Day 109 - Wind and Under 200 Miles

The evening's grib file presented prospects than the previous evening's. The windless seam which had been predicted in the earlier grib file was now going to be east of Pachuca, according to the more recent grib file. The wind that would begin from the north at about midnight would be viable for the remaining 48 hour span of the grib file.

I was up at 12.30 AM to find a usable 8 knot wind from the NE. I rolled out half of the headsail and soon had the boat moving to the NW at 1.4 knots. There was a lot of weather helm but Jeff seemed to cope OK. Even though there was good moonlight I wasn't prepared to raise the mainsail for such a weak wind. I went back to bed after setting the alarm for another 2 hours.

I got up just after sunrise and found that the boat was still moving to the WNW and had covered a distance of 10 miles. I knew that there had been a light shower overnight because I had carelessly left the companionway open and there was water over the engine cover. (Fortunately I had been sharp enough to close both hatches for the night.) Over coffee I reviewed the grib file. According to it the light winds were only 20 miles east of the position from which we had started sailing. I decided to raise the mainsail as soon as possible and make haste toward the west.

I improved the hoist procedure. I left the running backstays on and rolled in the headsail as I had learned the day before. I started the engine, put the boat into the wind, and set Jeff dead to wind, hoping that he would be able to steer even with the boat's superstructure in front of the airvane. I found that he could indeed keep the boat within 10 degrees off the wind, which removed a lot of pressure from me to keep running back to the cockpit to adjust our heading. At the mast I released the peak of the sail and put some tension on the halyard by raising a bit of sail. Then I worked my may back to the cockpit, making sure that I kept the tension on the halyard. I decided to raise the mainsail by hand as much as possible, and just as well because I had to time some of the jerks to clear two of the battens past the taut port running backstay. Before I knew it I had raised the sail to within 2 ft of its full (double reefed) height with ridiculous ease. The only reason why I wasn't able to complete the hoist was that the reefing line had become taut, so I finished the hoist with the winch. I suspect that I would be able to raise the sail to at least single reef height by hand, using the engine to keep the boat into the wind. (However, I normally hoist the mainsail on the run under jib when I don't have the mast step tangle problem, and this does require the use of the winch.)

I shut the engine down after one hour which left us heading slightly north of west at 2.8 knots off a 12 knot NNW wind. I didn't want to tack to the north yet because I wanted to get as far west as possible from that seam of slack wind to the east. The important thing was that we were on the move again after 60 hours of drifting around.

I finally captured the entire weather fax schedule from the Chile station. Immediately after the schedule they transmitted the isobar chart which came through beautifully clear. We were still under the influence of a high. There had to be a low to the east causing this northerly wind but unfortunately the Chile faxes did not extend east beyond our present position. Nevertheless their weather faxes would be sufficient to get us into MdP. Once in port I would find out the situation with Rio. They had either radically changed their schedule, their frequencies, or less likely stopped transmitting altogether. I would need their services for the passage to Cape Town.

At 9 AM we were making 4 knots to WNW off a 19 knot wind. I left out plenty of headsail because we were sailing on a starboard tack to the strong side of the rig.

I went through my set of courtesy flags and as expected I did not have one of Argentina because I had not planned on a visit. However, all was not lost. I had a Guatemalan courtesy flag which has the same blue-white-blue pattern running vertically instead of horizontally like that of the Argentinean flag. I figured that by turning it sideways and with some creative sewing to get the proportions right I would be able to transform it into an Argentinean flag good enough to get us into port.

At noon we were at position 41S19, 055W46. In the few hours that we had been sailing we had moved 33 miles in the direction 313T. At the time of the noon report we were making 4.7 knots on a port tack on heading 037T. We were 215 miles from MdP.

After several hours of work the Argentinean courtesy flag was ready and the result in my opinion was outstanding. The proportions were right, the colors were right, and the material was right. From a very short distance the flag would pass muster with no problem. There were in fact two different Argentinean flags shown on my chart of world flags. The only difference between the two was that one had in the center what appeared to be an image of the sun complete with eyes and mouth (maybe a traditional sun god?). The simple flag is symmetric on both axes which presents the convenient property of having no backwards or upside down. I got lucky with the Guatemalan flag in that its proportion of stripes was such that I could get the Argentinean proportions with a simple fold on each stripe, so I had to do no cutting. The only alteration that I made was to pierce a tiny hole in the material for the lower lanyard. I was able to use one of the existing grommets for the upper lanyard. This means that if I get blown of course and wind up in Guatemala all I have to do is to pick out the stitches form the Argentinean flag. (Just kidding.)

At nightfall we were just under 200 miles from MdP and still sailing toward it at over 5 knots. We had just crossed lat 41 S and were within one degree of reaching my goal of getting out of the Roaring Forties into ... let's call them the Tranquil Thirties.

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