Day 16 - Slowly but Steadily

There was just enough wind to keep the boat moving south throughout the entire night.

It was an evening that can be described as glorious. I stood in the cockpit wearing only shorts enjoying the cool breeze wafting around me. The nearly full moon was rising and there was a big wedge of moonlight stretching to the horizon. With the glow of the moonlight I could see the entire ocean around me amazingly well. And I enjoyed watching watching the boat as it steered itself peacefully through the gentle sea. I also revelled in the thought that in these moments of time I had this part of the world all to myself It was just me and the ocean. Moonlight sailing is great and I recommend it to everyone.

At 3.30 AM I awoke to the sound of the boom jerking from side to side. For some reason Jeff had taken us slightly off the wind. I hardened up and put us under Vistar the autopilot and watched things for 30 minutes until the wind strengthened. I was able to then switch back to Jeff and go back to bed.

I awoke at 8 AM to find the boat still moving but with the boom thrashing a bit. I did some adjustment and managed to keep both sails up, doing 3 kt into a 7 kt breeze. This was very marginal sailing and everything depended on which way the wind speed would change. We were at 09N02, 114W10, the latitude of southern Panama 1800 miles to the east, and 850 miles SSW of Cabo San Lucas. At 8.50 AM we crossed latitude 09 North. That meant 9 degrees and 540 miles to the equator.

I advise anybody contemplating long rang cruising to set off in a boat that can point to windward, because there will be times when there will be no other choice but to try to make progress against a weak wind. I have no idea of how I would have coped with one of those heavy, beamy, spacious and comfortable designs that is a dog to windward. (I asked one owner of such a boat "How is she to windward?" His reply was "Gentlemen never sail to weather." I knew then that the boat was a real dog to weather, and later he admitted that he used the engine to assist when going to windward. Using the engine can work, but one would need big fuel tanks and a change in name from "sailing" to "motor sailing". I don't know enough about multihulls to comment.)

At noon we were at 08N49, 114W12. Our n-n distance was 91 miles.

I started the engine just before 1 PM and ran it for 1.7 hours (115.0 total). I had not run it the day before, holding back for the lack of wind that didn't happen.

I lay in the bunk to read a few more pages of Richard Dana's "Two Years Before The Mast" and I just happened to be on the page where his ship is very close to my present position, on its way to the Horn: "Wednesday, May 18th. Lat. 9 degrees 45 minutes N, lon. 113 degrees 17 minutes W. The northeast trades had now left us, and we had the usual variable winds, the "doldrums," which prevail near the line [equator],together with some rain. So long as we were in these latitudes, we had but little rest in our watch on deck at night; for, as the winds were light and variable ...." Dana went on to say that they picked up the trade winds 24 hours after crossing the equator. They lost the trade winds several weeks later at 26S04, 116W31, and the winds became variable, principally from the west.

At 4 PM my sailing run ended. I was finishing off an urgent caulking job on the vent above the galley when I felt a few drops of rain. Fortunately I had just bedded down the vent onto the caulking. I finished the job in a light shower but that marked the end of useful wind. I dropped the mainsail and left a tiny bit of headsail out. Somehow Vistar was managing to keep the boat pointed south at 0.7 kt. To add to the gloom, the latest weather fax showed the ITCZ 3 degrees south of where it had been the previous day and pretty much on top of my position.

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