Day 98 - Creeping North

At last light we ran into a monster of a squall. I could see the clouds coming from the north and heard the thunder with occasional flashes of lightning. I shut down the chart plotter, threw the breakers to it and the VHF radio, and then shut down and disconnected the navigation computer. I didn't expect much else to happen because I had seen this several times over the previous few days. But then the wind started suddenly and I had to scramble fast to wind in the headsail. I figured that the wind must have been well over 40 knots. I disconnected Jeff, lashed the wheel, then left the boat to its own devices with the trysail up and went to bed until it blew over. At 2 AM I was up again, saw that the wind had settled down, and started sailing again. I could see flashes of lightning to the south.

I stayed up another 2 hours where I received messages from Brenda and Stephen about my proposed change of plans and then issued my statement to the blog while it was still dark and the Sailmail reception was good. I woke up several times thereafter and saw that the boat was headed slightly east of north against apparent wind in the high 20's. It was a very agitated ride, but our speed varied only between 2.5 and 3.5 knots. Yes, it was a load on the rig but it was either sail into it or drift in the wrong direction. Over coffee in the morning I looked at the pilot chart and noted that above lat 40S there is a large component of NE winds. Also the northern and southern coastal currents converge at Rio de La Plata and head out to sea from there, so I was sure that I'd be able to make my way if I found myself too far north along the coast. But I was hoping that it wouldn't come to that. Whenever I had an opportunity to sail to the west I would push the boat harder to make the most of it.

Soon after, the wind hit gale force speeds complete with breaking seas as had been predicted by the grib file. I spent 30 minutes in the cockpit rolling in the headsail, disconnecting Jeff, an lashing the wheel hard to weather. Wind steering or not the boat was riding beam to the wind so I may as well give Jeff a break. The trysail would carry the load. This left us moving to the NE at about one knot.

I then baked a loaf of bread and did my first Spanish lesson since the early days of the voyage. Approaching and rounding the Horn had not been very conducive for study but now that was behind me and ahead was Spanish speaking Argentina.

At noon our position was 47S07, 48W12, giving us a n-n distance of 46 miles in the direction 025T. I was amazed that we had covered even that much distance. During the night the boat crept along at about 3 knots into a very stiff wind. Most of this day had been spent hove to in what peaked as a full gale complete with episodes of thunder and lightning and hail. A few minutes before the noon report I noted that the wind had dropped slightly, but more importantly had backed. I rolled out a tiny amount of headsail and setus moving again at about 2.5 knots slightly to the west of north - very good!

I spent some time at the companionway watching the boat's progress. It was a wonder that the boat was making any headway at all, The wind had backed which meant that the boat was meeting the large swells more or less head on, climbing over the front and descending down the back of each swell. But the sea was fairly confused and there were some swells coming from the side frequently causing the boat's stern to wallow. Somehow Jeff managed to always retain the course and we plodded on at 2.5 knots.

I then noticed that the forward lashing of the whisker pole was slack, allowing a lot of movement of the pole from the toe rail. I found that the knot of the cord holding it down had unraveled. I retied the knot and for good measure tied a second lashing using shock cord to stop any movement of the pole. On the way to the whisker pole I had noticed that the lower starboard shroud was alarmingly loose on the rolls. I then visited the port side shroud, the jury rigged one, and put about 3 turns on the screw. I didn't force anything because I was afraid that using force might put stress on the toggle and break it. Once in a while the boat would roll to weather enough to make the shroud go slack and when this happened I would apply another turn of the screw.

The grib file was predicting yet another bout of winds of over 30 knots in 12 hours. And of course they would be from the NW, the direction in which I wanted to move, I was looking forward to this night's grib file hoping that this prediction had changed.

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