Day 89 - Moving well to the east

I retired for the night with a small amount of headsail in a 10 knot breeze and woke up several hours in a 31-32 knot wind. I saw on the plotters that the wind had backed and we were now headed west of North. It was drizzling outside. The grib file predicted that the new wind direction would persist for many hours so it was worthwhile to gybe because we needed to move to the east. I took my time getting suited up hoping that the wind would settle down, but it didn't so topside I went. It's amazing how quickly the sea can be whipped up into a frenzy. I rolled in the headsail, tightened the trysail sheets, then tried to use the Monitor wind steering to turn the boat but it wasn't even coming close to budging the boat from its beam reach; so I had to revert to my usual practice of disengaging Jeff and turning the boat manually. Even with the wheel hard over it took about a minute to respond.

While I was tidying up the lines I saw a light on the horizon and figured that it was probably a fishing boat out of the Falklands. However, the chart plotter reported it as another passenger ship, the Artania, also bound for Ushuaia. She was headed my way and would be passing too close for comfort so I hailed her on VHF 16. I told the man that I was a small sail boat about 5 miles ahead of him and he responded that the distance was actually 4.4 miles. I explained that I was making only about 3 knots and could I leave it up to him to avoid me. He told me not to worry. She passed less that one half mile off the port beam, all nicely lit up. I noticed afterward that her heading had changed from 221T to 218T.

The wind did settle down to about 20 knots so I rolled out a bit of headsail. We were now making 3.5 knots to the ENE. I was very happy with this course and the prospects of holding it for most of the day because we needed to move 4 degrees to the east in order to pass on the east side of the Falklands.

For the second consecutive day I tried to get a weather fax out of Rio and got no signal. Their schedule must have changed since Aug 2010. Just for the heck of it I tried CBV in Chile and got a beautiful signal. I revisited their coverage data and realized that contrary to my earlier impression, all of their weather faxes cover the waters on both sides of South America down to almost the pole. I take back all what I wrote earlier about their coverage. I think that I took 80S to be toward the equator rather than the pole. The coverage of their weather faxes is from 10S-80S and 030W-130W. I had been missing out on a valuable resource but would now start using their service until I crossed 030W. I would also start trying Rio at random times.

I spent an hour teasing out long lengths of heavy cord from the lazy jacks that I had brought down many weeks earlier. In La Paz I had tried to do the right thing by replacing the cords running from the mast steps to the shrouds designed to present a barrier to halyards that might want to wrap around the steps. Unfortunately the cord that I used was too light and much of it broke in the gales. I would have been better off leaving the old cord up. Anyway, the only heavy cord that I had on board was what I recovered during that hour. The hard part would be going up the mast and replacing all of the cord from the top of the mast down to the boom. Obviously I would choose the time carefully. This was a very important task because it would be a dangerous problem were the main halyard to wrap around a step while trying to reduce sail in rough weather.

At noon our position was 53S20, 060W24, giving us a n-n distance of 63 miles in the direction 068T. The distance was not great due to the weak winds but at least it was in the right direction. We were making about 5 knots in front of a fair wind of 22 knots and the prospects were for continuing moderately strong winds (low 20's) for the next 24 hours. Hopefully in 24 hours we would be far enough east for the real objective: to turn northward and make haste for lat 50S. Matt had correctly stated that doubling the Horn meant passing from 50S on one side to 50S on the other, not 55S as I had stated earlier. But that wasn't so important to me. In my mind the lat 40's represented milder conditions and more reliable westerly winds. I wanted to get away from the clutches of any monster low that might arise from the pole. I never would have thought that I would ever consider the Roaring Forties a refuge from rough weather.

During the engine run I keyed into the HF radio the frequency that Brenda and Stephen had sent me for Falklands weather reports. (530.0 KHz). I expected to hear a government station silent most of the time except when issuing official bulletins. Instead I got the Falklands pop station which presents a mixture of music, interviews, local and overseas news, weather, etc. I heard a fascinating account of the history of the Argentina-UK dispute over the Falklands and in the news I learned that a deep water oil drilling rig has just arrived. From the weather report I learned that there is a big high to the west of Chile that is causing the SW air flow over the Falklands. The overseas news was centered around England with some other international items. The music seems to cover the entire spectrum - but then it would, wouldn't it, given that it's the only station in town. I'm going to enjoy listening to this station as I pass by, and I expect to learn a lot about the Falklands culture.

I downloaded two weather faxes from Chile. According to the second one, the "Ice Report", there is no ice anywhere near my position.

An hour after sunset I reduced sail for the night and we were still headed east at 3.5 knots before an 18 knot wind. We had begun the passage across the meridians of East Falkland Island.

An hour after that I stuck my head out of the companionway to look around and saw the comet to the northwest, bright and spectacular as before.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com