Day 26, April 1 - Spray Dodger Removed and Hard Night

I was up at midnight to find the boat sailing well, but ESE, so I adjusted the airvane to point the boat as much downwind as possible without causing problems with the headsail. I set the alarm for 0200, dawn, to be ready to roll in headsail and possibly put up the staysail if the wind picked up. But at 6 AM the sail was holding up well during surges of 25 kt winds, taking the boat to over 8 kts at times. During the sags it was maintaining the boat speed at over 6 kts. I had about half of the headsail area out, and I was worried about over stressing it but it seemed to be faring well and I reminded myself that this was precisely the reason why I had ordered the heaviest sail possible (9.55 oz from memory), and I might as well take advantage of it. I didn't see the staysail in combination with the headsail as an option because it would not allow me to sail as directly downwind as I needed to. However, if the wind got to 30 kts that would be another story. This great wind was coming out of a squash zone between the high that I was trying to stay ahead of and a low farther to the SE.

I had success again with Sailmail on the 18 mHz frequencies. My messages went out at a sizzling 7237 bytes per minute. Unfortunately I received messages at only 400 bytes a minute, but that was tolerable. The rating on this frequency at the optimal time is 97.

The wind turned out to be stronger that I had expected and I fell into the trap of being caught with too much sail up. The wind picked up just before the early SAMMNet session and by the time I came up I had the problem of how to roll in the headsail while sailing downwind. I hashed it up and put the sail as well as myself through too much hardship. In the end I had to resort to the winch in order to roll in the sail before it self destructed in the 25 kt wind. Eventually I had to roll the entire sail in and lie ahull while I went forward and freed a seriously tangled pair of sheets. Fortunately there was no apparent damage to the sail, thanks to its youth and strength. After a lot of fiddling around I managed to set the Monitor so that it was not overpowered by weather helm during those gusts that were registering over 35 kts. We were running almost downwind at 7.2 kts with the headsail at about the area of the staysail. Once we got almost square to the huge seas coming from the stern the boat ceased to be thrown around like a toy.

At 0730 I downloaded a wonderfully clear weather fax of the Indian Ocean. I was able to pinpoint the location of the boat in relation to all of the weather systems around.

I had a good session with Sam at 1110. I received my situation report and after some effort I got summaries of the wind forecast for the next 2 days (30 kt winds).

Just before the noon report the boat took a monumental hit from a breaking wave. Anything not restrained went flying to the port side. Everything in the V berth area wound up on the port side. Fortunately the laptop was under the protection of the plastic cover, and the shower curtain was drawn. Through the companionway I could see the spray dodger over the cockpit. I managed to bring it in before another wave struck and found that the damage was not as bad as first appeared. The force of the wave pulled all bolt ropes out of their track except the ones on the sides with zippers, and there the zippers were simply pulled apart. The only thing holding the dodger were the two tightening straps at the back. The only thing that I can figure out is that the wave hit the dodger from the back and blew it out. Fortunately the windows and canvas material were intact. The stainless steel folding frame looked OK and the bolt rope tracks tracks were intact too. It might be possible for me to reinstate the dodger, but did I really want to expose it to more of that treatment? I put it aside and would look at the problem another day.

The noon numbers were good:

POS 39S53, 63E56
NND 135
DMG 2224
DTG 2561

At 1700 and well after dark there was an abrupt wind shift and I went topside to adjust the airvane. Unfortunately this put us on a beam reach and for the rest of the night we were exposed to the huge seas which were out of proportion to the local conditions of 30 kt winds gusting to perhaps 35. But the wind had been blowing or more than day and had a long fetch probably from gale condition further south. We were pounded all night by breaking waves and took a lot of water through the companionway. I could not heave to because the mainsail wasn't set and in any event I didn't want to because I wanted to keep the boat moving. I had only a small amount of headsail out so we were averaging only about 3.5 kts, but at least we were moving.

I was up at dawn and had a long cup of coffee planning what I had to do, which was to set the staysail. It was pretty wild out there with seas still breaking over the deck but I got the job done OK. As I was climbing down into the cockpit another wave passed around me and filled the cockpit with a foot of water. The staysail increased our speed from 3.5 kt to 5 kt.

During the afternoon I had taken the precaution of removing the laptop from the nav station and storing it in a drawer. After putting up the staysail and letting things settle down for 30 minutes I set up the laptop at the forward part of the main table near the mast. Here it was beyond the reach of water from the companionway, cabin vents, or cabin hatch. From midway along the table to aft everything not on a shelf or in a cabinet was either wet or damp. Relocating the laptop went very well. I placed it on a non-skid mat then tied it to the mast with cord wrapped around the base of the screen. I put the little GPS antennas on the shelf above the car radio, plugged them in to the computer's USB port, and both MP an OpenCPN came up nicely. The only issue left was the extension of the Pactor modem's USB cable to reach the laptop. I had an extension cable and if it turned out to be long enough and transfer the data correctly then I would be able to issue the blog via Sailmail. Otherwise the blog would have to wait until conditions were safe at the navigation station.

[Note: I found the USB extension cable and the laptop can see the Pactor modem on COM5. If this note is included in this blog it means that I was able to use Sailmail from the new laptop position.]

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