Day 77 - Sliding Hatch Fixed And 600 To Go

The expected wind change started at about 9 PM. The wind began to veer to the NW, Pachuca's heading veered toward the south, and it was time to gybe, particularly because the light was fading. The wind must have kept veering during the gybe because when the boat settled down on her new course we were headed to 110T, exactly where I wanted to go. With the weather on the port side the companionway was now getting protection from the good side of the spray dodger and the nav station was now sheltered from any spray that might enter the cabin. In anticipation of the 30 knot winds I rolled the headsail right in to 50 or 60 sq ft and between it and the trysail we were still making 4 knots. I like to wind the headsail in well ahead of time. Waiting until being forced to by the wind is hard on the sail, hard on the hands, and hard on the nerves. The problem is that the enormous pressure of the wind on the sail makes it impossible to wind it in without loosening the sheet at the risk of the sail flogging violently. With only 50 sq ft of sail out I am confident of being able to wind it in without much trouble even if I wake up with the wind at 38 or 40 knots.

I finally got smart with the cabin Dorade vents. For weeks I've been putting up with an annoying drip from the starboard Dorade. Today I noticed that the intakes were pointed aft from when we were doing a lot of beating to weather. But here and now it is mostly downwind running with the weather coming from aft. I spun the intakes to point forward. Duh!

I woke up at 2 AM expecting the boat to be tracking close to S but I was pleasantly surprised to see our course of 125, only 10 degrees from the ideal. The trysail was carrying most of the load because just before retiring I had reduced the headsail to the size of a large beach towel, and the effect was superb with the boat moving remarkably comfortably at 5 knots in a wind in the low 30's as predicted. The storm trysail had become the star performer in these waters, a sail that I had not used in a live situation before departing La Paz. In 3 hours the wind would begin to back from the NNW to the W so I saw no need to suit up and go into the howling wind and rain to tweak Jeff's course. I had expected to be up much of the night tending to the boat but it looked like luck was with me on this night.

The 2.30 AM weather fax confirmed what I had figured out from the grib file. A low of 983 hPa that I had seen on the previous night's weather fax was moving to the east on a path just south of us. Soon its center would be directly south and we would get the west winds of its northern quadrant. There was nothing to be done other than returning to my warm bunk until the 4.30 AM radio session with Jim in Fremantle. It's just as well that I had to get up then because the wind had shifted and I made a 30 degree adjustment to our course. The wind kept backing and not long afterwards I gybed the boat, putting us back on a port tack.

During the engine run I cleaned out the refrigerator, throwing out the last 2 packets of turkey sandwich meat that I had recently discovered in the freezer compartment. The only things remaining in the refrigerator are butter, yeast, cheese, and sprouts when I've made a batch. The refrigerator is of course switched off.

Then I started to think about a problem that had become a crisis in the last 24 hours. It was the sliding hatch, which had been giving me trouble for weeks, becoming harder and harder to slide. For weeks I had been sailing with a gap of several inches in the closed hatch so that I could use both hands to slide the it open with great difficulty. Last night the slide was so stiff that I had to leave an 18" wide open gap and throughout the night the light rain came into the cabin, getting the companionway landing and galley wet. This morning the only way I could open it was to stick my torso out through the front of the hatch then use my back to force the it open. This situation was untenable. If I couldn't slide that hatch I'd have big problems. My initial diagnosis had been that the problem was inside the "garage" or "turtle" which would have to be taken apart when I got into port. However, I had noticed another possibility. Imagine standing in the cockpit watching the hatch slide back and forth. It slides under a fiberglass facing designed to keep the water out of the cabin. The right side of that facing looked like it was making contact with the top of the hatch, particularly toward the end of the travel of the hatch. I couldn't be sure because the gelcoat on the hatch was not scuffed up in that area. This morning I revisited the area and decided that it was worth a try to make a visible gap all the way across the top of the hatch. But how, without doing too much damaged to the system? I got a brand new hacksaw blade, slid it into the gap in the middle of the hatch and with the blade flat on the hatch I started sawing my way over to the corner. It worked. I managed to neatly create a visible gap all the way across and found that it had freed up the hatch. The last 2 inches of travel were still stiff and on inspection I could see that the left corner was binding, so I gave that side the same hacksaw blade treatment. The result is that I can now use the hatch properly. Even as I write this the hatch is in the fully closed position for the first time in weeks. The stainless steel fitting that I recently put on the underside of the hatch has been very useful. To slide the hatch back from the inside I put a loop of rope around it which creates a nice handle. Before, there was nothing to grasp for sliding the hatch back and I had to bang it while using the friction of my hand to force it back. I do not know why after these years of sailing the boat this problem has just developed. I have difficulty simply blaming the cold and damp because this boat went through similar conditions on the passage to New Zealand. ... Come to think of it, Jak and I did take that section apart when we were searching for leaks in La Paz. (By the way, that Dorade vent did not leak last night.)

At 9 AM we were sailing nicely downwind with trysail and a bit of jib on course 115T at about 4.5 knots. The boat was going through periodic bouts of rolling from the residual swell but the wind had died down to less than 20 knots and I was anticipating a relatively comfortable sail for the rest of the day.

At noon our position was 54S05, 083W47, giving us a n-n distance of 98 miles in the direction 115T. According to the paper chart we were 600 miles from the Horn (which surprised me but I double checked the plot and the distance). The electronic charts gave the distances as 574 and 569. I had fared better than expected in the winds of the night.

I had a bad afternoon with that ailing headsail. The sail tape effort was a failure primarily because the tape was not sticking well enough - not even to itself. I went to great effort to do the taping over the flat surface of the table and firmly bed down the tape with no wrinkles using my hand and the back of a tablespoon. After doing one of the sewing runs I realized that I was wasting my time and gave up. I don't know what the problem was. Maybe the sail is too damp. Maybe the surface should be prepared with a solvent like acetone. Maybe the tape is bad. I don't have enough information on the matter. The second failure was in the attempt to neatly fold the sail. I tried different approaches for over an hour and couldn't do it. The sail was simply too large and stiff for folding in the cabin. I then spent a lot of time tying the sail into a sausage-like bundle so that it would fit through the passage way to the forecastle. That turned out to be a shambles and I wound up pulling and pushing the sail any way I could. One I got it into the forecastle I put my back to the bulkhead and used my legs to compact the sail at the front end of the area. I've done the best I can for that sail and I hope that I don't have to touch it again until I load it in the sail maker's van in Cape Town. However, I did get one small reward for my efforts - I've got the cabin all to myself again.

While I was in the forecastle pulling in the sail the Raymarine chart plotter began to alarm. I was sure it was warning me of an approaching ship but instead it was to advise me that it had lost compass heading. It wasn't displaying wind information. The autopilot control at the binnacle was also alarming and its message was "no Seatalk". Sound familiar? Tomorrow I'll go into the under cockpit area and properly service the connections that I think are the problem. Instead of just reseating the wires I'll pull them out give them a light sanding, then treat the connection with terminal cleaner. Let's hope that does the trick.

During the afternoon the boat settled into "ambling" mode. Light winds were expected until the morning and the boat was meandering along at about 3.5 knots. I decided to leave the trysail up and rolled in much of the headsail so that it would not thrash as hard when a heavy roll caused both sails to flog.

At 8 PM little had changed. We were were moving more to the south than I would have liked but there was little that I could do about it given the wind direction.

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