Day 33

The wind picked up after dark. At first the sailing was good as the boat zipped along smoothly at 6.5 knots, but once the seas built up things started to get rough and I had to take time off from the Bruce Willis movie (The Sixth Sense) to put in the second reef. This had little effect on the boat speed, which at times was getting close to 7 knots, so an hour later I was back in the cockpit totally rolling in the headsail for the first time since I had put it up ten days ago. I was determined to slow the boat down and my next step would be to drop the staysail. Fortunately that was not necessary because rolling in that tiny piece of headsail had reduced the speed to about 4 knots and the boat was now riding much quieter. After this I had the last grapefruit, nicely chilled out of the refrigerator. It was as juicy, sweet and refreshing as a fresh one. Grapefruit travel well but they are a bit bulky for storage in a refrigerator.

It was 1 AM when I lay down for the night but I was too hyped up couldn't settled down, probably because of the effects of pump repair effort, skipped nap, and nocturnal sail adjustments. I rose at 2 AM, listened to Australian Radio for a while, then decided that I'd better skip the 2.30 AM radio fax session and get to sleep. I took two Ibuprofen and went out like a light until dawn when I got up, had a look around, saw that the boat was still tracking nicely to the south at 4 knots, then went back to sleep until 9.30 AM. Over breakfast I marveled at how well the boat had been moving in these conditions with just a double reefed mainsail and the staysail. The wind was still relatively strong and the sea was still rough so I made no sail adjustments.

Our noon position was 15S47, 122W49, giving us a n-n distance of 106 miles. We had moved south another 1.8 degrees. Easter Island was 1000 miles to the SE. Cabo San Lucas was 2400 miles to the NNE.

In the afternoon I drained the last of the water from my first of four 20-liter containers that I had brought from La Paz. That empty container and the two empty 10 liter containers represented my net use of water from Pachuca's storage resources, not forgetting that I had managed to refill those containers during the short rains in the ITCZ. I had consumed roughly 80 liters of water in 33 day, or about 2.4 liters per day. That left me with 3x20 liter containers from La Paz plus the 280 liters in the boat's tanks, all untouched. I had plenty of water on board, but I was not going to ease up on the discipline until we encountered serious rain in the westerlies or maybe even before.

In the afternoon the sailing was good. With a falling wind I rolled out a bit of headsail to take the boat speed to just over 5 kts. The staysail, sheeted way out to the car track, was luffing a bit too much for my liking so with reluctance I fell another 10 degrees off the wind to quiet the sail and put on a bit of speed. At mid afternoon we were making 5.8-6 kts in reasonable comfort, though we were making almost directly for Ducie Island, which seemed to be acting like a magnet to Pachuca. It was difficult to tell which side of the island we would pass.

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