At 0500 I woke up and saw that we had about 16 knots of wind. The wind strengthened even as I worked in the dark to get the boat moving. At 6 AM things had settled down and we were moving NE at 3.5 knots slightly beating against a 23 knot wind and rising sea.
The new wind was good but we must have lost 8 hours of sailing in this latest of what was beginning to appear to be a cycle of regular and frequent lulls of the wind.
And the trysail once again showed its advantage. To get the boat moving again all I had to do was to ease its weather sheet because it had been up during the becalming helping to steady the boat. With the wind in the low 20's it was now delivering all of the power that I dare put onto the rigging. Had it been the mainsail I would have had to first get some way with the headsail then gone on deck to untie it from the boom and free its halyard, and after that raise the sail with one hand while steering the boat into the wind with the other, all in the pitch black darkness. Call me a lazy sailor, but a lot of it has to do with risk minimization. The less activity on that deck the better, particularly in darkness or bad weather.
Within the hour the wind strengthened and began to gust up to 33 knots, forcing me to return to the cockpit and reduce headsail fast. Doing this is in a high wind must be done very carefully because if either the sheet or the furler line goes free the strain on the rigging and sail will be enormous. I begin the cycle by easing about a foot of sheet, just enough to make the sail start fretting a little. Then I use the winch to turn the headsail roller. I don't like using a winch on the roller, but in heavy wind I have no choice. I coordinate the cranks with lulls in the wind to ease the strain. I repeat this cycle until I'm satisfied with the amount sail still out.
The wind got even stronger, with one gust hitting 38 knots. This forced me to reduce the headsail to maybe 30 square feet. This reduced our speed to 2.2 knots. It all showed the challenge of these waters: not enough wind or much more than you can use. And back to the virtues of the trysail, I would have been very unhappy to see a 38 knot gust slam into the double reefed mainsail and I probably would have hove to immediately. The problem is that many of these events are unexpected and develop fast. They are not predicted by the grib files which are only snapshots at every 3 hours of what the computer model thinks will be happening. Even if the model is spot on, the grib file says nothing about the time between the snapshots. At least this wind was fair and we were headed NNE.
I woke up at 9 AM to find us headed north. Soon I had the boat moving more comfortably downwind, 30 degrees off the wind. I rolled out a bit of headsail which gave us a speed of 3.5 knots. There was scope for increasing sail later. For all my grumblings about the wind, at least they are predominately from the west. Back to the trysail issue, I'd be very leery of running downwind with the mainsail in this wind because I would expect the boat to constantly round up and overpower Jeff. And to risk a gybe would be unthinkable, meaning that I'd have to go on that deck and set up a preventer.
When I get back to Fremantle I'll get the spare mainsail out of the garage and put it up. Steve Hartley of Tasker Sails pronounced it a very good sail but couldn't guarantee that it would get me around the world, so I said 'Fine, you'd better make me a new one.' Out of that came the fancy stack pack with its lazy jacks and only two sets of reefing points in the sail. I'm pretty sure that I'm through with stack packs because of the problems that the lazy jacks present when raising the mainsail and the way in which they obscure the boom. The spare mainsail has the more traditional 3 reefing points and slides along the track of the boom, not loose footed as the stack pack version must be. I want a traditional clean system with no obscuring sail cover or lazy jacks bullshit. I'm quit happy to manually tie the dropped sail around the mast and put a traditional sail cover on it. I'll have the current mainsail refurbished and speak with Steve about putting slides along the foot and maybe even a third set of reefing point if it is practical.
I got a scare from the wind instrument: it stopped sending wind speed data to the chart plotter although it continued to send wind direction data. I figured that something had gone wrong with the rotating cups at the top of the mast but happily the wind speed data began to display again 10 minutes later. Very strange.
I visited the head to pump out my 2 liter ration of water for the day. The pump was almost back to normal in its ease of use. Somehow that olive oil with which I had liberally coated the stem must have worked its way through the seal and tube overnight. In future I'll make sure that I work both the head and the galley manual pumps regularly, giving them the olive oil treatment. Yes, I got by with 2 liters of water yesterday (and about 100 ml of pineapple juice left in the container) and had enough surplus for a second cup of coffee this morning. I cooked the spaghetti in a smaller pot and judged the amount of water beautifully, ending up with well cooked spaghetti and no surplus water in the pot. The only loss of water was as steam during the cooking process. Tonight it will be rice which is easier to judge.
Today has been the most temperate and pleasant day since before we descended below latitude 50S more than 40 days ago. The sun was shining brightly, the breeze was mild and relatively warm, and the cabin temperature was 66F.
At noon our position was 47S49, 48W40, giving us a n-n distance of only 40 miles in the direction 033T.
After the noon report I decided to take advantage of the warm conditions to have my first wash and change of clothes since Day 63, 29 December, when I put the Icebreaker wool tights on. I got out a fresh towel and under clothes that still had the pleasant scent that the Marina de La Paz laundry leaves on the clothes. I found a nice wool undergarment sweater that I had purchased in Opua, NZ. From another bag I dug out a pair of fresh thick alpine socks and track suit bottoms. The cockpit bath went better than I had expected. I pampered myself by using a top quality shampoo (Elvive by L'Oreal of Paris) that Brenda must have left on the boat. After drying off and getting dressed I felt great. While putting the dirty clothes into the laundry bag I thought of the magnificent job the Icebreakers had done in supporting me around the Horn. After they've been laundered I will carefully pack them in a plastic bag to await the next circumnavigation. (Yea, right!) Soon after I gave myself the second beard trim of the voyage.
Looking back, I must say that I was remarkably successful in keeping the clothes that I was wearing dry during the doubling of the Horn. I was always very meticulous about suiting up properly before going topside because I knew that one good splash of salt water would require a complete change of clothes. I was similarly successful with the bedding, particularly the blankets. No matter how tough the conditions were I always had a warm and dry place to sleep.
I've been seeing lots of birds in the last few days - hundreds. Yesterday I had a large group of small birds that seemed to be following the boat. It was a joy to see them in action: fast, agile, and able to alight on the water and take off with effortless east. With the help of Brenda's book on sea birds I think that I am correct in identifying them as diving petrels, such as the "Common Diving Petrel" and the "Magellan Diving" petrel. This afternoon they are back, accompanied by larger all-brown birds with white beaks that I would identify as "White Chinned" petrels. Such zest and carefree joy of living. Watching them would be good therapy for a troubled mind.
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment