Day 64 - Moving Along and Happy New Year to Oz

We had a reasonable night. The 9 PM grib file indicated that the wind was as high as it was going to get so I left out the modest amount of headsail for the night. The boat sailed itself all night at over 4 knots and I expected a good n-n number. Movement had been predominantly to the east but I expected to have to tack at midday putting us on a more southerly heading for a while. We were at 47.5S degrees of latitude and I wanted to work our way to 50S to join the main stream of the strong current. The rolling had subsided but was still a problem and my project for the day was to stop the racket of sliding pots, pans, dishes, glasses, cutlery, jars, etc coming from the galley. During spasms of heavy rolling some of this movement was quite violent and threatening a breakage. I would do it by raiding my store of clothes using them to stuff the cupboards up so that nothing moved. (Anyone planning a passage like this would be advised to invest the time and effort to deal with this problem before departure. It cannot be completely eliminated but can be greatly reduced by good design of storage, particularly in the galley. Putting items in plastic baskets and simply cramming the pots and pans into a cupboard hoping for the best isn't good enough.)

For the last few days I had been tempting fate by engaging in some detailed planning of the actual rounding of the Horn. On the chart I saw a tiny dot by looking at the C-Map chart I saw that it was Isla Diego Ramirez at approximately 56S31, 68W43, 35 miles out to sea and smack in the middle of the approach to the Horn. (It has a light).

My preference is to sail close enough to see (and video) the Horn and Tierra del Fuego. This would involve traversing relatively shallow waters and exposing myself to rogue waves. (It was there where Dieter's boat got hit by one, severely knocking it down and fracturing its deck, forcing him to turn around.) I would do this only if I happened to arrive at a time when conditions and prospects look good. Assuming that I did this, I would then pass by the Horn and make for the channel "Estrecho de le Maire", between the mainland and Isla de los Estados (which I think is also known as "Staten Island"). From there I would turn north to pass west of the Falklands. Rightly or wrongly I see advantages to passing west of the Falklands. First it gets me into relatively sheltered waters more quickly, with the S.A. land mass and Isla de Los Estados giving me some protection from the prevailing west winds, the swell, and rogue waves. I am aware of several boats that have been hit hard near the Falklands after having safely rounded the Horn, including "Pink Lady" with young Jessica Watson on board, and it seems to me that passing to the east of the Falklands leaves the boat more exposed to these dangers. Another reason, probably not quite so important in this age of global warming, is the advice by Ocean Passages to pass either west of the Falklands or as close on the east as possible to avoid ice, even in summer. With this route the question of sleep is an issue. The distance between the beginning of the shallows and the far end of the Estrecho de le Maire is about 200 miles. However, on either side of the Horn there are sections where I would be at least 25 miles from land and I should be able to get an hour or two of sleep (keeping in mind the strong current!)

The safer and recommended way is to remain in deep water and stand off 80 miles south of the Horn. (Dieter took this route on his second rounding with no problem.) In that case I would pass to the east of Isla de los Estados and probably east of the Falklands too.

I visited the cockpit at 9AM to start the engine for its daily 1 hour run and to look around. It was a cold, grey, drizzly and misty day. I looked ahead and everything seemed to be in order. Down blow I used the heater to dry and warm my socks and my feet before putting on the sea boots for the day. Then it was the turn of my slippers and beanie, with my wet weather jacket draped over the end of the table to get some of the benefit.

I finally remembered to turn on the carbon monoxide detector, which will remain on until Cape Town.

After going back out to shut down the engine I visited the foredeck for a look around and on close inspection found that the inner forestay was kaput. Most of its remaining wires had broken and it was hanging on by only 5 or 6 wires. I removed the toggle then secured it by passing it down through the two pole rings at the front of the mast, then back up and lashing the two sections of wire together as sort of a cord bulldog clamp. I would have to put up with the clanking until I got a chance to go up the mast and release the top end. This was not the day for that because between everything being wet with the drizzle and the periodic bouts of heavy rolling it was simply too risky to go up the mast. (Thank goodness I had had a guard made for the radar dome.) I would now have to vigilant with the mast. At the first sign of mast pumping (which I haven't noticed on this boat) I would have to shorten sail. However, I was confident that we would be OK because I recalled that Arnold and I sailed much of the passage from Tahiti to Hilo without an inner forestay. (That year-old stay corroded at the base I think because the support wire under the deck was in contact with the electric windlass motor.) Also, the running backstays would give some support.

When I got back into the cabin I saw that the wind had backed and eased as the grib file had predicted. I was expecting the wind to keep backing with me gybing the boat.

At noon our position was 47S31, 102W21, giving us a n-n distance of 100 miles in the direction 100T. We were 1400 miles from the Horn.

At 12.30 I gybed the boat which put us on a nice heading of 110T. The operation was made easier by the fact that there was no longer an inner forestay to get in the way, which reminded me that when I had purchased the boat it didn't have an inner forestay. It's owners had removed it to make tacking easier. I expected the wind to keep backing, which would give me good control over the course. Our speed was 3.7 kt but I'd wait to see where the wind settled before deciding on whether or not to roll out more sail. The weather was now off our starboard quarter and I had make sure that the shower curtain was always in place and the computer protected. The grib files, incidentally, had been extremely accurate in this part of the world.

At mid afternoon I climbed up the mast with a bag of tools to see if I could free the damaged stay, but the roll was too much. However I went back up with a piece of cord and lashed the stay half way up to a mast step. That eliminated the majority of gyrations of the wire.

I let myself get caught by the wind. I dozed off running downwind before a 15 kt breeze with a sizable amount of headsail. A change woke me up and I saw that we were beam to a wind in the high 20's. Half asleep I got into a frantic effort to roll in some sail and there was way too much flogging and snapping of the precious headsail. Fortunately there was no apparent damage and I mentally kicked myself for being so careless, because the grib file had told me to expect a stronger wind. We were then running nicely on course 120T at 4.5 knots.

Australia will be waking up to New Years Eve. I'm presently having a drink wishing all of my friends in Oz a happy new year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

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