Day 8 - Great Sailing, Good Progress

The night turned out to be as peaceful and productive as I had hoped. I slept with no alarms and woke up naturally twice during the night. Both times I found the boat tracking nicely to 116T, slightly south of Tristan da Cunha, and making 5.5 kts with a 10-12 kt wind on the port beam. On the second time up the half moon was up, giving a nice picture of the serene ocean to the horizon. Overhead the masthead light was showing incredible bright as usual, the sails were properly set, Jeff was doing a better job of steering than I possibly could, and the boat just didn't need me around, thank you very much. I know when I'm not wanted so I went back to bed.

I was up at 7.30 AM to find the boat making 6.3-6.5 kts on still on course centered around 116T. While preparing the coffee and toast I listened to Radio New Zealand until they switched frequencies at 8 AM. The sky was clear and I was hoping for another pleasant day of sailing in the knowledge that I would have to change the sail configuration before dark in preparation for the predicted stronger winds. This would be my 4th day without seeing a ship and for now I had this patch of paradise all to myself.

I had a leisurely second cup of coffee at the companionway with my head and shoulders protected by the spray dodger. During that time I sensed the rising wind, and I began seeing wind speeds of 15 kts. The sea was up, with whitecaps here and there. When I came back below our boat speed was 6.8-6.9 kts, occasionally touching 7.1 kts.

At 10.30 AM I decided to drop down to the second reef. The situation wasn't urgent, with the wind at 15 or 16 kts because the doctrine calls for putting in the 1st reef at 18 kts and the 2nd reef at 24 kts. Nevertheless the boat was moving at 7.0-7.1 knots and getting agitated. I figured that I would have to reef before the end of the day and it may as well be now.

I decided to make this a dress (literally) rehearsal for whenever I had to do it at night. I wanted to do everything slowly with checks all along the way that at night I would know from the cockpit exactly what was happening. [Note: Skip the following paragraph unless you are interested in the minutiae of reefing.]

I put on all of my wet weather gear and took great pleasure in putting on my restored sailing jacket. Then I went to the cockpit and moved Jeff's air vane to put the boat into the wind and when the headsail began to flutter I eased its sheet more to let it flutter freely then rolled in a few feet of sail. I then sheeted the headsail hard and used Jeff to put the boat as much into the wind as possible. After that I let off the mainsheet to line up the mainsail with the wind as much as possible. Leaving the first reef lines in position (handy when I have to raise the sail again) I slowly eased the main halyard while bringing on the forward reefing line, which runs from the forward reefing point back to the cockpit. The slides came down nicely as the sail fluttered. When I got to the mark on the forward reefing line I cleated everything off and went forward for a look. All of the lower slides had come down and were together at the gate (which prevents the slides from coming out of the mast track). I saw that the forward reefing line was a its maximum travel, because as of now any more downward pull would be destructive as it would try to compress the lower slides further and not do anything to pull down the sail. This was useful knowledge. In future I will stop lowering the sail when the mark on the reefing line is about 3" farther forward. This will give me scope for tightening the luff of the sail using the reefing line and the natural weight of the sail rather than the halyard. I then eased the boom vang (which holds the boom down) and used the topping lift to raise the back of the boom another foot. I have found that I can do a better job of setting the aft reefing point if the line does to have to lift up the boom and has only to bring the back of the sail to the boom. (Again, this was a learning exercise and normally I would try to avoid leaving the cockpit when reefing, so the topping lift would stay as is.) Back in the cockpit I removed the safety line from the first reef point (used to back up and share the load of the aft reefing line) and put it through the second reef point, then brought on the aft reefing line of the 2nd reef hard, until the aft reef point almost met the boom. I then tied the backup reef line hard, went forward to ease the topping left and bring on the vang, then went back to the cockpit and adjusted Jeff for the original course.

After rolling out a bit of headsail and adjusting the boom with the mainsheet I went down below and saw that we were now making 6.4-6.5 kts, so by my reckoning we had lost only 0.6 kts in speed. I regarded that as a small price to pay for a more comfortable boat, less stress on the rigging and sails, and a nearly neutral helm. I celebrated with a cup of coffee at the companionway, enjoying yet another brilliantly sunny day. The solar panels were producing 7 amps, the wind charger was averaging about 1.5 amps, and we were making good speed almost directly toward Tristan da Cunha.

Life was good.

At noon our position was 31S26, 036W00, giving us another surprising n-n distance of 120 miles, in the direction 107T, precisely to the degree toward Tristan da Cunha. We were now 1230 miles from the island and 675 miles from our departure. What could I say except WOW!! The barometer had dropped one point to 1017 hPa. I looked at the chart plotter and saw that we were now doing 6.8-7.1 knots with the shortened sail. DOUBLE WOW!!

At 3 PM the blow was well underway. At the navigation station I was looking at sustained speeds of 7.6 and 7.7 knots. The boat could do it because we had the 18 kt wind on the beam and were moving along the peaks and troughs of the waves. I was glad that I had reefed so soon.

At 3.30 PM we were 1200 miles from Tristan da Cunha.

The boat speed was beginning to touch 8 kts and I was beginning to think about rolling in some headsail. But first I wanted get the boat a little more off the wind because even though we were on a good course, there was a 20 degree backing of the wind predicted during the night and if I had any hope of running with the mainsail all night I would have to run just enough downwind to avoid blanketing of the headsail and possibly gybing. I dressed up, went to the steering station, and gave Jeff's air vane a nudge. That put us another 10 degrees downwind with the wind now around 15 degrees abaft of the beam. The boat handled the change OK but I noticed an surprisingly dramatic side effect. The boat's speed dropped a full knot (though still a respectable 6.5-6.7 kts)and the rough and tumble of the hull was replaced by the gentle rolling characteristic of downwind sailing. Also, the apparent wind dropped a good two knots. All this for a 10 degree change in heading. Given the good result I thought that we had a reasonable chance of running through the night with the predicted 28 kt wind. I hoped so because I didn't want to have to round up in the heavy sea to drop the mainsail, which would definitely require a trip to the mast.

I then rigged what could be termed a "preventer lite". I passed a line from the back of the boom, forward to the unoccupied sheet block at the rear of the track (used for the staysail), back to the turning block on the outside of the coaming, then cleated off. This would prevent a potentially catastrophic full swing of the boom were we to unintentionally gybe. I was pleased with the result: easy and safe to set up and appearing to be effective.

At 5 PM I noticed that I still a lot of headsail out. I didn't relish the idea of furling it during a heavy wind so I rounded up a bit then rolled in a hefty portion of it, leaving a small and manageable area out. We were still averaging 6 kts. I realized that we could still be doing 7 kts but this wasn't a race and I did not want to set myself up for problems later.

I am cooking another bean stew in the pressure cooker. There's a half kilo of dried beans that I started soaking yesterday, a cupful of lentils, two good sized potatoes and carrots and onions, a very large tomato, and four cloves of garlic. That will provide my main meal for at least 4 days. I've still got plenty of fresh potatoes, onions, carrots and a few tomatoes and capsicums. I've got only a few bananas left but a half dozen or so oranges and apples, and two limes. There is plenty of cheese and eggs too. It is all in the refrigerator compartment now.

At 11.45 PM the wind was up to perhaps 22 kts and we were scooting along at 6.4-7 kts. The boat was coping well with the double reefed mainsail and small amount of jib, but the wind was predicted to keep strengthening until dawn so I would have to make frequent checks throughout the night. I figured that the worst that could happen would be that I would turn the boat into the wind and heave to.

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