“This is Going to Eat Us” – Storm in the Indian Ocean

There are three things a newbie sailor like me never wants to hear on their first trip sailing across an ocean, and I had just heard my Skipper, Wyn, say all three.

First, as we watched the advancing wall of grey storm close in on us, he said ‘This is going to eat us.’ There was no melodrama or exaggeration in his voice. It was just underlined with a deepening sense of anxiousness as the storm sat poised to gobble us up.

Second, once the fury of the winds had hit he admitted, ‘this is the roughest I’ve seen the sea’. I cursed my luck that he had been sailing around the world for 2 years, had a lifetime of sailing experience before that, and I had chosen this moment to join him.

And finally, as a huge wave slammed sideways through the boat, flinging the cupboard doors open and sending us flailing for something to grab, he said ‘I thought that one was going to tip us!’ We were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 1,000 miles from land. We hadn’t seen another boat in 5 days. I felt helpless, alone, and afraid.

We were helpless. We just had to sit and wait for it to pass however long that would take. I retreated to my cabin, lay in bed and closed my eyes. Waves struck the side of my cabin with explosions of cannon fire. My window offered a view that swung rapidly between sky and sea. My cabin felt like a coffin, a coffin that dangled beneath a crane, during an earthquake, in a thunderstorm.

There’s a hatch above my head. Normally at night I like to lay in bed and stare at the moon and stars through it. Now I wondered how quickly I would be able to escape through it. And how quickly my cabin would fill with water. And if everything was upside down, which direction would I have to swim to get out? I was a long way beyond my comfort zone; I’m not embarrassed to admit I have never been more scared in my life.

The storm didn’t lull but increased in intensity, until I resigned myself to the fact that we were surely going to capsize any moment. I stuffed my laptop, phone and the hard drive containing my photos into a waterproof bag and sat outside on the bench beside the emergency life raft with the same expectancy one waits for a bus at a bus stop. When the inevitable wave plunged us into the water, I would be ready; I’d be first into the life raft, and I’d have all my valuables with me.

Sitting outside, the ocean’s anger terrified and impressed me in equal measure. Every wave scooped us up, lifting us into the sky, and for a split second I looked out over an uneven desert of steep dunes which stretched off to a vanishing point. I saw a mountain landscape, with white crests atop each wave that rivalled the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas. The whole panorama was moving, crashing and falling.

And then, from our lofty vantage point we would surf down the face of the wave with a sudden burst of speed – our speed would more than double as the wave drove us forwards. Leia B battled to hold a true course while the wave threatened to twist her sideways which would certainly cartwheel us all over. This resulted in giant, heart-stopping ‘S’ turns as we lurched unsteadily across the wall of the wave, and dropped into the trough, only just managing to maintain any semblance of control. From this trough, I craned my neck to see a wall of water towering over us on every front and wondered if this was the one that would get us. This giddying ride continued for many slow hours.

Eventually the storm subsided and a rainbow arched across the sky, leaving me feeling just as epic as Noah and his ark! The fear and adrenaline slipped away leaving us to collapse into an exhausted slump. Wyn returned to his cabin to play accordion. Normally his jaunty tunes transport me to a Parisian Café on a spring afternoon or to a mariner’s bar where you might while away the evenings singing sea shanties, but that time it felt like the scene from Titanic, where the boat is sinking and the band is doomed to go down with the ship, and even as the water swirls around their feet, they keep playing until the very end.

The storm left Leia B and her crew slightly the worse for wear. Both our engines were out of order, which would make charging our batteries more difficult and we would also be unable to navigate the channel through the reef into Rodrigues Island. We would have to push on further to Mauritius. I would just have to wait even longer for fresh food, and a shower, and contact with the 'real' world. I stared out at the horizon, and the waves that marched towards it. It would be another 8 days before any land appeared there. I had a new respect for the vastness and power of the Ocean, and I felt as alive as ever.

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