Day 6 - Two Milestones

+I had another wind scare last night. To achieve better transmission times I am now connecting to Sailmail in Chile after midnight. At 1 AM just after the Sailmail session the wind began to drop and veer, putting me on a course slightly west of south. I watched the situation for 30 minutes to see how the sails and Jeff would cope. I was amazed to see the boat doing over 4 kts against a 6.5 kt wind, with Jeff still managing to steer. I then set the timer for 2 hours and hit the bunk expecting anything. At 3.15 AM I woke up to the hum of the wind charger and was elated to find the boat once again tracking to the SE at close to 5 kts.

This could be the calmest patch of ocean that I've sailed to date. Whereas the SE Pacific approaching the Horn seemed to always be on a hair trigger with the sea ready to rise at the slightest excuse, this SW Atlantic doesn't seem to want to be riled up unless severely provoked. Thus the boat can carry sail and make way in the lightest conditions that I have seen yet. At the time of this writing, 9.45 AM, the boat is making 5.5 kts against an apparent win of 10 kts with the passage so smooth that we could be on rails.

I was up at 8.30 AM to find another bright and sunny day under a clear sky. The sea was calm and blue and empty to the horizon.

I then thought about the latest grib file. It predicts the wind at 19 kts from the N at 6 AM on 7 Dec, building to 27 kts at noon and 37 kts at 6 PM with a barometric pressure of 992. That is as far ahead as I can see with the grib file reports. In order to hold the amount of data transmission to a minimum I get a report for a patch of ocean 2 x 2 degrees for every 6 hours covering 3 days. Tonight's grib file will tell me more, and with the improved transmission rates I might ask for a report for every 3 hours as well as a spot report. The spot report is interesting. I can get a detailed prediction report which include wave height for any spot on the ocean that I choose, with the spot moving every 6 hours according to the course and speed that I had stated.

So at this point I am assuming near gale conditions and I have a choice of tactics. I can sail with the mainsail double reefed and the headsail rolled in to a small area, and be prepared to heave to (with mainsail double reefed, headsail completely rolled in, and wheel lashed to weather) when the wind reaches 30 or 31 kts. The other option is to put up the storm trysail and staysail when the wind is in the mid 20's and sail downwind (SSE probably) throughout the blow. I used this technique in running before heavy gales near the Horn with great success. Unfortunately I haven't figured out a way of sailing with the trysail then safely heaving to if things get really nasty. This boat will not properly heave to (ie with bow pointing toward the wind) with the trysail, and I would have to switch back to the mainsail. I don't relish the thought of going to the foredeck in gale conditions to drop the trysail and staysail then bring up the mainsail for heaving to. It's nothing to do with personal effort and discomfort and everything to do with risk.

At noon our position was 30S11, 040W15, giving us a respectable n-n distance of 123 miles in the direction 140T (SE), and all to windward. Thus we had passed the milestone of latitude 30S. We also passed the milestone of being less than 1500 miles from Tristan da Cunha, at 1475 miles. We were 485 miles from the point of departure at Angra and 460 miles off the Brazilian coast. I wasn't planning to descend below 38S, which put me less than 8 degrees or 480 miles from the southern limit of the passage. I would try to shape a course as an arc between my current position and the destination of TdC at 37S, 012W. The barometer had risen one point to 1021 but was predicted to drop steeply to 992 over the next 30 hours. While it lasted I would keep enjoying the warm sunny weather and good sailing.

OOPS! While working on the noon report I noticed that I made a mistake the position report that I sent to the Pangolin site in New Zealand. I reported my latitude as 38S and it should have been 28S. I know of no way of correcting this mistake so anyone tracking my progress on the Pangolin site will have to disregard this anomaly.

At mid afternoon I powered up the little Acer netbook and it malfunctioned. While booting up it would put out a 30 second squeal through its loudspeaker then Windows XP would boot up looking normal except that the cursor was going berserk. I would point to one program on the desktop and another would start up. I went to "start" at the bottom left and the cursor would scroll up and down all of the selections. I tried to do a normal "stop" but it would not work so I had to do a hardware stop. It is not a disaster because I have two more computers backing up the new Toshiba acting as the navigation computer, and it may turn out to be a simple problem.

I had another look at the grib file showing the predicted strong winds and noticed that at 34S the wind would be at 30 kts and at 36S it would be at 36 kts. Based on that small area of wind prediction it seems to me that the farther to the north I stay the better. At 3 PM I was at 30S17 and altered course to 110T in order to make more easting and less southing. I'll try to stay above 32S until it, well, it blows over. This afternoon I will make another attempt to raise the Brazil weather fax service. I really miss those surface charts.

At 8 PM there was barely enough wind to keep the boat sailing so I took the opportunity to run the engine for a couple of hours in order to charge the batteries. I left the sails up and they stayed full and maybe even helped to drive the boat a bit. The sea was even more calm and peaceful than before. After two hours of running I decided to motor a third hour in the hopes that the wind would pick up a bit. I set the timer for an hour and woke up abruptly one minute before it went off. I shut the engine, pointed the boat closer to the wind, then reengaged the autopilot to see what would happen. To my amazement the boat managed to sail and steer itself at 3.7 kts into an apparent wind of less than 8 kts. I was so pleased that I had my first beer in two days. It was ice cold and it was very good. A knot of wind speed either way would decide whether or not we kept moving all night.

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