Day 102 - Rough Night and Monitor Repair

t was a tough night. At 4 AM I got up and saw the wind speed firmly in the 30's, touching 40 at times. Fortunately we did not have waves slamming us from the side as previously.

Just before dawn the boat tacked very subtly. I figured that the wind must have dropped, changing the dynamics and the boat had crossed the wind because her wheel was lashed to weather. No harm done. About 5 minutes later wham! and she was firmly back on her original starboard tack. I suited up and went into the cockpit to find the boat firmly hove to, sheet and traveler tight, and all well. Strange. Must have been a sudden wind gust from the side. The sky was crystal clear. I looked at the compass and saw the boat was pointing to 200T and the wind was from 240T, the abrupt change predicted by the grib file and a sure sign that another front had passed through. Another sign was one that I missed until making the previous day's noon report: in 24 hours the barometer had plunged from 1017 Hpa to 996 Hpa.

When the wind speed climbed into the 30's the drift of the boat had increased. I went to sleep unhappy in the knowledge that we were drifting south at the rate of 2 knots and there was nothing that I could do about it. Changing tacks would not have helped because the boat's motion was not forward but rather downwind. I hoped that the expected wind shift would arrest this southern movement and so it happened. After the wind shift to the SW the boat was drifting ENE and we had made a loop in the track. Unfortunately we had crossed back to the east side of longitude 50W, a hard-won milestone of the previous day.

But there was more bad news. The night's grib file predicted that after a few hours of weakening wind, reaching down to 10 knots, there would be another cycle of strong NW winds lasting 18 hours, followed by the familiar backing and weakening of the wind. I figured that I'd probably manage to get in a few hours of sailing toward the NW to make up for the ground that we had lost during the night and maybe a bit more, but try as I might I couldn't see how I would be able to do any sailing during the second blow. It would be out of the NW at 28 knots and probably higher because the grib files have been underestimating the winds lately. The seas would once again be huge and I would not be able to sail into it or across it and of course running before it would take me to the SE. So it was going to be another lost day with a lot of pounding of the boat. I seemed to be in a bad zone and I somehow had to inch my way to the north. At this point despair was my biggest enemy and patience my best ally. Fortunately I had actually experienced several reasonable days of sailing since turning toward Argentina, so I knew that I'd be able to ratchet my way north eventually. But it would take time and the boat would be subjected to a longer period of stress (not to mention the skipper). Fortunately I had plenty of supplies, though I would be arriving at the destination with less fuel that I had anticipated.

At 8 AM I faced the task of getting the boat moving. We had lost 10 miles to the ESE while hove to. The wind was in the low 20's out of the SW and the sea was still rough. Under more normal circumstances where there is a gap of days and maybe even weeks between gales I would have waited a few hours until conditions settled down, but I had no such luxury now. I used the engine to tack the boat because I wanted to use all of the help that I could get. I then let off the starboard running backstay and brought the port one on hard to support the mast. After a quick trip to the foredeck to free a sheet from a bollard I rolled out a small amount headsail, set the course, then engaged Jeff to do the steering. My effort was well rewarded. At the nav station I had the pleasure of watching the boat move at over 4 knot to the NW, almost exactly in the direction of Mar del Plata. The boat was moving much smoother through the water that I would have expected, probably because once more we were climbing over the swell head on. I was hoping to hold this tack for 8 or 9 hours while the wind veered, weakened, then strengthened from the NW leaving us on a track to the NE. Soon after that I would tack to the strong side of the boat and heave to again.

The sail throughout the morning went well. The lull that had been predicted didn't happen and the wind simply began to veer and strengthen. My plan was to keep the boat moving as long as possible. If I got lucky and the winds turned out to be 2 or 3 knots lighter than predicted and there were none of those vicious gusts of the night before I might even sail throughout the entire event.

At about 1 PM local time the boat tacked itself. I figured that the prop walk from the running engine had caused the tack and ent topside to sort it out. The problem was a bit more complicated: one of the Monitor control lines had broken. I shut down the engine and hove to with the headsail backwinded as it was. Soon I had my hands on a nice section of rope, a bit thicker than the existing lines, but in very good condition and professionally cut at one end. The thicker rope passed through the blocks OK so I went over the stern rail to fit it. But the divas had decided to throw a curve ball at me and when I put my foot on the lower port strut it gave at one end. This was serious because that frame must be drum tight in order to deal with the stresses from the moving parts. I managed to thread the new line through without much problem. It was the same deal as before: bending over trying to tease out the rope from the bottom of the vertical Monitor tube and the pitching stern putting my arms in the water to my elbows.

The lower brace runs horizontally from the stern of the boat to meet the aft vertical tube section of the Monitor frame. The brace is flattened at the end with a hole for a bolt to be threaded upward into the vertical tube. Fortunately the frame had not broken and all that had happened was that the bolt had come loose even though it had been wired on. And fortunately I had purchase the repair kit with the Monitor. It was an optional item that from memory took most of the $500 incentive discount given by the company, but at this point it was definitely money well spent. I got out the repair kit and the bag with all of the nuts and bolts and washers had a packing list that included two 5/16" bolts with holes through the head. That's what I wanted. I saw a possible problem in lining up the brace with the vertical section so that I could blindly thread the bolt. Using a small Phillips screw driver I found that fortunately the two pieces were already lined up very well and there was enough movement in the brace to get the exact lineup without requiring too much force. I managed to get the bolt stared then used the 11 mm wrench to bring it home tight. Then I got the mousing wire in one hand and managed top bend over with my head almost in the water so that I could look up and see the hole on the bolt head. I finished wiring up the bolt and soon Jeff was back on the job again. The repair had taken about an hour. Once again I counted my blessings. The failure had happened in broad daylight, clear weather, and just as the wind was starting to get stronger. And if the rope had not broken I would not have known about the missing bolt.

At noon our position was 45S16, 049W57, giving us a n-n distance of 19 miles in the direction NNE (026T). After the battering of the night before and loss of 10 miles while hove to I was actually happy with that result. At the time of the noon report (3PM local time, 1800 GMT/UTC) we were still sailing, doing over 4 knots into a 23 or 24 knot wind. Our COG was 045T but I didn't care because we were moving to the north, and I very much wanted to get north of 40S in the hopes of finding better conditions.

At 9PM we were still hanging in there sailing to 030T. The wind was close to 30 knots but neither it nor the sea were as vicious and they had been last night. Although I had reduced the headsail to maybe 20 sq ft we were still going against the wind at 4.2 knots. We were only 6 miles from crossing lat 45S and I was hoping that at dawn we had made a good start to 44S.

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