DAY 11 - Weaker Wind, Tightened Rigging

We ran all night with the headsail on the port side in front of a 13-18 kt wind and that worked out very well. At about midnight I rolled out more headsail to about 50% of its potential area and we moved along at about 5.5 kts to the SE. This morning I had another look at last night's grib file and it looks like I'll be able to run downwind with the headsail one more day. The grib files have proven themselves to be very accurate and reliable, and have helped me to plan my tactics and sail plans a day or two ahead.

I'll put in a good word for the Sailmail service out of Chile, too. On the coastal run from Argentina to Brazil the service got pretty terrible as I approached Ilha Bela, my port of entry in Brazil. It was so bad that I got a gentle warning message from Sailmail that I was using too much air time, but to their credit they supported me until I reached Bracui. On this passage it has been a very different story, with Sailmail transmission rates ranging from very good to excellent. Last night I was able to transmit at 2600 bytes/min and receive at 3300 byte/min, which I would rate excellent. Why was the service so bad off the Brazilian coast? Perhaps I was too close for the high frequencies that I am using now and the Andes mountains were interfering with the low frequency signal.

After coffee and toast I suited up and spent an hour topside. I went to the platform supporting the Zodiac inflatable in front of the mast and straddled it cowboy style facing aft. From that comfortable and secure position I spent a leisurely 20 minutes looking up the mast, forward to the headsail, the foredeck to see if anything had dropped off, and checking the shrouds, particularly the swages, while giving them a good shake. Other than tightening two unused halyards there was nothing to be done. I then sat at the steering station for 30 minutes looking around. The Monitor control lines were tight with no sign of chafing. The air vane and the rest of the unit were fine. The entire boat seemed to be in good order. The day was a sunny one again, with a cover of thin cloud. The sea was extremely lumpy with whitecaps to the horizon. Every once in a while a big wave would lift the stern of the boat then throw it over leading to heavy rolling. There was a crispness in the air which confirmed that we were out of the sub tropics. There were quite a few birds out. We passed a group of 5 or 6 of them floating in the water and I would not have seen them had I not just been there looking at nothing in particular. The birds were mostly the smaller brown petrels, though the day before I had seen a larger bird with white above and below that I have not been able to identify. The boat was moving well at more than 5 kts directly toward the island.

The heavy lumpy sea is a concern. Jimmy Cornell states that that an anchorage can usually be found on the lee side of Tristan da Cunha. That's fine, except that if the lee side means far from the settlement off a rocky coast over a deep bottom then I won't be interested. That will all have to wait until I arrive at the island and can speak with the residents by VHF radio.

At noon our position was 33S04, 030W08, giving us a n-n distance of 114 miles in the direction 106T, directly for the island, which was now 911 miles away. We still had a good wind and were making over 5 kts directly toward the island. There was bright sunshine under a blue sky and I might try fishing in the afternoon.

At 2.30 PM we passed the 900 mile mark. The wind had dropped and I had switched to the autopilot. I was trailing a squid lure with a weight to get it below the surface, following Mark's advice. If that didn't work I'd try a fish-looking lure that had been recommended to me in Hawaii. What interests me about that lure is its weight, which suggests to me that it is designed to drop down well below the surface of the water.

The wind died down during the afternoon. Jeff could not cope with the steering in light airs so I switched to the autopilot which kept us going at 2.5 kts at the cost of a flogging headsail. The wind was still a reasonable 10 kts but in the big swell the motion of the mast was overpowering the effect of the wind. When I had had enough I set a bit of jib amidships and allowed the boat to drift downwind at 1 kt.

Then I got the bright idea of taking the opportunity to tighten the rigging. The conditions were as good as they would get at sea: bright sunny day, boat moving very slowly, and a swell rocking her side by side, which would be useful. I attended to the lower (D1) shrouds, which seemed to need tightening because the leeward one would get a bit slacker than I liked during a hard beat. I used the sway of the mast to my advantage. When the mast rocked my way I could tighten the shroud easier and also get a better feel of how much more tightening was needed. I gave both shrouds one full turn of the turnbuckle. I was tempted to give them another half turn but decided to be prudent and creep up on the ideal. Then I tightened the backstay in order to put more tension on the headstay, that had shown too much sag for my liking. First I loosened the inner (cutter) forestay then applied 1.5 turns to the backstay. When this was done I re tightened the cutter stay. I then recorded these changes in a rigging log that I keep in the ships diary. By the way, the rigging book states "Note that you will not be able to overtighten a wire with hand tools of about 40-50 cm length." That's longer than the tools that I've been using.

By the time I had finished that the wind had perked up again. It had backed so I set sail with the headsail on the other tack. The autopilot went on standby twice in 15 minutes so I managed to get Jeff to do the steering. The wind settled back to its previous speed but this time Pachuca was carrying the sail OK partly, no doubt, because the sea had settled more, but mostly because the boat was now presenting its stern to the swell.

The wind prospects for the next 24 hours are not good so I am not expecting a good n-n distance tomorrow. But with sailing you can never tell.

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