DAY 23 - The Bird Flies..........

I had a nap after completing my noon report and then joined the 1.30 PM session with Firewater and Sonrisa. Reception was very good and I was able to have a good conversation with both Richard and Ryan. Richard was still becalmed. He had motored another 48 nm but said that he simply did not have enough fuel to motor all of the way in. He did not expect wind for 4 or 5 days. I told him not to be so sure about that because where that morning's 48 hour surface forecast placed the Highs and Lows to me in indicated that he would might some southerly winds. I told them both about the nasty Lows on the way.

For once I could hear Don on Summer Passage (Don is a shore-based volunteer who provides weather and routing advice. I was told that even the Coast Guard goes to him for advice.) Guess what? He told Richard that he could expect a light southerly wind two days from now. But once he gets through that band of wind there would be no wind between him and Juan de Fuca. Don joked about Richard making it in by Christmas and probably by Thanksgiving. Richard said that he hoped to be in by 1 July, which if I heard right is Canada's Independence Day. Don said that he had his doubts which I found a pessimistic given that this was only 12 June. Don't laugh but Don asked Richard if he could put him on his church's prayer list. Richard said OK. Don said that the Lord never listens to him but he'll probably listen to the congregation of his Episcopalian church somewhere in California. They will pray for fair winds for Richard.

Then Don started to speak with Ryan. Don has his own weather inputs and does his own forecasting. He told Ryan that in three days they will be hit with 40-50 knot winds and to start getting ready for it. The only way to escape it was to head for Panama. Those were the Lows that I had just alerted Richard and Ryan about. I talked with Ryan afterward. His boat was built in 1978 but I had heard him tell Richard that he had it re-rigged a year ago. Ryan has what he called a storm jib which he can hank on his inner forestay. He has no storm trysail so it will be the double reefed mainsail or nothing. He has no drogue. I told him that I would consider heaving to or laying ahull and he said that he would play it by ear.

Shortly after that I went to the cockpit to see the container ship "Ever Urban" pass four miles behind my stern on her way to Los Angeles. She was close enough for me to see "Evergreen" on her side, which I presume is the name of the line. It was 2.50 PM and the boat was still moving at 015 T with jib only and a very light breeze. At least we were moving.

I had another go at launching the ailing bird. He was not interested. I then put his basket on the starboard cabin seat trying to help him get used to the place. A few minutes later I saw that he had jumped out of the basket and was trying to burrow into a dark crevice between my Toshiba laptop computer and the corner of the settee. He obviously wanted to disappear in the dark so I put him back in the quarter berth with a thin cloth over the top of his basket.

During the 7.30 PM radio session with Richard and Ryan I heard flapping sounds and found that the bird had left his cosy hospital bed and was on the section of the sole behind the main cabin between the quarter berths. He seemed lively and was extending his wings as if to tell me that he was ready to fly. I gently picked him up with both hands and no resistance from him and I couldn't resist giving him a kiss on the head before I put him on the cockpit seat. I watched him for a few seconds while he stood on the cockpit seat looking around and then rejoined the radio session. When I returned to the cockpit a few minutes later my little friend was gone. I had a look in every nook and cranny of the cockpit with my head torch to make sure that he was not cowering somewhere. He was definitely gone of his own volition. Hopefully he had just needed a rest for some reason and now he (or she) will be OK. (The next morning I looked in the book on sea birds. Brenda was right. It was a storm petrel, probably "Leach's Storm-Petrel".)

After my 9 PM conversation with Chris I spent an hour finishing the movie Predator ("If it bleeds we can kill it."). After the movie I checked at the navigation station and saw that the wind had picked up to 16, 17, and 18 knots. The boat speed at about 6 kt was too much for the building seas. I put in a reef and rolled in the headsail. The sails were close hauled and we were going hard to weather at 5 kt.

Reefing at night is no longer a big deal for me. Last night the boat was heeled to port as we raced along on a starboard tack. I turned on the deck light, put on my wet weather jacket, life vest, head torch and went topside. Because we were close hauled I left the boat on the same heading and eased the boom to take the pressure off the sail. Then I payed out two arm spans of mainsail halyard to place the first reefing point down at the gooseneck. The sail dropped naturally in the agitating wind. I then clipped on the jack line and walked to the mast along the starboard side of the deck which was now level because of the boat's heel. The boom was no danger because my standard practice now is to have a preventer in place. Walking to the mast is now relatively safe because of the perimeter of rope that I have around the middle of the boat. At the mast I had a look around then hooked the reefing strap (a strap that passes through the reefeing eye and has a stainless steel ring on each end) on the gooseneck fitting. Then it was back to the cockpit for a few turns of the port cabin winch to tension the mainsail halyard. After that I pulled the first reef line tight by hand, brought the boom inboard with the mainsheet, tied on another reef line on then eased the first reef line so that the two lines could share the load.

The boat was hard to weather all night and even with the reduced sail and boat speed of 5 kt it was still a bumpy ride as Pachuca punched into the waves. I made checks at 11 PM and 1 AM. and at 4 AM I woke up to daylight and the sound of water lapping in the bilge.

The S&S 39 does not have a particularly large bilge. It is about 1.5 ft wide, 1 ft deep, and runs from the stern of the boat to the V-berth section. It has a series of bulkheads or baffles with holes in them for the passage of hosing and water along the length of the bilge. The bilge pumps have their intakes at a forward part of the bilge, near the mast. The manual Whale Gusher pump in the cockpit is by far the better pump to use over the electric one - it shifts the water faster and it will take the water level down lower. Pumping the bilge is done in a series of strokes: pump until you hear a suckinjg sound, wait 3 minutes to allow water to flow forward through the baffles and raise the water level around the pump intakes, then pump again. Each series of pumps usually requires fewer strokes. When I hear sucking after 10 or 12 strokes I stop. Because of the shape of the hull the rising water level of the bilge first manifests itself as water overflowing at the edge of the sole either under the navigation table or in the galley, depending on the heel of the boat.

This morning I had to do 120 strokes: 30, 20, 20, 20, 20, 10. That represented ingress of water over a period of 6 hours. There is practically no shipping of water in moderate sailing, even when going to weather. It is only in turbulent conditions when the hull is rolling, yawing, and in particular pitching a lot that she ships water. Solving this will be a big step in the transformation of this boat from weekend to cruising standard. (I've begun to call this circumnavigation the world's longest shakedown cruise.)

While we are at it a few words on the cabin leaks. I am pleased to note that on this port heel with a lot of water flowing over the top of the boat the left side of the cabin is dry. No longer are we getting drips over the navigation table or the end of the port bunk. The two leaks on the starboard side were not too bad, undoubtedly because of the port heel. Last night they were little more than a nuisance, although they WILL be fixed. There was some leaking around the cap of the brand new, just-replaced plastic portal for the solar fan in the head. For rough work I remove the fan and replace it with the cap. Except that the cap did not have an O-ring as I had expected. Itthe is supposed to rely on the plastic-to-plastic contact for the seal. Dream on. This is another example of a weekend toy not up to cruising standard. This too is more of a nuisance than a serious problem, since the water will drip through the duck board into the bilge. For rough passages I'll have to seal the joint with silicone sealant.

We had made good progress during the night. At 7 AM were 625 nm from Cape Flattery. There was another ship crossing my stern 32 miles away in 20 minutes: the "APL Denmark" bound for Yokohama.

The 0615 weather fax, reporting conditions as of about midnight the previous night, showed that I was 10 degrees east of a moderately intense Low (1005 mb) and I was benefiting from its SE winds. Richard, on the other hand, was just enough farther east (15 deg) and farther north (3 deg) to place him smack in the middle of a High.

The 24, 48, and 72 hour weather faxes showed that Ryan and his crew were going to have heavy weather for at least 2, probably 3 days. Tomorrow he'll be in the so-called squash zone between the Low the High and get strong SW winds. Things will then get more serious during the two days after that. Having said that, the 48 hour wind/wave prediction indicates that he will far enough east to have escaped the 5 and 6 meter seas. It looks like he'll be lucky and escape the brunt of it. Also, he's got the advantage that he'll be south of the Low running before the wind. Maybe he can keep sailing east with a small jib up front because the farther he can go east the better.

I then thought of Jeff Hansen in his small boat with his two inexperienced female crew. He left Honolulu a week or so before I did but he was probably going to spend a few days in Kauai. I have no idea of where Jeff is now because he has no HF radio which means that he does not have access to weather reports. He is an experienced sailor and I'm sure that he'll be OK but if his crew get seasick things will not be nice in the boat.

Dieter does not have an HF radio either but he left well ahead of me and is probably safely in the Alaskan coast by now.

At midday we were at 44.54N 138.23W, exactly 600 nm from Cape Flattery, heading for Vancouver Island at 5.5-6.0 kt. We had a noon-noon distance of 103 nm.