A real treat.........

Here is the first ever email from Pachuca sent using the satellite phone;


Opua-Raivavae – First lEG

20 Sep 08:

The departure was amazingly orderly. We decided to discard the toaster and electric kettle that I had purchased in Adelaide and we gave them to Rosangela aboard “Zazoo”. To Rosangela also went our telephone and Internet cards and to her children Luke and Joshua a surplus $2.00 coin each. We asked Rosangela to convey our regards to her husband Ben, who was in Viet Nam on a diving job.

Arnold visited Warwick and Nancy Tompkins' “Flashgirl” with our copy of Foreign Affairs magazine and a goodbye note because they were not home.

At 9.45 AM we visited Laura at the marina office and returned our parking permit, keys, and electrical cord. Laura produced 5 copies of Pachuca's registration document. At 10.00 AM Brenda, Arnold, and I presented ourselves at the Customs office where Jo Ann inspected our documents, accepted our forms, and give Pachuca her clearance paper. We then had hamburgers for lunch on the boat.

At 1.20 PM we backed Pachuca out of the pen and were on our way. We motored for almost two hours then set sail with a 15 kt East wind in a generally dry and sunny day.

21 Sep 08:

After sailing into a light E/SE all night we were becalmed at 4 AM during my watch. I dropped all sails and took to the bunk fully dressed while the boat lay ahull. Shortly after dawn I woke up to the sound of the hum of the wind charger, indicating that we had more than 10 kt of wind. I woke Arnold up for his watch, we set sail, and I went back to bed. At 9 AM we were 2035 nm from Raivavae, and only about 60 nm from the NZ coast.

At mid-day we were becalmed again and had a go at calibrating our new Raymarine ST60 wind instrument. We had discovered the previous day that the indicator points in the direction of where the wind is going to, rather than where it is coming from. The chart plotter was reporting the wind direction correctly, which suggested that the masthead unit had been orientated correctly. We had rechecked the wire connections and found no problem. The manual was next to useless in its shallow simplicity. We started the engine and tried several double 360-degree turns as prescribed in the calibration procedure, but they failed we think because with the wallowing of the boat in the sea the wind direction was not changing in a steady and consistent rate. So for the foreseeable future we would have to live with the situation.

Before we started the engine the batteries bank voltages were 12.9V for the House bank, 12.9V for the Start bank, and 13.0V for the Aux (i.e. Anchor winch) bank. House bank capacity was 766 Amp Hours, representing 83% capacity. The charger started putting out over 160 amps which settled down to about 75 amps after 30 minutes. After 55 minutes we shut the engine down with over 90% capacity in the House bank.

At 3 PM we were becalmed again.

At 4PM we decided to give the asymmetrical spinnaker a go. We had never flown one of kites before so we proceeded with great caution. It took an hour to repack the kite, find suitable sheets, and set up the pole. The big moment came and the kite went up with remarkable little trouble, and minimal shouting. The big problem was the pole, which had only one mid-pole attachments, not two, one each for the topping lift and the down haul. This presented a problem where we could not keep the pole down properly. Nevertheless we were able make a reasonable job of setting and trimming the spinnaker and were soon moving at about 3.5 kt.

At sunset we dropped the kite, stowed it, stowed the lines, then rolled out the jib against a gentle NW wind. We engaged the Autohelm to have dinner together and decided to let it run all night. Arnold had the first watch. At midnight I woke up for my watch and he reported that the system had run very well and he had had an easy night down in the cabin reading and occasionally sticking his head out to scan the horizon. I am writing this at 2AM. The boat is gently running itself at 5.0 kt, course 065 True, and Brenda is asleep in the forecastle and Arnold is asleep in the port quarter berth. What luxury! I am in the warm dry cabin with the time and energy to do productive things. For example, I took the first sextant sights of the cruise today, and soon I'll be able to reduce them to get a line position. If things continue to go well I'll try to take some star sights at dawn.

22 Sep 08

It was a day of little progress from downwind sailing in a light breeze. After lunch Arnold telephoned Bob at Cater Marine in Opua and I described the problem with our new wind display instrument. He agreed to make inquiries and we would telephone him the next day. I reduced one of the sun sightings of he previous day and got a line of position (LOP) within two miles of our actual position. I also started to become reacquainted with the procedure of getting weather faxes.

23 Sep 08

We had such light winds from the SW that we lay ahull most of the previous night. We figured that 2.5 kt of speed was not worth the effort and the flogging rigging. Instead we all got a good night's sleep and woke up refreshed. It was a better wind day and by now we were accustomed to using the Autohelm continuously. I put in more effort into the weather fax and we got an excellent chart of the South Pacific from NZ at noon. That put our mind at ease about future weather information. The weather fax confirmed that we were in the middle of a high pressure zone with no nasty weather in sight. That explains the clear sunny days and light winds that we have been experiencing. We telephoned Bob and his response was that we should calibrate the instrument. We will do that the first chance that we get but we are somewhat skeptical. Nobody can explain why the display is so far out yet the chart plotter uses information from the display to produce
accurate apparent wind direction data. We will have to wait for a suitable time for the calibration – either a very calm day when we can execute the two 360 degree turns without the indicator swinging back and forth, or my going up the mast to manually turn the indicator.

We hoisted the spinnaker at 3PM and after some improvisations with the down haul (the new life raft was getting in the way of a starboard pole down haul) we got it up with excellent results. With great reluctance I decided to plan it safe and drop the kite before dark. Just as well. The wind was strong, our technique not very good, and the kite wound up under the hull and in front of the keel. I thought that we would lose the kite but we managed to free the halyard on the starboard side and pull the kite up onto the port side.

At the moment it is 1040. After a pleasant dinner to the music of the Beach Boys followed by Cointreau we agreed that I would take the first watch. Arnold and Brenda are asleep. The boat is doing 5.4 kt with a partial jib and a strengthening wind off the starboard quarter. The Autohelm is steering the boat and the batteries are holding up well.

24 Sep 08

We had a long September 23. At about 12.45 of the “24th” we crossed the international date line and were thrown back to the 23rd. We were at longitude 180 degrees, opposite Greenwich, crossing from the Eastern to the Western hemisphere.

In the morning I lashed the spinnaker on the fore deck dry it out. I got two good weather faxes – the situations now and in 48 hours. We are still in a high pressure zone, with the wind from the SW at about 15 kt. We are running slightly south of east on a broad starboard reach with only half of the jib rolled out in order to minimize flogging when the boat rolls. Our speed ranges from 3.2 kt to 4.5 kt.

After lunch sky became sunny. Arnold had a bath in the cockpit. When it was my turn we hove to, lowered the ladder, and I had my bath in the sea accompanied by my usual vociferous expression of scorn to my wimpy shipmates.

By then the “house” bank was down to 12.1V after three days since the last charge and we ran the engine for one hour. A one hour run would give us only one day's battery power supply but we wanted to save the long run of the engine required to bring the batteries up to 100% until we were becalmed and the engine could be used to keep us moving. During this time Arnold made a very useful repair. Soon after our departure I noted that our engine hours counter had stopped working. This is important because it helps us keep track of our fuel consumption as a guide for maintenance. He discovered that the counter is activated by turning on the ignition key, rather than by some exotic direct connection to the engine. With a multimeter he identified the problem: positive and negative wires had been reversed during our stay in Opua. Fortunately the reverse polarity did not damage the counter and it appears to be working OK. It is useful to have
electrical skills on board.

At 1AM before taking over the watch I helped Arnold get a good weather fax out of Charleville, Australia using his PC. This is good because it is important to have a backup to my machine. His PC experiences the same electrical noise as mine when there is a connection from the HF radio to the PC and to the inverter supplying power to the laptop. We get clear faxes only when we run the laptops on internal battery power. My laptop battery currently supports the machine barely enough to get one weather fax (i.e. 15 minutes). If things get any worse then we will have to rely on Arnold's laptop. (I don't think that it is the battery, which is double capacity and less than a year old. I think that it is the firmware which has once before been proving to be the culprit.) Arnold's laptop also has its own copy of C-map and GPS antenna – another good backup.

We plan to try out the water maker soon so that we can plan our use of water.