Brenda sent me a very interesting blog entry from a fellow sailor, Matt Rutherford, who at the time of writing was at lat 15S12, about 250 miles from me, on his way to the Horn. His thoughts and experiences were eerily similar to mine, which gave me great comfort, possibly because it provided me with some validation.
On the doldrums: "I'm happy to have made it through the "crazy latitudes". I call it that
because it's a infamous area, known to make sailors lose their mind. For me
it started at around 9 north and continued until 3 south. That's roughly
720 miles of thunderstorms, light winds, and opposing currents. The French
have a word for the doldrums that roughly translates into "terrible
miserable darkness". I'd say that sums it up nicely. It felt like I was
trying to sail through the twilight zone, I'm no crazier then when I left."
On the SE trade winds: "Since 3 south its been head winds, head winds, headwinds. I'm just slowly
beating into the seas trying not to beat my boat to death. No matter how
much I reduce sail I still pound from time to time. St Brendan is getting
pretty beat up."
He is worried about the hammering his 40-year old fiberglass Albin Vega design boat "St Brendan" is taking.
He even recommended viewing of "Deep Water", the tragic story of solo sailor Donald Crowhurst. I saw it myself about a week ago and the documentary has special impact on someone alone at sea.
The Matt a track record. He set off from Annapolis, sailed the Northwest Passage, and plans to return to Annapolis via the Horn non-stop. I doff my hat to him. I admire his credo: "The ocean can kill me, but it can't break me."
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It was a very good sailing night. At last light I was tempted to shake out my second reef but fortunately decided not to. All night long the boat sailed itself to the south at about 5 kts. Twice during the night I got up and found that all was well. At 8 AM I was up for the day, quite refreshed after the previous "rest day" and the good night's sleep. I was still headed for Ducie Island and was thinking of shaking out that second reef.
At about 10.30 AM I got the bright idea of transferring fuel from the deck containers into the main tanks. It was a bright sunny day and although we were moving at over 5 kts the seats and cockpit sole were dry, meaning that the diesel would not be contaminated by salt water spray. I had been so impressed with the hand pump that Bob Carroll had introduced me to that I had purchased a second one and had been using one very effectively to pump fresh water out of the 20 liter containers and the other one for pumping out diesel fuel. Unfortunately the diesel fuel pump had stopped working. On inspection I saw that the seal had been eaten away, so my guess is that the pump had been designed for water only. I was unprepared for this and wound up lifting the 20 liter diesel containers and pouring directly into the Baja filter. This was not easy on a heeled and gyrating boat. I managed to transfer what I estimate to be 27 liters of fuel, allowing for spillage of about 2 liters. During this operation I learned to not try to fill the leeward tank. Both tanks are connected and the result was that the leeward tank overflowed (at more loss of fuel) much sooner than I had expected. At the end I was left with 2 seats and the sole covered in diesel, and myself covered in diesel from the waist down. A good rinsing of the cockpit and a salt water bath using soap fixed that problem, but that cleanup came after I had produced my noon report covered in diesel oil and sitting on an old towel. The important thing was that I had completed the transfer without contaminating the fuel with water or damaging the Baja Filter. The next time I'll be better prepared. Siphoning won't work because the Baja filter sits too high. I may simply decant the fuel into one of my two new and very clean buckets that I had purchased for capturing rain water.
At noon our position was 17S46, 123W21, giving us a n-n distance of 124 miles. We had made 1.98 degrees to the south, one minute short of a full 2 degrees. We were now south of Tahiti, 1500 miles to the west.
At 2 PM I shook out the 2nd reef and sailed with the 1st reef. The wind speed had dropped somewhat but was satisfactory, particularly since it seemed to have backed 15 degrees and put us on a course due south at 5 knots. While running the engine (135.0 hours) I spent 30 minutes cleaning out the ice box and refrigerator. A tomato and two onions went into the ocean. As soon we reach cooler temperatures I will shut off the refrigerator and let the butter, cheese, and what is left of the lunch meat fend for themselves. Incidentally my third effort at making yogurt was by far the best: good consistency and great taste. I'll keep that little yogurt production line going as long as I c
Shortly before 5 PM we went through a light shower and the wind abruptly picked up speed and did not drop again. Pachuca was off to the races again, doing 6.5 knots through a rising sea. I put in the second reef again and wound in most of the headsail and our speed dropped to a more comfortable 5.5 knots. Unfortunately the new wind had veered 15 degrees and for now we were headed for midway between Ducie Island and Henderson Island, 200 miles to the west. I could have sailed harder into the wind by dropping the staysail and using the jib, half rolled out and sheeted in tight, but I didn't want to do that because I would need that sail for running downwind before the westerlies.
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1 comment:
Good news...around the Horn in early January.
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