Day 7, March 13 - Pactor Working!

The boat sailed nicely all night and at 6 AM we had made good 70 miles to the east. By then our course was slightly to the north of east so I tacked the boat to put us on a heading of SW. The wind speed was variable 8-13 kts and there were periods when the boom would begin to slam, but not too violently partly because the mainsail was double reefed. In any event I would endure the slamming because it was most important that I reach the westerly winds at latitude 43S.

I had a good clear session with Sam on the 40 meter band. He relayed a message from Brenda in which she passed information from sailing friend Jim Putt. The forecast for easterly winds was no more, and I was now facing a lull during the middle of the day followed a moderate west wind during the night. If that came to pass I would be able to make good progress toward my goal of latitude 43S.

I went through the selection of useful things to do in the morning and decided to try once more the spare cable on the Pactor modem. I have already described what I did in a separate blog, and for some fortunate reason the Pactor modem began to communicate with the laptop's USB port again. The laptop now recognized a "SCS PTC-IIusb" on port COM5 and I managed send and received messages from Sailmail. I am by no means out of the woods yet with the modem problem because it could be an intermittent one that could even go hard. But so far so good and with each passing day I will gain more confidence in the system.

At 10 AM I dropped all sail and lay ahull in a 4 kt breeze. We began to drift SSE at more than 1.5 kts and I could not complain about that. We were at lat 41S20, 100 miles north of the target of 43S. As before, I would relax and make the best of it until the wind returned. I had the 11.30 SAMMNet session to look forward to, where I would tell Graham and SAMMNet of my good fortune, in case he had not yet read the message that I had sent to him. ... The conversation with Graham was not to be. I managed to get out my information through a relay, who seemed to hear me very well, but the reception from her was very bad and at the end I told her that it had become untenable and I thanked her for her help as a relay. This was another indication that people can hear me much better than I can hear them. Even at the Sailmail session this morning my transmission of the uploads were several times faster than reception of the downloads.

At 1.30 I awoke from a nap to the humming sound of the Rutland wind charger, which meant that there was enough wind for sailing. The wind from the SW on our starboard beam so all I had to do was to roll out the jib. This got us moving at about 4 kts to the SE. I resisted the impulse to raise the mainsail and had a cup of tea while kept an eye on the wind, looking for some strength and durability.

At 4 PM we were still sailing slowly to the SW at about 3 kts, but the wind had weakened and the headsail was flogging too much for my liking. I rolled it in, lashed the wheel, and tidied up the cockpit for the coming night. I expected some sailing activity near midnight, when a moderate west wind was predicted. We were at 41S32 and drifting SE at over 1.5 kts, no doubt under the influence of the Agulhas current as it curved around to meet the Southern Ocean current.

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