Saturday, 11th February 2017
Shane Freeman faces Storms in Southern Ocean
Solo sailor and SYC member Shane Freeman has faced the biggest challenge of his trip so far when he met three days of storms and gales over the past week. Currently around 1,000 NM west of Chile and on his way to the UK, Shane and his 35ft Trade Winds yacht Mushka experienced winds of between 50 and 60 knots and seas in excess of 12 meters. “I saw 15 knots of boat speed as I surfed down some of the big waves and so I thought it was time to deploy the drogue”, Shane said. “That settled things down nicely”. In his latest blog post, Shane describes the conditions he experienced across last weekend when he phoned in a report.
Arriving at SYC early last year, Shane set about preparing his recently purchased boat for the solo trip to the UK. He worked almost daily on Mushka, utilizing many of the facilities and businesses at Sandringham as he virtually pulled the boat apart and put it back together again. Shane redesigned his entire sail plan for the boat and of course added many safety features and equipment such as a drogue, a para-anchor and fully stocked and equipped life raft.
This is only the first stage of a three year project for Shane, who has entered the GGR2018 around the world 50 year anniversary race which starts from Falmouth in the UK in June 2018. There’ll be 30 competitors from countries all around the world and skippers will have to sail solo and non-stop for around 300 days, without the aid of modern digital navigation and communications equipment. Unlike many of the competitors who have entered from Europe, skippers such as Shane have to get their boat to the start line from the other side of the world. Shane decided to sail his boat there, hoping to gain valuable experience along the way.
He set sail from SYC on December 13th via the Cook Straights in New Zealand and then on to the bottom of South America and to the Falkland Islands where he’ll make his first landfall. Although this is the best time of year to make such a crossing, the weather on occasions has been quite intense. For this trip, Shane receives daily weather forecasts and course suggestions from a Weather Router. This information has proved to be invaluable, however getting the forecast to Shane on a daily basis has proved to be challenging. Sail-mail and HF have been used for the first couple of months but with the increased distance and poor radio conditions this year, it’s now proving impossible. Shane’s 3 times weekly HF schedule with club member Ian MacWilliams on his boat at SYC has been put aside for the moment and a daily satellite phone call is the only way for Shane to get the information.
With a major part of this first and hardest leg now behind him, Shane’s looking forward to landing in the Falklands within the next two weeks. He’s yet to face more challenging weather before that and has to decided the best way to get from the west side of South America to the more weather friendly east side – there are a couple of options open to him there.
If you’d like to regularly keep up with what’s happening on Shane’s journey, you can find him on his blog Freeman Sailing and on Facebook.
