DAY 13 - Fouled Propeller

Yesterday at 1.30 I spoke with Richard. He was still becalmed but the fog had lifted. He had had a good night's sleep in the quiet boat and was in the process of devoting 1.5 hours to cooking a good meal. I told him that I was impressed because I spend only about 10 minutes preparing my meals. I think that he enjoys cooking and he may as well take advantage of the quiet time. Just after we finished talking a boat giving its name that sounded like Sunrisa made contact explaining that they had just left Maui bound for Seattle. Richard gave them the information on our nightly contacts. Boats on passage like to keep in touch with boats ahead of them to get information on weather and conditions.

I the made my own lunch (That's right, 10 minutes to simmer the packaged meal.) and had a short nap. When I got up I turned on the Acer laptop to work on the fax problem. I discovered the Sailmail debug file and decided to analyze the debug data on some fresh faxes. I downloaded the first fax, had a look, and to my surprise there it was, stored in the Faxfiles folder. I let the process continue until a second fax was completed. It too wound up in the Faxfiles folder. I was able to retrieve both of them and see them through the viewer. Everything normal. Just like nothing had happened. Spooky.

I then turned my attention to an AIS target that I had been watching for hours. It was the Cetus Leader, a cargo ship 651 ft long, bound for Toyohashi. AIS was reporting strange numbers: Course 266 T, COG 348 T, SOG 1.2 kt. So it was pointing west, but traveling north at 1.2 kt. Uhuh. OK. Except that in 5 hours I would be on top of it. I hailed them by name and call sign, got an immediate response, and I explained that I was a sail boat 26 nm SE of him, I was seeing strange numbers, and could he confirm his heading and speed. The man explained that have been drifting while attending to certain matters. I thanked him for his explanation and told him that in 5 hours I would be in his vicinity and would give him a wide berth. He replied that in 5 hours they would be long gone and bade me good sailing. I gave him my good wishes and that was that.

Then I visited the cockpit and saw a strange thing closely shadowing the boat. At first I thought that it was a live fish. On closer inspection it looked like some sort of gutted fish. I kept looking and concluded that it was some sort of tangle of rope and material caught on the keel. I could see white line going forward toward the keel. I thought of dropping sails and using the engine to gingerly back out of the snag. I decided instead to leave it and hope that it would go away. I didn't think that it was causing much drag and if I had any luck it will eventually tear away. Yes, I would have to resolve this before my next engine run in 2 or 3 days.

An hour later I visited the cockpit with a cup of tea and my ration of one cookie for the day. I started to look at the trailing rope. It definitely was rope. Then it occurred to me that if the rope did not break in the right place I could be left with enough rope underneath to threaten the propeller and no way to get it out. There was only one hour of sunlight left but I decided to have a go at removing it. I exchanged my slippers for the working shoes, put some gloves on, and went out with the boat hook. Four knots does not sound like much until you are working down at water level. The slipstream was too fast for me to get the hook down straight and besides, the slipstream was holding the mass of rope down. I had to stop the boat. I left the headsail up to keep the apparent wind to a minimum and dropped the mainsail on the run. It came down with amazing ease. I then rolled in the jib and threw the boat to starboard to point the boat into the wind to stop it. I then bent over and managed to snag the two ropes that formed a loop holding the mass together. I managed to hook the loop over the port spinnaker winch, with the mass of ropes and netting and whatever hanging over the side. So far so good. The rope was a full inch thick and it was my good fortune that the sun was shining on that side of the hull. By bending far over (no harness, but the boat was still) I could see that the rope was looped around a propeller blade, not the keel as I had expected. Turning the propeller with this situation would have been a disaster. If the loop passed around only one blade I had a shot at dislodging it from the cockpit; otherwise I would have to go for a swim. I needed to jiggle the rope and tease the loop off the blade. I got a long line and passed it through the rope in such a way that I could retrieve it from the water if I lost it but I could also slip it through if by some miracle the mass started to float away free. I did some jiggling and shaking of the rope and managed to free it from the propeller blade. I figured that I was making just enough way to drift from this bundle of rope if I could toss it from as far aft as possible. I freed my line from the rope, manhandled the heavy bundle to the stern, and pushed it clear as best I could. That worked. Slowly I got separation between Pachuca and the bundle.

It was time to get the mainsail up. I let out jib to no. 2 as it had been before, sheeted it hard, then brought to windward close hauled on a starboard tack with the autopilot doing the steering. The boom was already far over to port, preventer and all, in line with the wind, and I managed to hoist the mainsail without much problem. I then fell away from the wind, set the course to about 040, eased the jib, disengaged the Vistar the autopilot and engaged Jeff the wind vane.

I then went down below and saw on the chart plotter that the Cetus Leader was racing off to the west at 17 kt.

There had been enough drama for one day. I decided to relax and get ready for the 7.30 PM session. The wind had picked up and Pachuca went into the night doing over 5 knots.

We had a good radio session at 7.30 PM. Richard was nearing the end of his 36 hours of being becalmed. I told him that according to my spot report of his position he should be in 22 kt southerly wind. As we spoke he was sensing changes indicating advent of the expected fresh wind. Ryan from the just leaving for Seattle from Maui introduced himself. He passed on weather information (eg the jet stream is unusually low) that he had received from a friend ashore. Later, after the radio session with Chris I tuned into the ABC and enjoyed the PM program. Earlier I had heard the fabled Fran Kelly. During he day I listen to Armed Forces Radio which provides news on the hour and various current affairs programs (end hysterical entertainment from Rush Limbaugh).

The wind picked up before I retired at 10.30 PM. As far as I know Pachuca did over 6 kt all night. At 1 AM I saw that she was touching 7 kt. At 7.45 AM Pachuca was doing 6.5 kt on course 0945 T. I would like to have steered directly north to pick up stronger winds from a Low but with the fluctuating wind speed and high weather helm during gusts I had to be satisfied with Jeff keeping me on a very modest broad reach. I needed to cross 35 N as far west of 145 W as possible before the classical Pacific High reestablished itself. At my rate of travel I would accomplish this within 24 hours.

At 8 AM Pachuca was at 33.51N, 149.20 W, 870 nm NE of Oahu and 1400 nm SW of Juan de Fuca. It was another bright and sunny day with moderate temperature.

Starting at 9.01 AM (1901 GMT) I downloaded the series of 24, 48, and 72 hour surface analysis prediction weather faxes. If things go as predicted I would have skirted the west of the center of the Pacific High and gotten north of its latitude just as it drifted southwest below me, which would enhance my "rounding" of the Pacific High. This would give me as clear a run to Juan de Fuca as can be expected.

The distance covered over the previous 24 hours was 127 nautical miles.