Day 39 - Night Operations

The alarm woke me at 2 AM for the fax session. I got a very good image and was able to see quite clearly the cause of the rotating wind predicted by the grib file: there was a weak low very near by wedged between two highs and I was getting caught in the clockwise (in the southern hemisphere) rotation of its winds. The boat was headed SE which was a pleasant surprise because the wind was supposed to have backed to the north by then. I went to bed just after 3 AM but couldn't sleep, thinking about the boat's heading. I then felt a subtle change in the motion of the boat and got up to have a look. We were now headed due east at 3.5 knots. I could see no point in sailing due east and besides, before dawn we would probably be sailing to the NE. The half moon had disappeared but the sky was clear and I could see amazingly well by starlight. With the calm sea and light wind I figured that it would be a good time to experiment with the sails and learn something.

I rolled in the headsail and tried running downwind in the 9 kt breeze with the mainsail. It didn't work. It didn't come even close to working. The problem was the constant slamming of the boom as it swung from side to side with the roll of the boat. The preventer wasn't doing much to stop that. The only other option was to use a foresail so I dropped the mainsail. I then raised the boom a bit with the topping life, tied the end of the boom to the cockpit frame, then put in a lot of time tying down the sail neatly along the boom.

Then I tried running downwind with the staysail. It didn't work because we were making only 1.5 kt and Jeff could not steer the boat in the light conditions. I could see no justification in staying up the rest of the night to hand steer a sluggish helm for such little speed so I hove to, back winding the staysail and tying the wheel to weather. We were now pointing west and making .6 kt. This was a time for learning so I decided to heave to on the other tack to see if we could forereach to the east, a better direction. After sorting out a problem with the routing of the port sheet I wore ship and put us on the starboard tack (i.e. wind from starboard). The wind had perked up a knot or two and was now coming from the NNW so I decided to have a go at sailing downwind before heaving to. Somehow Jeff managed to hold course this time, and after 30 minutes we were still headed due south at 2 knots (a current may have been helping me) with an apparent wind of less than 10 knots. I resisted the temptation to roll out the headsail and get more speed. I had learned years earlier that a small foresail is best when running in these light conditions because a higher boat speed will decrease the speed of the apparent wind and cause the sail to collapse regularly. With the staysail we were getting a nice and steady pull.

After listening to the BBC news at 6 AM I went back to bed.

I woke up at 9.30 AM from a deep sleep. Before I opened my eyes I could tell from the motion of the boat that it was still moving downwind. I could hear from the hum of the wind charger that the wind speed had increased slightly. I opened my eyes and through the cabin hatch could see the staysail against the brilliant blue sky drawing nicely and doing its thing. I went to the chart plotter I saw that at that moment we were still tracking due south at an increased speed of 2.7 knots. Jeff had done a magnificent job of steering. All of this was very pleasing. The night's work had not only provided lessons and experience in working the sails at night but had also produced good practical results. Maybe we had not set any speed record but we had managed to move more than one degree to the south since the previous noon. While munching on my toast I thought about the preventer and concluded that to make it effective I would have to change the angle of the line by turning it off a block on the toe rail, forward of the shrouds. Unfortunately the plastic jerry can deck cargo would be in the way ... ah, unless I ran the line outside of the gunwale to the end of the boom. I would have to experiment with that.

There was more to learn. At 11 AM I went out to change from the staysail the headsail. I didn't want to lose boat speed during the change so I decided to do a "peel" - rolling out the headsail while the staysail was up, then dropping the staysail so that it would not blanket the headsail. The headsail was remarkable stable during the rollout, with some collapsing that was not very violent. I let out the full headsail for the first time since I bent it on north of the equator then dropped the staysail. One great thing about hanked sails is that when you let the halyard fly the sail drops like a rock. The headsail filled with still a bit of fretting because its sheet was too lose but I first made haste to the foredeck to tidy up the staysail inside of the rail netting. Back at the cockpit I brought on the headsail sheet and it steadied down nicely. We had gained more than a knot in speed to 3.8-4.1 knots. The headsail did not appear to be under much stress: always filled and pulling steadily.

This was all basic work because I had never worked with a staysail before, and the lessons learned in the previous 12 hours about what to do and how things would behave provided a valuable template for the coming downwind work in the westerlies. ... By the way, Ocean Passages states that I can expect to encounter the Westerlies at about latitude 35S. That means another 10 degrees of southing to go. This could take anything from 7 to 10 days, depending not only on the wind but also on the direction of my movement - tracking SE would attenuate my movement to the south by 30%.

Brenda sent me information on the position of Matt, the other solo sailor in the area doing it tough with equipment problems. On 3 December, 0901 GMT, he was 250 miles SE of Pitcairn Island. That put him approximately 270 miles to my southwest and ahead of me at the time, so it is likely that we will get closer to each other. However, I heard that he's been having trouble with his satellite telephone so I am not certain that he will be able to continue issuing position reports. If we could get updates on each other's positions there would be a chance of fudging our speed and headings to come within sight of each other. It is likely that he has a VHF radio, which would make things easier, but I can't be sure of that.

At noon we were at 25S26, 123W07, giving us a n-n distance of 77 miles in the direction 160T. We had moved 1.2 degrees to the south. I could not complain because it could have been much worse.

In the afternoon I tended to the torn right side of the spray dodger. I had not been able to deal with it because I had been sailing almost exclusively on a port tank with the resultant boat heel making the work difficult and somewhat dangerous. Today everything was right: good weather and gentle wind abaft meaning that the boat was more or less level, though rolling. I began by trimming the jagged pieces of the shattered plastic window. To my surprise the hole had not expanded since the initial damage, though I figured that one good gale would change that. Anyway, I trimmed any loose and jagged material that might catch the wind and cause more tearing. I then lined the open edges of the plastic with electrical tape. Then I looked at a 2" tear in the canvas material. It was very vulnerable and the slightest stress would result in the tear zipping along. My attempt at sewing failed. I could not overlap the material and the edges to be joined were badly frayed. I had no patching material on hand. After an hour of fruitless effort I gave up and dug out the sail repair kit from the V berth storage compartment. I cut lengths of sail repair tape and taped both sides of the torn material. The result wasn't pretty but may prevent lengthening of the tear. I then had a closer look at the sail repair kit. It is a very good one. There is plenty of material for the replacement and repair of webbing using the excellent sewing kit which includes a leather palm, beeswax, strong needles and thread. There are several widths of sail repair tape. I wouldn't risk further damaging a sail by sewing it, but I'll certainly try the sail tape if I am forced to. I still haven't clipped on the sun shade to the damaged window. I haven't needed to because so far the weather has been coming from the port side. However, I expect to be beating into the wind on a starboard tack before long and I will be putting up the sunshade.

At 5 PM we were headed SSW at 4.5 knots with the headsail and the wind still off the starboard quarter. During the hour that I ran the engine we were making 5 knots. According to the grib file I would be running into the centre of the weak low with its associated rain and variable winds before dawn, so I knew that we would not be able to continue this pace.

I was looking forward to a radio communication session with Jim in Fremantle starting at 6.05 AM (12.05 GMT) and was naturally hoping for success.

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