Day 19 - Communications Uncertainty

I woke up at 7.30 AM sensing that the boat was still sailing, though moving slowly. Indeed, the wind was down to 10 kts again yet the sail fretted little, we were making 3 kts, and Jeff was managing to steer. I considered myself lucky that the boat had kept moving for the rest of the night and was happy to see that we were now 385 miles from TdC. It was another overcast day of rain and drizzle. After coffee and my last piece of bread I went topside, started the engine, furled the headsail, and soon we were making a respectable 4.3 kts at 1500 rpm, no doubt being helped by the following sea and wind. The house battery bank was down to 12.3 V following 3 consecutive overcast days. Then I turned on the Red Dot heater and set some damp clothes in front of it for drying.

----------------- COMMUNICATION PROBLEM -------------------

That gave me a chance to think about my communication difficulty the previous night. I began the Sailmail session at the usual time of 11.30 PM, which provided me a 2-3 hour window of optimal transmission and reception. The Chile station operates on 6 frequencies, 4 of which I can monitor at this distance (2400 miles). Since most of these stations can work one frequency at a time I checked the 4 frequencies for the sound of Sailmail traffic and when I heard none I went to one of the usual higher frequencies and tried to establish a connection. For the next 30 minutes I must have tried connecting at least 20 times, using the 3 highest frequencies, with no response. In desperation I even tried Africa twice (distance 2500 miles, propagation quality 85/100) and got no response. With that I set the timer and went to sleep for an hour. At 1 AM and 2 AM I made similar attempts to connect with no joy.

I gave up for the night thinking that there was either something technically wrong at the Chile station or there was some big atmospheric event causing interference because all of my equipment appeared to be in good order. I knew that missing the blog for one day would bring some disquiet to relatives and friends, but missing blogs for several days would cause serious misgivings.

HERE MID-WAY BETWEEN S. AMERICA AND AFRICA THE SAILMAIL SERVICE COULD BE POOR. THIS MEANS THAT BLOGS NOT POSTED FOR DAYS AT A TIME SHOULD NOT BE A CAUSE OF CONCERN.

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Without the benefit of the latest grib file I had to assume that tomorrow's gale was still going to happen, and would hoist the reefed mainsail as soon as the wind was strong enough.

After the engine had run for 2 hours I went up to set the mainsail. The wind had picked enough to sustain it and I didn't want to get caught out by a strong wind. It took some doing, for the usual reason that the ends of the battens got caught on the lazy jack, then the running backstay, then even the shoulder-high safety line. By the time I finished the wind had picked up to about 20 kts and we were doing about 4.5 kts on a reach. I then rolled out a tiny bit of headsail which took us to more than 6.5 kts. Jeff took over the steering with no problem and I shut the engine down after 2.9 hours of running time.

Down below the cabin was dry and cozy. The wettest thing inside of it now was me and my wet gear. I had managed to dry my slippers and the cushion at the navigation desk, which had gotten damp from my sitting on it with a wet bottom.

Incidentally, the vinyl curtain that I put over the opening to the lazarette has been a great success. Every time I access the area to manipulate the exhaust thru hull valve I find a dry floor, something that would have been unheard of before, in these conditions. That measure has certainly eliminated one of the vectors of water into the bilge, but there is something else which I haven't been able to figure out. As I have stated before, my ultimate measure will be strip the boat of every piece of gear below not necessary for sailing so that I have unfettered access to every part of the hull. Then with every part below deck bone dry I'll take the boat out for tests. Hopefully I'll spot a track of water somewhere that will lead me to the source.

At noon our position was 36S26, 019W55, giving us a n-n distance of 95 miles directly to the east (091T), and we were now 370 miles from TdC. The barometer had fallen 3 points to 1010 hPa. ... Before I had a chance to finish the previous sentence I noticed the boat veering downwind but before I could react the boat gybed and the boom slammed to the other side hard. As I suited up I wondered if the Monitor had given up the ghost. Fortunately all that had happened was that the control lines had loosened and jumped off the drum. I got us sailing again but with reduced headsail, which brought our speed down from around 6.7 kts to around 6.0 kts. I decided to spend the rest of the day in my wet weather trousers and boots for a faster reaction time.

At 3.30 PM I rolled in the last of the headsail and we were sailing with the double reefed mainsail. I eased the mainsheet a bit to reduce the weather helm. Beyond that I could see nothing else to do to de-power other than to heave to. The wind was in the high 20's and if it got into the low 30's I would do precisely that, even though it wasn't supposed to happen until the following day. Anyway, for now our speed was back down to 6-6.5 kt and Jeff was still coping well. Looking at the wheel I could not see excessive weather helm. Unless I hove to it was going to be a long night.

At 6 PM the wind had abated somewhat and the boat traveling more comfortably even though we were doing 7-7.5 kts. I had hopes of sailing all night until the full gale force winds set in at around noon.

At 9 PM we were running slightly before the wind, with the big waves hitting the port quarter of the boat. I tried a beam reach so that I could lose some power by letting the mainsail out more it the result was downright harrowing. We were running parallel to the waves and they were threatening to board the boat along its entire length. I reset the airvane pronto to take us a bit down wind and decided that we would either run before it or heave to, no in-between.

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