Shortly before last light I dropped the mainsail and rolled in the headsail. The wind had dropped to below 5 knots, the sails were fretting, and the latest grib file didn't give me much hope for the immediate future. After a meal and a movie I noticed a bit of wind so rolled out the headsail and got the boat moving toward the NE at maybe 1 knot. At the 2 AM check I noted that the boat had arced around toward the SW. The wind was so weak that when I tried to gybe the boat stalled pointing dead downwind. After 5 minutes of doing what I could to complete the gybe I concluded that if there wasn't even enough wind to wear ship then trying to sail wasn't worth the effort, so I rolled in the headsail and hit the sack.
In the morning I went on deck to find us on an oily sea, i.e. so smooth that we appeared to be floating on a gently undulating sea of oil. I had not seen this since the North Pacific in 2009. In order to hold down the amount of data being transmitted I restrict grib file reports to a rectangle of 2 degrees of latitude and 3 degrees of longitude. For days I had been seeing usable winds in one corner of the rectangle or another, but I was always in the wrong place for me. Frames in the latest grib file showed me to be in a seam between usable north winds to the west and usable south winds to the east, but I was not willing to use precious fuel to motor for 10 hours chasing grib file vectors.
It was another bright and sunny day in paradise and I saw opportunities to do some useful things in the calm (though with some rolling) conditions. It would have been a good time for setting the anchor on the stem roller with the chain in the locker below, but the boat sails beautifully with the light bow and I didn't want to upset its trim for any rough weather that I might yet encounter in the remaining 250 miles to MdP. However, I decided to do my last fuel transfer. I had considered holding back the remaining 20 liters until I actually had the port in sight, to make absolutely sure that I had enough fuel for the entry. But my fuel consumption calculations had proven to be accurate and if anything on the conservative side and besides, I would be too busy and excited in those final hours for a fuel transfer. The ship's papers and my passports were in one zip up folder, but I would review everything and put the papers in easy-to-reach order. I would also put the quarantine flag within easy reach but unfortunately I didn't have a courtesy flag of Argentina.
And then there were the Spanish lessons. Since altering course for Argentina I had been hitting the Spanish lessons pretty hard (by my standards) for over one hour every day, and I would probably put in 3 hours today, with plenty of rests in between. I've been working through a wonderful text and audio course provided to me by Al and Cathy in La Paz. The beauty of the course is that it has started me talking. Many times in La Paz I just knew what to say but wouldn't speak until I had verified its meaning and pronunciation, which never seemed to happen. Every day I "learn" words that I already knew from my early childhood a long, long, too long time ago. I'd estimate that I remember about half of the words and phrases in the course so far, words from the world of an 8 year old boy, such as "miedo", "tambien", "por que" and yesterday "lluvia" (rain). But the ones I didn't know such as "a veces", "muy a menudo", and "demasiado" have taken a lot of effort to assimilate, generating a lot of sympathy in me for anyone learning a language from a cold start. In Argentina I'll probably piss off the locals with my chattering in bad Spanish, but so what? The adult ego is probably the biggest impediment to language fluency for older people, in contrast to the mindless blabbering of children, who learn at an amazing pace.
I did the fuel transfer and it went very well, with a better outcome than I had expected because I had more fuel on deck than I had thought. I knew that I had one full 20 liter container and 2 or 3 partially filled ones. There were 2 partially filled ones. One of them had only about 5 liters in it but the other was a 28 liter container with about 22 liters of fuel still inside. The result was that both of the internal tanks were now full and I still had an estimated 14 liters spare on deck. This was an outstanding position to be in after 108 days at sea with almost daily hour-long engine runs for battery charging. The engine should use no more than 3 liters an hour at a cruising speed of 2200 rpm. That would yield approximately 45 hours of engine time. Depending on the boat speed that I achieve it could represent a range of over 200 miles. I would do a speed-rpm trial during the day's engine run. I would wait out this spell of becalming but if it were to be repeated further down the track I would probably hand steer the boat toward MdP using the engine to move through the calm waters.
I knew that I would get fuel all over me so I worked starkers. After the fuel transfer I worked at the side in the sun for over an hour picking apart difficult knots and re securing the 3 fuel containers, and found myself actually sweating. It felt great. This was my kind of climate. Afterwards I had my second bucket bath in the cockpit in 2 days. The shampoo and water helped wash out the rest of the diesel on the cockpit sole.
Those fuel containers are very effective. I got to see all of the fuel that I transferred because I first had to stage it in a bucket. There was no evidence of water in the fuel, which is impressive considering the howling gales that the containers had been through on deck. I did find, however, particles of soot-like material at the bottom of the containers, which I presume came from the Pemex station in La Paz. I decanted some of it (apologies to the marine life) and the Baja filter took care of the rest. This suggests to me that I'll be able to put cleaner fuel into the boat's tanks if I put it in manually using the Baja filter rather than pumping it straight in at the marina. ... Come to think of it, I should be able to filter the fuel coming from the marina pump through a funnel with a coarse filter or better yet, the Baja filter, if the operator is willing to exercise some patience that perhaps could be greatly revived by the offer of a generous tip.
At noon our position was 41S37, 055W09. In 24 hours we had moved 6 miles almost directly to the north. At least we had not lost ground. Mar de Plata was 250 miles to the northwest. Patience was required. What had the wise man said? Ah yes, "Langsam langsam aber weiter."
I did the speed-rpm trial under ideal conditions. The wind was below 4 knots, the sea was oily, and as far as I could tell there was very little current and what there was would likely be set to the east, at right angles to our heading. As I had found earlier, the relationship of speed to rpm was more or less linear: 2.4 kt @ 1100 rpm, 3.5 kt @ 1650 rpm, 5.0 kt @ 2200 rpm. I've established that the engine consumes about 1.3 l/hr at 1100 rpm. If we assume a linear relationship between rpm and fuel consumption, the engine should consume about 2.6 l/hr @ 2200 rpm, yielding 5 knots in neutral conditions. If I make the conservative estimate of 3 l/hr @ 2200 rpm, that suggests that the 140 liters of fuel in the tanks will last 46.6 hours yielding a distance of 233 miles. These are only estimates based on several assumptions so I would not place the welfare of the boat in the hands of these numbers to the last liter of fuel, but they give me a rough benchmark which tell me that I am in the ballpark. And it doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. Had I known two days ago what I know now I would have motored toward MdP until I found wind and then started sailing. Who knows, I'd probably be half way there by now. It sometimes takes me a while to get come around to new ideas.
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