BT Global Challenge Diary

madforsailing's diary writer Andy Magrath reports on the 'southerly buster'

We have had the most intense start to a leg of this race since we left Southampton last year.
We had light winds on start day, not surprising as most of our starts have been in light weather. We used the same start line as the Sydney-Hobart race which was incredibly short for eleven, 72 ft, 42 tonne steel challenge yachts!

As we rounded Sydney Heads LG FLATRON was in 6th place. We had upwind sailing for 24 hrs but by Monday we had the spinaker up. All of that was soon to change. In Sydney we had a talk on weather at our crew briefing. We were shown a photograph of a cloud formation representing a 'southerly buster' - basically a long cylinder of rolled up white cloud approaching from the south.

There we were going downwind approaching what looked like the very same cloud formation rolling towards us with some very confused dark grey clouds after that. We dropped the kite early in expectation. What followed was a 24 hr period of 55 knot head winds with high, steep short breaking seas. We dropped the main and sailed on under No. 3 yankee and storm staysail.

Some of the waves were terrific. Cascading walls of breaking white water over the bow of the boat. We use automatic inflating lifejackets on the yacht. At one point, when I was in the helm there was sufficient water washing over me to set off my lifejacket! We came through relatively unscathed.

One yacht, which you may have already read about (Veritas) suffered major damage from such a wave. Their communications dome was washed off the stern, stantion posts were bent and two crew members were injured such that the yacht went ashore at Eden to get them to a hospital as soon as possible.

Another first for me since I left Southampton is that I have suffered from sea sickness. A combination of the weather conditions and being on mother watch during the worst of the storm seemed to have set me off. The sickness only lasted for 24 hrs and I am now perfectly well!

We are currently 40 miles in the lead which is great for day five. It is warm and sunny on deck - not what we were expecting at all - but I expect that the cold and the rough seas are only days away. The crew have settled back to life on board very quickly and hopefully we can keep the current intensity going until Cape Town. We have done it before so hopefully we can do it again.

Finally I would like to say that my thoughts, along with the rest of the crew of LG FLATRON are with the two guys that had to be taken ashore injured a few days ago. I hope that they recover and get well soon.