Day 75 - Good Winds

The wind was quite moderate throughout the night and we sailed SSE. At 3 AM the wind backed 20 degrees and strengthened to the mid 20's. We were approaching 6 knots of speed on a beam reach and a reasonably calm sea but as usual I got worried about the headsail and wound it back to reduce our speed to 4.5 knots. Nevertheless the wind prospects were very good for the coming day and I expected to make good progress. There was quite a bit of blue sky showing.

I went through the radio schedule with Jim where we 6 different frequencies at 2 minute intervals. Unfortunately I heard nothing from him. As I mentioned in a message to him, for the last week I'd had poor radio reception of the ABC and NZ radio services. The weather faxes had been legible but not nearly as clear as before. So there could be atmospherics at play.

I woke up at 9 AM to find the sailing going very well. After a bowl of how oatmeal I let out a bit of headsail to keep us in the 4-5 kt range of speed. I tweaked Jeff to take us a little more downwind. The night's weather fax showed us to be in SW winds from a low to the south.

At noon our position was 52S40, 88W55, giving us a n-n distance of 92 miles in the direction 122T. We were 830 miles from the Horn and 500 miles off the coast of Chile.

It was a very good afternoon of sailing. We ran downwind all day with the wind off the starboard quarter. We were able to sail far enough off teh wind to keep both sails filled, and from time to time I would adjust Jeff to keep us pointed toward the Horn. There was a huge following swell. It was a mixed day weather wise, with plenty of bright sun and plenty of scattered showers. At 7 PM I was in the cockpit adjusting Jeff and we got pelted with hail, fortunately the size of peas. This was part of a squall that took the wind speed up from below 20 to over 30 knots in seconds, heeling us over and pushing our speed to well over 6 knots. Incidents like this are a reminder of why I am conservative with the sails. Later while I was out I saw my first rainbow of this cruise off to the NW.

I spent the afternoon sewing and after 4 hours of work completed the second long sewing run. This one was only 8 ft long. I averaged about 6 stitches per inch, which means that over the 19 ft of sewing I made an estimated 1,368 stitches each requiring the forcing of the needle through with the palm and dragging through two threads. Afterwards I tidied up the ends of both the runs and I must say that I was not happy with the state of the part of the sail where I began the sewing. There seem to be loose threads everywhere and the material looks pretty beat up in places. However, I am in no position to do major re stitching. Tomorrow I will stitch an 8-ft run where the UV tape has come loose and then I'll start seeing what I can do with the sail repair tape, which I have never worked with before. It will be the outcome of the repair tape effort which will determine how much confidence I have in the repaired sail. (Keeping the sail in the cabin was a smarter move than I thought. It's presence in the cabin spurred me to get on with the job and finish it so that I can get it out of my space.)

I visited the foredeck to make sure that everything was in order for the night. While I was there I looked at the spare headsail that has carried us so far and I had to admit that it looked pretty good. All the seams and the UV tape looked very good. I was looking at the right side of the sail where no repairs were made. But even the left side looks good, with the sail repair tape neatly in place where the patching was done. It certainly looks a lot better than the sail that I'm working on now. The sail is probably stronger than I think but I will keep fussing over it because the price if it fails could be high. On the way back I checked on Jeff's control lines and just as well. One had come loose probably would have led to steering failure during the night.

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