'THE SHAKING OF THE RIG WAS HORRIFIC'

Mike Reynolds and his wife Nicki were heading for Europe on their 34-foot Yamazaki cruiser-racer Zen Again when a day of light squalls while exiting the tropics quickly turned into something much uglier

Our nadir was approaching. Our home port of Fremantle, Australia would be 6,880 miles away – straight down. From Bermuda our yacht Zen Again would need to literally fly to move further from home. And wherever we sailed from there we’d be heading towards home!

We were on our way in Zen Again to Europe to spend several years topping up the cruising kitty before resuming our circumnavigation. We had crossed the Southern Indian and the South Atlantic Oceans and had visited Cocos Keeling Islands, Rodrigues, Mauritius, Réunion, South Africa, St Helena and the eastern Caribbean.

Zen Again is a 1980s fibreglass 34-foot cruiser-racer. She underwent a major refit in Phuket while cruising south-east Asia. We equipped her for bluewater cruising, including SSB radio and Iridium GO! satellite messaging, but with neither wind sensors nor radar. We had departed the British Virgin Islands six days previously, heading north with a 15 to 20-knot easterly breeze. We had enjoyed Champagne tradewind sailing conditions for two days, but the wind then veered through the south to the south-west, a heavy low overcast covered the sky and showers became persistent rain.

On day five, several squall lines had passed through with 30-plus knot winds and heavy rain. Several times we handed the main, sailing under part-furled yankee alone. Mostly we set two reefs in our cruising main which presented a trisail area and we furled the yankee to suit the conditions.