Day 9 - Past Socorro Island and the Revillagigedo Group

Shortly before dawn I passed 12 miles west of Roca Partida, one of the four members of the Revillagigedo group. I stayed up until 1 AM watching the situation, and thereafter I got up every 90 minutes to have a look around, which included visually scanning the horizon. Because I was relying almost totally on my Raymarine and laptop chart plotters I kept checking the numbers over and over again. The chart plotters had the same positions for the islands as the paper chart. The chart plotters agreed with each other on my position. This constant checking was irrational, but I was determined to avoid the ending of this voyage with me perched on top of a god forsaken rock awaiting rescue. Just in case, I made sure that my emergency ditch bag was ready for a quick grab on the way out. At about 5 AM we were abeam of Roca Partida and I knew that it would take a 90 degree wind shift to steer me to it, so I went to sleep with no alarm set.

Earlier in the night I had decided to use my radar show me any lumps of land - particularly any unexpectedly lumps ahead of me! Radar would be just another load on my batteries so I had a look at the voltage of the house bank and was surprised to see it down to 12.1 V. It had been at 12.3 V that afternoon and I had been planning to do a battery charging engine run the following day. I wanted to use the radar and did not want power hassles to distract me from the task ahead, so I ran the engine of 1 hour, steering a more westerly to put my track further west when I resumed sailing. This brought up the voltage to 12.4 V and I resumed the sailing. Every hour or so I would start the radar looking for anything. Even at less than 15 miles away I never did see Roca Partida on the radar, no matter how much I fiddled with the gain. I don't blame the radar. I'm no expert but it seems to me that a lot depends on the height of the island above the sea (it is low) and the incidence at which the radar pulses strike its surface.

It was a very good night for sailing. We had a moon for most of the night, the sea was relatively calm, and the wind held up just enough for me to keep the headsail up without too much flogging. We must have averaged 3.5 kt throughout the night. I woke up at 8.30 this morning to find that the wind had strengthened to over 10 kt so I rolled out the full headsail and altered course port 10 degrees to about 200 T. We were then making 4.5 kt in a wonderfully calm sea. My next arc of islands would be Dulcie, Easter, and Sala y Gomez islands 2500 miles to the south.

Stephen at "mission headquarters" in Fremantle has confirmed that my daily position reports are appearing on the Pangolin site. Anyone who wants a quick view of my progress can visit the site, using the instructions on the first page of this blog. (If my bookmark is correct you need to visit http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=VNW5980 with an internet browser.) You will note that instead of running due south along the 110 degree meridian I've been drifting toward the west, currently at 112.5 degrees west. This is the track that the wind has given to me. The wind is out of the N-NW and I cannot run dead downwind, but rather must keep the wind 30-40 degrees off the starboard quarter. I am not too concerned about this westerly component because there will be ample opportunity to slant back toward the east when the wind is right.

I was sitting in the cockpit late in the morning enjoying the scene when I saw a big ball of line pass 20 ft from the port side. It looked like that poly type of line that floats and it looked to be 1/4" - 3/8" in diameter. This reminded me of that very large ball of a variety of lines that I had managed to free from the skeg by using the boathook. It's possible that today's light line may have been pushed aside by the bow of the boat. On the other hand, had the engine been running the propeller could have well sucked it in. I know one boat in our club at Fremantle that had its propellers shaft bent on one occasion and the engine loosened from its mounts on a second fouling of the propeller by fishing line. (This was a special boat. The had the "four knot rule" by which they started the engine when the sailing boat speed dropped below 4 knots, which meant a lot of motoring.)

At noon our position was 18N37, 112W34. We had a noon-noon distance of 91 miles and were 290 miles SW of Cabo San Lucas. Bear in mind that the 91 miles was to the SW, not to the S which is my destination. You take what you can get.

At 1.45 PM I started the engine for an hour. I ran it at 1500 rpm in forward gear (to put a load on it) and 65-69 amps were going into the battery banks. The charge from the alternator is initially directed solely to the starter bank. However, a voltage sensitive relay will allow charging to the house bank when it detects that the starter bank has reached 13.7 V. It will take me a few days to get the feel of how much running time will be required to keep the house battery bank at a healthy voltage.

We went into the evening with the boat quietly ambling along at 3.5 kt, pulled along by the partially rolled out headsail and steered by reliable Jeff, the Monitor wind steering unit.

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