Before nightfall I removed the trysail from the boom and bagged it up. The idea was to save time in the morning when it was time to put up the mainsail.
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With some precise times and locations that I had recorded I used the chart plotter in the morning to establish that the boat had drifted 3.79 miles in the direction 107T over the period of 13 hours. The direction was good, toward the Horn, but the rate of drift was a disappointing 0.29 knots.
If the grib file was to be believed, I would get head winds (from the east) in several hours, and this wind would slowly back to the NE, N, NW over the subsequent 24 hours. This meant that I could expect to raise a sail on the mast for the first time in days. I preferred raising the storm trysail but the grib file indicated that we would pass through rain and I decided to give myself the opportunity of collecting rain water by raising the mainsail to one reef. Hours after the rain I would probably have to put in the second reef, which should be sufficient in winds not expected to top 26 knots. However, grib files had gotten it wrong before and if the wind approached 30 kts I was prepared to drop the mainsail altogether and run with jib only.
What not raising the trysail would rob me of was the opportunity of attempting to heave to properly if the wind exceeded 30 knots. I remembered that we had heaved to very well using the staysail during a gale off the Oregon coast, but it was working with the double reefed mainsail. The other day when the staysail was paired with the much smaller trysail the results had been dismal, with the boat riding almost beam to the wind. I was hoping that the trysail alone would be sufficient for heaving to when the need arrived.
It would have been good to have taken the opportunity of doing some chores during the becalming, but there was still too much rolling going on for going up the mast to drop that damaged forestay, and it was too damp to attempt a refueling operation.
At 7.30 AM the wind came, a bit earlier than I had expected but I was not complaining. At 8 AM I went on deck and after freeing up the mainsail, halyard, and boom I started the engine to help me point the boat into the wind while I raised the mainsail. By using the wheel behind me to keep the boat into the wind I raised the sail to its first reef with surprising ease. I then set up Jeff to do the steering, rolled out a bit of headsail, and watched the boat settle down on a course of 180T. We were hard to the wind on a port tack but I expected the boat to alter heading to port and hence toward the Horn as the wind backed. Our speed wasn't great, at less than 4 kt even with engine support, but the wind wasn't yet very strong. It was a start. I would run the engine for 1.5 hours to charge up the batteries a bit extra. At the prime space in front of the heater I placed all of the damp ropes that had restrained the mainsail and boom.
Three hours later and the wind was still coming from the direction of Cape Horn, but it had strengthened to over 15 knots and the seas were building up. I wasn't interested in beating the boat hard to weather in order to go south a little bit faster so I shortened sail to the second reef and rolled in some headsail. Our speed went down from 4 kt to 3 kt but the boat was riding better. I was anxiously looking for the predicted wind shift because up to now we had not been closing the distance to the Horn.
At noon our position was 50S52, 097W36, giving us a n-n distance of 21 miles in the direction 145. Very discouraging, but I had no other choice than to persevere.
At 2 PM the wind still had not backed. My track since the start of sailing in the morning was 185T against a persistent SE wind that I considered unusual at this latitude. I figured that I would not be much worse off by tacking so I wore ship and put us on a starboard track. We were now on course 070, representing a terrible 115 degree spread. Not that it mattered a lot. The boat was moving very comfortable but making only 2 knots. Nevertheless the change cheered me up a bit and besides, I didn't want to go further south at this point.
At 4 PM I was feeling pretty low. I had experienced a horrible night running to the south before a gale only to fall into two wasted days of either becalming or highly unusual winds right on the nose from the SE. I called a Time Out and hove to, sort of. I couldn't see the point in pounding 60 degrees off my destination and I didn't like the way the headsail would luff every few minutes, no matter how reasonably far I went off the wind. So I rolled in the headsail, left the double reefed mainsail up, and left Jeff engaged to see what would happen. The boat got into a sort of crawling heave to situation, still creeping in the same NE direction but at only 1.3 knots. The boat was 60 degrees off the wind, quiet, steady, with a happy mainsail.
I would try go put aside my frustration and have a quiet and restful night to be ready for the next sailing opportunity.
Grrrrr!
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2 comments:
Take care. A worry with the wind coming from The Horn...
Always thinking of you Robert -- stay safe, take your time.
Nigel and Patrick
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