alani was observing the damage to the sail, a large swell caught up to the boat, splashing onto the deck and smashing into Alani’s back, slamming her into the wall in front of her and knocking her off her feet. As the water receded, she gasped at the sudden shock and hauled herself onto her feet and back into the cabin. Alani wiped the water off her face and out of her ponytail, only to realize her hands were red from a bloody nose. As she cleaned her hands and face, she checked the boat’s course and altered it to head more north and hopefully into calmer and less dangerous seas. She sent a brief message to her team on land, reading: Mainsail torn in half, holding course, but at a reduced speed of 6-9 knots.

She only let herself think for a few more seconds before getting up and readying a harness and ropes to go out and take down the sail. Alani double-checked that she had everything before disappearing back out the door and around the cockpit. She clipped herself in so she could not fall overboard and slowly disentangled the lower part of the mainsail from the boom and mast. It was strenuous work because of the constant washing over of waves and the rocking of the boat. She would just be getting a knot loosened and the water and wind would yank at the end again tightening it. Once she got the first part of the sail undone she was forced to put it inside the cabin for fear of it washing away off the deck. The second piece of sail was even more tangled than the first and took more than an hour to get down and undo from the mast. Since Alani had to concentrate fully on getting the sails inside the boat and stowed away with no loose lines, she didn’t fully realize the predicament she was in until she was sitting inside feeling a lump form on her forehead from another wave that had caught her from the side and sent her tumbling to the deck. It was not good, not good at all. She had very little experience fixing sails and had rarely jury-rigged something and had it work for a sustained amount of time. The boat had two extra headsails of different types but no extra mainsail. This now seemed like a stupid decision she’d made, but she had done it to reduce weight onboard. Alani debated whether or not she could and should try to fix the sail. On one hand, if she didn’t, she would be out of the Vendée Globe at least for a few days, which she did NOT want to do. But on the other hand, her sail-making and fixing skills were limited and she did not have all the proper materials to do so. It was a war between herself and herself. The Vendée Globe had been a lifelong dream and if she stopped for repairs it would ruin her chance of winning. She would also have to wait for the next Vendée Globe which was in four years. Continuing would endanger her life because another problem with her boat -if one arose-, could easily be devastating. She talked with her family and her team onshore through a video call and they gave mixed advice about turning back. Her team said that she had the right tools and experience and was able to do it, but her family was far more safety concerned. As Alani ended the call, she let out a long weary sigh. She made herself a meal as she thought long and hard. Eventually, she thought “I don’t have the skill for this or the materials, I need to get repairs,’’ and called for a boat to come to get her. As Alani walked towards the computer to make her call, she forgot to hold on and a wave hit the side of the boat, tipping it sideways and tossing Alani sideways into the wall. Her knee cracked down on the floor and she yelled, mad at the wind and water for punishing her for nothing. She curled into a ball on the ever-rocking floor and cried into her knees. Crying sorted her out, releasing the hard twist in her stomach. It shook her and her thoughts up, and she realized, maybe that wave at that moment had meant something. Maybe the ocean didn’t want her to make that call. Maybe it was testing her, making her rethink this problem. It was a crazy thought, but it made her remember. “I am 1,200 miles from shore, it could take weeks for them to get to me out here!” followed by: “I may not be a sailmaker, but I am a professional sailor,” and a flow of positive thoughts in favor of fixing her sail and finishing the race. This totally changed her state of mind and instead of grabbing the phone, she grabbed the tools to finish the sail. There was nowhere near enough room to lay out the full sail but she rolled up the part that she was not working on and shoved it to the side. She cut, glued, and even did some stitching to put the sail back together. It was strenuous and difficult to align the pieces without wrinkles and to make sure the edge that connected to the mast was as straight as possible. The final result was eight feet shorter than the original sail and was wrinkled around the repair job. Alani admired her work but was skeptical as to if it would hold up to the brutal southern winds.

By now the boat with one sail had traveled slightly further north where there was a little less wind, but it was not calm, or even close. But she still had the work of getting the sail outside and setting it up. This all had to be done harnessed in again because she could NOT risk falling overboard. It took her multiple tries to get the burdensome sail in the right position, and longer still to bring it up the mast with the wind pulling at it. But Alani was determined because she had no other options, and so, with arms burning, she heaved it up the last several inches and secured the taught line. She pulled in the mainsail so it would catch the wind and Fly High began to fly. Not exactly flying, but foiling sure could make it seem like it,