Day 98 - Change of Plans

The boat is at the moment headed North toward Buenos Aires, Argentina.

After passing the Falkland Islands I grew unhappier each passing day with my situation and the prospects for the passage to Cape Town. Progress was much slower than I had anticipated and I had made plans for a 60 day passage, which would have stretched my fresh water and diesel resources to the limit but more importantly exposed the boat to a longer period of risk. And to make it in 60 days I had to be prepared to drive the boat harder. I figured that if I lost the mast further out than 1000 miles from Cape Town I would set off my EPIRB, prepared to accept rescue and abandonment of the boat.

Yesterday morning in response to Mark's wish to me for happy sailing I responded that my sail and rigging problems had taken all of the joy out of the cruise. I read these words and realized that I had to do something. I don't mind the privation, and I can deal with danger when it comes (what other choice is there?), but perhaps because of the 3 years of university statistics I am extremely sensitive to risk, probabilities, expected gain, that sort of thing; and I had a really bad feeling about pushing on to Cape Town. It was just too risky and the passage was going to be an ordeal rather than a joyful adventure. Probably 20 times a day I check the headsail and port lower shroud to make sure that they are still intact. Every time I hear a hard sound my eyes are immediately up to make sure that the mast is still secure. Every time the boat gets up a head of steam I look at the angle of heel and reduce sail to relieve the load on the rigging. This is no way to sail a boat if it can be avoided.

I brought up David's software on the laptop, zoomed out to include South America, changed the image type from Google satellite to road map, and right away saw Buenos Aires. I then used the distance & bearing function to see that it was less than 900 air miles away. 900 miles to Buenos Aires is a lot shorter than the 3100 miles to Cape Town. Buenos Aires is a world city and I figured that it would offer all of the services that I needed. I saw it as the solution to my problem and immediately I felt better. I sent off a quick message to Brenda and Stephen telling them of my idea and asking for information on marinas in Buenos Aires. It was about 11 PM in Fremantle and Stephen was still up and responded immediately. Ten hours later I had all of the information that I needed for the moment on marinas and yacht clubs, with references to haulout facilities and the statements "North Buenos Aires has a large and very friendly sailing community" and "There are good facilities available and also a good range of marine supplies in Buenos Aires." This information sealed my decision.

Reaching the Rio de La Plata will not be as easy as it would have been had I proceeded along the coast to the west of the Falklands because I am now far off the coast and the prevailing winds are from the west. However, Buenos Aires is to the northwest and I figure that I've got ample time to play the winds and work my way west before reaching latitude 34S30 of the city. I'll undoubtedly do a lot more than 900 miles of sailing to get there, but it will still be very much shorter than Cape Town.

The latitude of B.A. is similar to that of Cape Town and Fremantle, so it should have a pleasant climate. Looking ahead, the passage from B.A. to Cape Town should be straightforward: sail ESE to pick up the route at latitude 41S or 42S. However, the timing of that passage will require some thinking. I've already been beat up by the Southern Ocean in winter, and I am not interested in repeating the experience. This suggests a stay in B.A. through at least November. I don't mind the long stay. In fact, I don't mind going to B.A. I have not visited any South American countries so far in this circumnavigation and now that the urgency of the Horn is behind me I am under no pressure to keep moving. It's called retirement. I'll have to see how things unfold but it seems to me that if I can put the boat in a secure place there will be ample opportunity for doing some serious bus touring.

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Day 97 - Bath and Change of Clothes

Shortly before dark the wind died to below sailing speed and we were left wallowing with the rolled up headsail and the trysail up and tightly sheeted. After dinner I went out and saw that the wind speed was down to 4 knots. I went to bed at midnight UTC with the alarm set for 0300. At 0300 the wind was still too calm so I reset the alarm for 0600 and went back to sleep.

At 0500 I woke up and saw that we had about 16 knots of wind. The wind strengthened even as I worked in the dark to get the boat moving. At 6 AM things had settled down and we were moving NE at 3.5 knots slightly beating against a 23 knot wind and rising sea.

The new wind was good but we must have lost 8 hours of sailing in this latest of what was beginning to appear to be a cycle of regular and frequent lulls of the wind.

And the trysail once again showed its advantage. To get the boat moving again all I had to do was to ease its weather sheet because it had been up during the becalming helping to steady the boat. With the wind in the low 20's it was now delivering all of the power that I dare put onto the rigging. Had it been the mainsail I would have had to first get some way with the headsail then gone on deck to untie it from the boom and free its halyard, and after that raise the sail with one hand while steering the boat into the wind with the other, all in the pitch black darkness. Call me a lazy sailor, but a lot of it has to do with risk minimization. The less activity on that deck the better, particularly in darkness or bad weather.

Within the hour the wind strengthened and began to gust up to 33 knots, forcing me to return to the cockpit and reduce headsail fast. Doing this is in a high wind must be done very carefully because if either the sheet or the furler line goes free the strain on the rigging and sail will be enormous. I begin the cycle by easing about a foot of sheet, just enough to make the sail start fretting a little. Then I use the winch to turn the headsail roller. I don't like using a winch on the roller, but in heavy wind I have no choice. I coordinate the cranks with lulls in the wind to ease the strain. I repeat this cycle until I'm satisfied with the amount sail still out.

The wind got even stronger, with one gust hitting 38 knots. This forced me to reduce the headsail to maybe 30 square feet. This reduced our speed to 2.2 knots. It all showed the challenge of these waters: not enough wind or much more than you can use. And back to the virtues of the trysail, I would have been very unhappy to see a 38 knot gust slam into the double reefed mainsail and I probably would have hove to immediately. The problem is that many of these events are unexpected and develop fast. They are not predicted by the grib files which are only snapshots at every 3 hours of what the computer model thinks will be happening. Even if the model is spot on, the grib file says nothing about the time between the snapshots. At least this wind was fair and we were headed NNE.

I woke up at 9 AM to find us headed north. Soon I had the boat moving more comfortably downwind, 30 degrees off the wind. I rolled out a bit of headsail which gave us a speed of 3.5 knots. There was scope for increasing sail later. For all my grumblings about the wind, at least they are predominately from the west. Back to the trysail issue, I'd be very leery of running downwind with the mainsail in this wind because I would expect the boat to constantly round up and overpower Jeff. And to risk a gybe would be unthinkable, meaning that I'd have to go on that deck and set up a preventer.

When I get back to Fremantle I'll get the spare mainsail out of the garage and put it up. Steve Hartley of Tasker Sails pronounced it a very good sail but couldn't guarantee that it would get me around the world, so I said 'Fine, you'd better make me a new one.' Out of that came the fancy stack pack with its lazy jacks and only two sets of reefing points in the sail. I'm pretty sure that I'm through with stack packs because of the problems that the lazy jacks present when raising the mainsail and the way in which they obscure the boom. The spare mainsail has the more traditional 3 reefing points and slides along the track of the boom, not loose footed as the stack pack version must be. I want a traditional clean system with no obscuring sail cover or lazy jacks bullshit. I'm quit happy to manually tie the dropped sail around the mast and put a traditional sail cover on it. I'll have the current mainsail refurbished and speak with Steve about putting slides along the foot and maybe even a third set of reefing point if it is practical.

I got a scare from the wind instrument: it stopped sending wind speed data to the chart plotter although it continued to send wind direction data. I figured that something had gone wrong with the rotating cups at the top of the mast but happily the wind speed data began to display again 10 minutes later. Very strange.

I visited the head to pump out my 2 liter ration of water for the day. The pump was almost back to normal in its ease of use. Somehow that olive oil with which I had liberally coated the stem must have worked its way through the seal and tube overnight. In future I'll make sure that I work both the head and the galley manual pumps regularly, giving them the olive oil treatment. Yes, I got by with 2 liters of water yesterday (and about 100 ml of pineapple juice left in the container) and had enough surplus for a second cup of coffee this morning. I cooked the spaghetti in a smaller pot and judged the amount of water beautifully, ending up with well cooked spaghetti and no surplus water in the pot. The only loss of water was as steam during the cooking process. Tonight it will be rice which is easier to judge.

Today has been the most temperate and pleasant day since before we descended below latitude 50S more than 40 days ago. The sun was shining brightly, the breeze was mild and relatively warm, and the cabin temperature was 66F.

At noon our position was 47S49, 48W40, giving us a n-n distance of only 40 miles in the direction 033T.

After the noon report I decided to take advantage of the warm conditions to have my first wash and change of clothes since Day 63, 29 December, when I put the Icebreaker wool tights on. I got out a fresh towel and under clothes that still had the pleasant scent that the Marina de La Paz laundry leaves on the clothes. I found a nice wool undergarment sweater that I had purchased in Opua, NZ. From another bag I dug out a pair of fresh thick alpine socks and track suit bottoms. The cockpit bath went better than I had expected. I pampered myself by using a top quality shampoo (Elvive by L'Oreal of Paris) that Brenda must have left on the boat. After drying off and getting dressed I felt great. While putting the dirty clothes into the laundry bag I thought of the magnificent job the Icebreakers had done in supporting me around the Horn. After they've been laundered I will carefully pack them in a plastic bag to await the next circumnavigation. (Yea, right!) Soon after I gave myself the second beard trim of the voyage.

Looking back, I must say that I was remarkably successful in keeping the clothes that I was wearing dry during the doubling of the Horn. I was always very meticulous about suiting up properly before going topside because I knew that one good splash of salt water would require a complete change of clothes. I was similarly successful with the bedding, particularly the blankets. No matter how tough the conditions were I always had a warm and dry place to sleep.

I've been seeing lots of birds in the last few days - hundreds. Yesterday I had a large group of small birds that seemed to be following the boat. It was a joy to see them in action: fast, agile, and able to alight on the water and take off with effortless east. With the help of Brenda's book on sea birds I think that I am correct in identifying them as diving petrels, such as the "Common Diving Petrel" and the "Magellan Diving" petrel. This afternoon they are back, accompanied by larger all-brown birds with white beaks that I would identify as "White Chinned" petrels. Such zest and carefree joy of living. Watching them would be good therapy for a troubled mind.

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Day 96 - Gas Cylinder Change

It was not a night for fast sailing. The wind was from the NNE in the low 20's and I didn't want to drive too hard against the rough sea, particularly in the pitch black night. We were now far enough away from the high latitudes to have normal nights.

In the morning the sky was clear, the sun was out, and the wind had backed. I rolled out more sail and at last we were making a modest amount of northing and a not-too-great but acceptable 3.3 knots.

I went to the head to pump out the first daily jug of water from the port tank and found the hand pump so stiff that I almost gave up the effort. I used a lot of olive oil to lubricate the plunger shaft and hopefully the pump will free up over time. The alternative is to switch on the water pressure pump, fill up the jug at the galley, then immediately switch off the pump again.

The wind stayed stronger than predicted and we sailed on a beam reach well into the afternoon. The sail and rigging seemed happy enough so I let the boat move at over 4 knots in an effort to make up for the recent slow going.

Before the noon report (which is a 3 PM local time) I decided to take advantage of the dry and not too rough conditions to remove the empty LPG gas cylinder from the lazarette and install the spare which I had been carrying from La Paz on the stern rail. I connected the cylinder up then brought it on line. As I was securing the cylinder with rope and shock cord my elbow hit the valve knob and gas came out. The gas was passing through the valve stem but when I turned the valve knob hard to the open position the leaking seemed to stop. I went back with a paint brush and soapy water and after trying very hard I did not see any gas bubbling out from either the cylinder valve or the hose connection. Like too many other things in this boat I'll have to wait and hope. Lack of gas would not be a show stopper but would certainly remove a lot of the comfort and pleasure of this cruise. I road tested the work by having my second hot drink of the day, a tall hot chocolate.

At noon our position was 48S23, 049W13, giving us a n-n distance of 67 miles in the direction 080T. The chart plotter was performing beautifully.

Late in the afternoon the wind died to 10 knots leaving us making 2.3 knots.

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Day 95 - Success with Chart Plotter

At nightfall there was a brilliant quarter+ moon and just to the right of it was our friend the comet, our companion for weeks now.

The evening's Sailmail brought good technical information from Arnold on the design of the Seatalk network. I ask his indulgence in my publishing his words which may be of help to others:

"The Seatalk bus consists of three wires that are connected to each device
on the net: 12V (red), GND (grey), and data (yellow).

The interface could not be more simple. A single wire (yellow) transmits
data between instruments. The wire is normally at 12V. When somebody talks,
the wire voltage bounces between 12V (binary 1) and GND (binary 0).
Technically, it's an open collector bus that is "pulled up" to 12V through
a resistor to indicate idle or 1, and is "pulled down" through a transistor
to indicate a 0.

I suggest you go to the Seatalk connectors in the comm closet and check the
following:

Red wires -- should be approximately 12V steady.

Grey wires -- should be 0V.

Yellow wires -- really need an oscilloscope for this. Check with the
multimeter anyway. If nobody is talking, it should be at 12V. If somebody
is taking it should be between 0V and 12V. After the DC check, change the
multimeter to AC function, low voltage. If somebody is talking I would
expect to see a small AC voltage.

The multimeter GND lead is connected to GND during measurements, of course.

If the red (12V) and grey (GND) wires look OK, I would try to disconnect
each device yellow (data) wire at the Seatalk junction box, one at a time,
to identify a bad device that may be corrupting the data bus."

Stephen sent me several messages containing the results of an internet search that he did for "Seatalk Failure" which were extremely useful and verified that I had been on the right track. (And a struggling amateur needs all of the validation that he can get!).

Several points stood out in my mind from this information: (1) ANY problem with a wire or connector can bring down the entire Seatalk network (2) I must heck that the autopilot black box is putting out 12V (3) Divide and conquer by isolating components from the Seatalk network.

With this information I went to bed determined to either fix or isolate the problem the next day, armed with a multimeter, wire cutting splicing equipment, fine sandpaper, the can of terminal cleaner, and lots of resolve. ("This ends NOW, Seatalk!") The ocean is a harsh environment for wiring and there was a good chance that corrosion had crept in somewhere.

The wind didn't even last the night. I was waken up by the heavy rolling of the boat, which meant insufficient wind and the headsail flogging back and forth. I got up and rolled it in and there we were, wallowing in the water. It was a a brilliantly clear night yet ahead of us on the horizon I could see regular flashes of lightning.

After 3 cups of coffee I began work on the Seatalk Problem.

I'll give the outcome up front so that anyone not interested in the technical details may skip "The Fix" section.

I would have to call it a total success with the chart plotter but a partial success with the system.

The chart plotter now displays position, heading, the COG/SOG data, the wind direction and speed, and the depth. So for the first time in weeks I am again able to monitor the boat at the nav station and no longer do I have to stick my head out through the companionway to look at the wind data.

The autopilot was the source of the problem and has been isolated from Seatalk. I will probably remove its 5A fuse to ensure that it is not energized.

To my surprise and disappointment the radar is still not functioning. It goes through the 60 second scanner warmup OK but when I give the TX command there is no rotation or imaging.

--------------- The Fix -----------------

I began the work with the principle that I need not investigate the wind & depth instruments or cabling because I had already isolated them with no result.

I probed the Seatalk network at the Raymarine junction box and got 9.8V on the red (R) and 0.73V on the yellow (Y). I switched on the multimeter to AC on low voltage as Arnold had suggested and got nothing on the red or yellow.

Going into the top of the junction box were two Seatalk cables: one from the autopilot (AP) and one from the front of the boat. The individual matching wires had been joined with solder and crimps. I withdrew the top wires from the junction box and found that the wires going into the lower end of the box were now dead. Going into the lower side were 3 Seatalk cables: one from the GPS at, one from the front of the boat, and one from the wind & depth instruments.

Of the two cables passing to the front of the boat, one had to go to the C120 and the other had to go to the depth transducer, though at this point I wasn't sure which was which.

I removed the 5A fuse from the AP and probed the fuse gap and got 12V.

I then did my first wire cuts: the R, Y, and G (ground) wires from the AP. I stripped the R and Y and probed to find 0.36V from the R.

I then cut and stripped the top wires going to the front and got a reading of 11.38V on the red. This had to be the C120 cable, and the source of power to the Seatalk network.

Leaving the three bottom sets in place (i.e. GPS, depth transducer, and wind & depth) I connected only the Seatalk wires from the C120 cable at the top, leaving out the AP wires. The chart plotter came alive, displaying everything.

I then decided to push my luck to see if reconnecting the AP wires would bring back its functionality and allow the C120 to once again see the flux gate compass and for the AP to work. It was worth a try because I had cut out several cable joins. I connected the AP cables and once again the chart plotter went dead. I withdrew the AP Y (data) wire and still the chart plotter was dead. Next I withdrew the R (power) wire and still the chart plotter was dead. Finally I withdrew G (ground) wire and the chart plotter came alive. Why the Seatalk ground cable of the AP causes a problem is beyond me. Perhaps something has gone wrong with the AP's power supply.

Back to the radar, I opened the access panel behind the C120 to make sure that I had not disturbed the radar cable when I looked into the area the previous day, but the plug is a heavy duty screw on type and solid as a rock. The area is so protected and dry (The cables are dusty.) that I saw no point in disturbing the connection. I had not run the radar since the hard passage around the Horn and it is possible that the heavy weather caused a problem up at the radome, or maybe even the cable running down the mast, though it is in its own conduit.

------------------- End of Fix Account ---------------------

So that has left me with full functionality of the C120 except for the heading, but no autopilot or radar. Most importantly, I have no reason for doubting that the AIS is working since it is a 3rd party product interfacing into the C120 via an NMEA 0183 interface and totally independent of Seatalk, which is working anyway. (I'll know when we encounter the next ship.)

I give my thanks to both Arnold and Stephen for their indispensable help in getting this vital system up and running again. Thanks fellows for your support.

As if on cue the wind began to get lively just as I had finished. Soon we were moving NE with a gentle wind and I went back below to put all of the tools and materials away. Within the hour it was drizzling and the wind had picked up to the mid 20's. I reduced sail and started the engine because the House bank was down to 12.0V.

The starboard water tank started making gurgling sounds as though it was about to go dry. I had been expecting it and I considered every day of water from that tank since the Horn a gift. The 140 liter starboard tank combined the water from La Paz and the rainwater that I had captured in the doldrums had supported me for 95 days. Now I had 140 liters of water in the port tank and 15 liters of La Paz water in reserve to get me Cape Town. I was fairly sure that I would be able to collect more rainwater once my mainsail was back up, but for now I had to assume the worst. I would reinstate the system of using the jug to hold myself to 2.5 liters of water a day, giving me 56 days at sea. Certainly the morale sustaining indulgence of all of the hot coffee and chocolate that I could drink which sustained me past the Horn would have to cease, since all that seemed to do was to push the fluids straight through me.

At noon our position was 48S34, 50W53, giving us a n-n distance of 69 miles in the direction 061T. In the last 3 days I had averaged a paltry 64 miles per day. At this rate it would take 50 days to make Cape Town. I needed to do better and I expected to.

I had been drizzling for hours and at one point I saw some serious looking clouds approaching. I dug out the spare shower curtain and spread it over the cockpit well in front of the binnacle to see if I could capture even a few liters of water. Unfortunately as all the other so-called rain since the doldrums it turned out to be more weak drizzle.

As darkness approached the sky began to clear and I was eagerly awaiting a predicted backing of the wind so that our course would alter more to the north than our current 100T.

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Day 94 - Modest Progress from Northerly Wind

There was a good strong wind overnight and we made reasonable progress. In the morning the wind veered and I had to put the boat into the wind, but not too hard because with the trysail we can't point too well. In any event I did not want to go hard to weather against the rough sea, This put us on a COG of W at about 3 knots.

This trysail is a mixed blessing. I woke up in the middle of the night with the wind unexpectedly up to 27 and 28 knots, which would have put too much load on the rig had the double reefed mainsail been up.

At mid morning we began to cross the edge of the continental shelf which is wide in this part of the continent and I noticed that there were many sea birds around.

Falklands Radio is fading fast. It is a medium wave service of 530 KHz with limited range. I enjoyed it while it lasted and am sorry to see it go.

At noon we were at position 49S04, 52W23, giving us a n-n distance of 66 miles in the direction 055T. In the past 24 hours the wind had gone from calm to too strong, generating rough seas from the north. It had been a relatively slow 2 days and Cape Town was a long 3200 miles away.

Two hours later the wind hit 30 and 31 knots, making it a Force 7 Near Gale. I rolled it most of the remaining headsail and we crept along at 3 knots taking a pounding from the regular breaking waves. It is difficult to baby the rigging and sails when nature will not cooperate.

By nightfall the high winds were finished and we were entering a period of 12 hours of steadily declining winds.

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Day 93 - Horn Doubled and Assessment

We had a rough night with the boat being pounded regularly by breaking waves. I set the chart plotter alarm for 3 AM local time but that failed to go off and of course it would fail because without GPS input the chart plotter does not know the time. (The C120 is called by Raymarine a "multifunction display" rather than a chart plotter, because it can display more than charts. At the moment the only service that I'm sure the C120 can provide is radar display.) I stuck my head through the hatch and saw a brilliantly clear sky full of stars. The wind was down to the mid 20's, but the sea was still rough. At the laptop chart plotter I saw that the boat had maintained its NW course and we were well above latitude 50S, meaning that we had formally doubled the Horn. This had no practical effect, but it meant that we had entered the roaring forties. At this point I was satisfied that we had rounded the Horn in all respects, in particular the dangers specific to the rounding, and that phase was behind us.

I woke up at 5.30 AM to a brilliant day, and with a falling wind over a falling sea it promised to be a day of heavy rolling and fretting sails. I dispelled the gloom of the latest gear failure of the C120 by thinking of the things that were still working. The rigging and sail survived the night with no apparent damage and the Monitor had done a brilliant job of steering. The spot forecast indicated no heavy winds for the next 3 days and after this day's lull of the wind I was hoping to get into a gentle routine of plodding our way to Cape Town.

Looking back on the impacts on the boat and crew during the doubling of the Horn, which took 27 days (Day 66/Jan 1 to Day 93/Jan 27) and I must say that we fared remarkably well. First of all, no really bad things happened: no rogue wave, no knockdown or rollover, no survival storm or "greybeard" waves. Discounting the torn headsail, broken inner forestay, broken Monitor control and trip lines, and autopilot problems, which either happened before the rounding or can be attributed to wear and tear rather than the passage round the Horn, the only tangible damage was the torn port D1 lower shroud and the loss of one empty fuel container. The life raft and Zodiac above it survived intact, as did most of the fuel containers on deck. Even the spray dodger survived without further serious damage: most of the rest of the starboard window was blown out and the port side retaining strap broke, but all of the canvas and the port window are intact and the dodger continues to provide valuable shelter to the companionway. I have to ascribe the good outcome to the benign season of the year, selection of the approach path to the Horn, and lots of good luck, particularly since I was not able to heave to properly.

I spent two hours looking into the chart plotter problem and got no result other than gaining more insight into the system. I removed the cover behind the C120 and saw that the connections being used are power, radar, Seatalk, and NMEA0183. Seatalk2 and DSM are not being used. The NMEA 0183 connection is for the non-Raymarine AIS transponder. Notably, there is no GPS input.

I then went into the communications closet behind the nav station and managed to open up a Raymarine junction box. Seatalk wires from the various Raymarine devices (3 wires per device) had been crimped together before connection to the junction box. There was no GPS input and then I realized that the Raymarine GPS antenna would have smarts in it to deliver its output via Seatalk, the same as the depth and wind devices. All of the corresponding Seatalk wires were spliced together, with the single Seatalk cable then going to the C120. I know from investigation that Arnold did earlier that Seatalk has a laughably simple structure and protocol, with no central control. So the question is why is the autopilot display reporting "Seatalk Failure" and the C120 not seeing any of the Seatalk devices? The only thing I can think of is that noise is getting into the system, either from a device or a bad connection. Regarding connections, they all looked OK to me and I jiggled them around while watching the C120 and got no success. I didn't go very far into isolating the autopilot from Seatalk largely because I didn't want to start cutting wires only to learn later that the problem was a simple one elsewhere. However, I did remove the fuse from the autopilot which should have made it dead in regard to the Seatalk network, and that got no result.

At noon we were at position 49S40, 53W48, making a n-n distance of 57 miles to 034T. We had been becalmed for 6 hours and were still waiting for wind.

With the impending light winds I thought that it was a good time to make the changeover to the mainsail. I dropped the trysail and stowed it in the cabin and fortunately I checked the main halyard up the mast before unfurling the mainsail. It was wrapped around the one step above the second crosstrees. I managed to free that but then noticed that there was a second wrap, between the first and second crosstrees, and it was behind a cord. I have a vague recollection of tying the loose end of that broken cord and I must have been too focused on the cord and not falling off that I didn't notice that I was trapping the main halyard behind a step. For now there was nothing to be done but put the trysail back up and wait for a quiet day so that I could go all the way to the top of the mast to sort things out. Until that calm and dry day came I would be sailing in a degraded mode. This step-cord business had caused me a lot of trouble and I must confess that it was self inflicted.

While all of this was going on fog began to roll in and the visibility dropped to less than half a mile. What had begun as a brilliant clear day had clouded up fast. Soon after the trysail was up and we were sailing to a feeble wind I began to hear a fog horn at about 5 seconds every 30 seconds. The sound was coming from ahead and it was getting louder. I was on the wrong tack anyway so I started the engine, tacked the boat, and began to move to the ENE. The horn still seemed to be getting closer so I turned on the radar. The radar went into standby mode OK but when I hit the command to transmit nothing happened. I remember being told that with modern radar all of the processing is done at the dome, so possibly the data was being passed to the C120 via the Seatalk protocol. It's a shame. I was planning to use the radar as a substitute for the AIS ship detection system. The only thing that the C120 may be useful now was for displaying AIS targets because the data is via the NMEA 0183 connection. To me this had exposed the big flaw of an integrated system.

OK, so I decided to hail the fog horn via VHF 16. "Fog horn at approximate position ... do you copy?" After 2 minutes of no response: "Fog horn approximately 185 miles NE of East Falklands, do you copy?" A minute later he responded. I explained that I was on a small yacht, gave my position, course and speed, then asked him if I would be OK. He said No Problem and that he was 3 miles away. I gave him my thanks.

By then a light wind had established itself and we were moving roughly NE at 2.5 knots and now that we were moving again I felt better, but I was determined to get the mast step problem solved as soon as possible.

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Day 92 - Chart Plotter Failure

We sailed all night with a steadily moderating wind. First thing in the morning I rolled out more sail to compensate for the 12 kt wind. The lull would last about six hours then the wind would build up again to a near gale.

I calculated that in the 6.4 days days in which we had sailed the 531 miles from the Horn we had averaged 83 miles a day. This included one slack day of very little progress and of course the challenge of getting around the Falklands. It increased my confidence in my assumption of 80 mile per day for the run to Cape Town, given that it would be a straighter run and I would be using the mainsail.

Not long after morning coffee I ventured to the foredeck for the first time in 2 days. All looked well. Both of the jury rig stays were still taut and the rest of the rigging looked OK. The headsail was still battling on with no obvious deterioration, and the fuel containers seemed secure. I started the engine early to get that out of the way before the wind strengthened. It looked like we would be becalmed for much of the following day and I hoped to seize that opportunity to do the bulk of the cord work on the mast steps and swap the large gas cylinders. Fortunately the cords at the top section of the mast were still intact, though I would still like to replace them with stronger cord. If I could replace the cords from the second crosstree down I would then be in a position to raise the mainsail.

I got up after a short nap, had a look at the situation outside, and decided to try to go up the mast and lay the mast step cord barrier from the first crosstree down. Even though the wind was at 17 kt and there was still a bit of a swell I thought that I could do it. It was the lower rungs that were almost totally unprotected and dealing with them would allow me to raise the mainsail if that became urgent. It was not an easy task. During the climb up the front of the mast facing aft and the actual work, the rolls were constantly pushing me hard sideways trying to spin me off the mast. This required clinging on hard, stiff as a board, during the rolls and trying to make progress between the rolls. I managed to do it and when I got back on the deck I was wringing wet with sweat. Down below I shed the foul weather gear and two sweaters in an effort to cool off. The thick and strong cord was perfect for the job. Had I used this in Fremantle when preparing the boat I have no doubt that it would have lasted throughout the entire circumnavigation. I would have to pick a very calm day for the work above the first crosstrees. This would require having no sail up the mast because at the first crosstree I must move to the other side of the mast to get past the radar dome.

At noon our position was 50S29, 54W37, representing a n-n distance of 92 miles in the direction 050T.

In the late afternoon the autopilot control at the binnacle began to audibly alarm and would not stop. Up to then it was always quietly displaying "Seatalk Failure" on its display. I powered down the C120 and threw the breakers and when I restarted the C120 was not plotting our position. For weeks it would lose touch with the GPS every 15 minutes or so but come back after a few seconds. This time it had gone hard.

I will rely on Dave's laptop software for navigation. In the computer is also C-Map. I also have two backup computers. I'll keep the C120 switched on in case it is still able to display AIS targets. However, without GPS input the C120 will not be able to calculate intercepts and warn me of danger. I will look into all this again on a calm day. I'll have to clear the port quarter berth area as well as the crossover between the quarter berths to enable me to trace the GPS and autopilot cables. I'd like to completely isolate the autopilot and ensure that the GPS cable is properly connected to the chart plotter.

At 7 PM local time we were sailing in a 30 knot wind. According the Falklands Radio the high winds were the result of a low passing toward the east, yet the sky was clear. Maybe we were in a squash zone. We kept sailing through it and held our course, making about 3 knots under the trysail and a greatly reduced headsail.

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Day 91 - Plans for Next Phase

The wind began to calm down during the night. Even though I was only 27 miles off the coast I could see no lights from the shore. Even when I had Stanley to the beam I could not see even the lights of the port. When I arose at 11 AM local time the sky was clear and the wind had shifted to the NW. I altered sail to take us back to a NE heading and looked back towards the Falklands coast 32 miles away and still saw nothing. I suspect that the Falklands are rather low lying with no tall mountains.

It would have been very easy to call in on Stanley. Several days before, Brenda and Stephen had provided me with everything that I needed to know about the entry procedure, the services provided, the charges, etc. This even included a message from the Stanley harbor master which included the name of a person who would coordinate whatever repair services were available. My C-Map chart showed the harbor to be well sheltered and even showed the floating Customs pontoon. Unfortunately, helpful and obliging as the island seemed to be, it could offer no formal commercial repair services such as rigging and sail repair. Some repairs could be done by private citizens, but no specifics were given. Nothing could be promised on spares. Everything could be ordered from the UK but of course that would take time. I would be allowed only 24 hours on the Customs pontoon and thereafter would have to either lease a mooring or ride at anchor, and I didn't relish the prospect of relying on the Zodiac in the cold and damp climate for my transport to shore. After thinking about it overnight I decided that my situation was not dire enough to warrant a stop. By then I had jury rigged my second rigging failure and I thought that I had a good shot at making it to Cape Town without mishap.

But with characteristic ambivalence, on this bright and sunny morning I had second thoughts. If I could confirm by radio that water and diesel were available and I could dispose of my garbage at the pontoon a 24 hour visit might be warranted. I might even be able to procure more bulldog U-clamps and wire. Given my current position it would cost me only 2 days. But I decided not to break my momentum and would push on. I had sufficient diesel, had yet to tap into my port tank with 140 liters of water, and the garbage was plastic material that had all been washed and had no odor. The key issue was the state of the sail and rigging and time would tell if I had made the right decision. It would have nice to have stepped ashore at Stanley and met some of the residents but on the other hand there would be the grim satisfaction of knowing that I had made it all of the way to Cape Town non stop in spite of my problems. Ambivalence. That's a concise word that says that you want it both ways.

Then I started looking ahead. I was approximately 3500 sea miles from Cape Town. With the fair current and prevailing wind I thought that a conservative 80 miles of progress a day, representing an average of only 3.3 knots, was a realistic assumption for my planning. (Don't forget that there will be days of total calm, according to the pilot chart. In Fremantle I had planned on 120 miles per day in this leg.) That represented another 45 days at sea, for which I had enough water and diesel on board. I had plenty of food and other provisions.) To maintain that modest average I was willing to push the boat a little harder. After consulting once again the excellent current and sail route charts of "Ocean Passages" my plan was to head NE until I reached latitude 42S then proceed east on that latitude, passing south of Gough Island which is at (40.3S, 009.9W). Once past Gough Island I would head ENE making directly for Cape Town a further 1400 miles ahead. According to the chart I would have the strong Southern Ocean Current behind me most of the way, which could be worth 20 miles per day. The climatic chart for January showed a permanent high centered between S. America and Africa at 30S. The average number of days per month that the wind would be Force 7 (28-33 kt) or higher was 5. The pilot chart showed the winds to be generally favorable. From that look at the pilot chart I reduced the variation in the chart plotter to only 4 degrees west. I had no complaints about the prospects of the sailing conditions to Cape Town.

At noon our position was 51S27, 56W30, giving us a n-n distance of 105 miles in the direction 032T. It was a bright sunny day and we were making about 4.5 knots to the NE off of a 22 kt NW wind. We were almost 60 miles away from Stanley.

Total engine hours was at 202. I had done a oil and filter change at 72 hours so I would be able to wait until I got to Cape Town before changing the oils and filter and still be well within the prescribed time.

At 10 PM local time we were still moving nicely to the NE with a moderate NW wind. I wasn't sure whether what I had been experiencing was normal to the area or I had been just plain lucky, but the winds for the last 3 days had been very good to us.

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Day 90 - Passing the Falklands

It has taken me less than 12 hours to get hooked on Falklands Radio. The first thing that I did after waking this morning up was as always to check the boat's position, course, speed. The second thing was to look through the hatch to make sure that the headsail and the shrouds had survived the night intact. The third thing, almost without conscious thought, was to turn on the radio. I don't think that "pop" is a good description of the station. To me it sounds like a mixture of ABC and News Radio in Australia, or like the Canadian CBC. Last night I heard part of the nightly current affairs and business reports from the BBC and did a lot of catching up on the Euro (and world!) financial crisis. (I'm with Angel Merckel. The Greeks have to do more. How can you run a modern economy where the only tool against flagrant tax dodgers is "name and shame" rather than prosecution and confiscation.) I'm amazed at the amount of normalcy the radio service has brought to the atmosphere of the boat after 3 months at sea.

The boat moved well all night. I set the alarm to wake me up in 3 hours because we were due to pass 23 miles south of Beauchine Island and I wanted to make sure that a totally unexpected wind shift was not sending us to the north. All was OK so I slept on for another 4 hours. In the morning I saw with great pleasure the surprisingly straight track of the boat to the east (085T). Even with reduced sail we were moving at over 4 knots in front of a wind in the low 20's. Beauchine Island was well behind us and we were half way across the southern shore of East Falkland island and 90 miles SSW of Stanley. I saw no reason for changing course at this point, particularly because it would keep me outside of the 200 meter contour line around the Falklands, but if a 20 degree veering of the wind came as expected in a few hours I would gybe the boat and head NNE. The latest spot wind report indicated no winds stronger than 26 knots for the next 4 days, so I was hopeful of reaching 50S without encountering heavy weather.

At 10 AM local time (UTC-3) the boat's track confirmed that the expected veer of the wind had occurred and I gybed the boat. The course seemed to be 040T which would give me good clearance of the Falklands. In time the track on the laptop chart plotter would confirm the actual course. (It turned out to be 30T, still OK.)

In the late morning the wind strengthened to the mid-20's and waves began to slam into the side of the boat partly, I suspect, because we were sailing into shallower waters. I shortened the headsail to maybe half the size of the trysail to protect it and to reduce the load on the rigging. With a strong fair wind and following sea I saw no need to stress the boat and in fact we were still doing over 4 knots. This conservatism would have to be my approach all of the way to Cape Town.

At noon our position was 52S56, 58W00, giving us a n-n distance of 89 miles in the direction 073T. We were 45 miles east of Beauchine Island and 35 miles from the southern most latitude of East Falkland Island. The boat was taking a pounding from the waves in a 29 knot wind and I suspected that this would be a very dangerous location during a gale, given that we were at the top of a steeply rising ocean bottom. An even more dangerous place would be the Burdwood bank to the south, which rises from over 1000 meters to less than 200 meters then falls again. Pachuca had sailed past the west side of it then turned east and ran along the the depths between the bank and the shallows around the Falklands.

At last light Pachuca was north of the southern shore of East Falkland and was beginning the 60 mile passage along its east side. Even though the coast was less than 40 miles away I had not been able to see the island because it was shrouded in cloud and mist. It had been a much rougher day than I had anticipated. The wind had been a bit higher than predicted but it was the ferocity of the sea that surprised me. A couple of times the boat was hit so hard that I checked the deck to make sure that the fuel containers were OK. I had been apprehensive about the passage past the Falklands because I knew of several boats that had gotten past the Horn OK only to be slammed hard near the Falklands. The wind was still a hefty 23-25 knots. I had stayed in the cabin most of the day, venturing out only for quick dashes to run the engine or adjust Jeff's airvane. I was hoping for some relief when we got into the lee of East Falkland.

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Day 89 - Moving well to the east

I retired for the night with a small amount of headsail in a 10 knot breeze and woke up several hours in a 31-32 knot wind. I saw on the plotters that the wind had backed and we were now headed west of North. It was drizzling outside. The grib file predicted that the new wind direction would persist for many hours so it was worthwhile to gybe because we needed to move to the east. I took my time getting suited up hoping that the wind would settle down, but it didn't so topside I went. It's amazing how quickly the sea can be whipped up into a frenzy. I rolled in the headsail, tightened the trysail sheets, then tried to use the Monitor wind steering to turn the boat but it wasn't even coming close to budging the boat from its beam reach; so I had to revert to my usual practice of disengaging Jeff and turning the boat manually. Even with the wheel hard over it took about a minute to respond.

While I was tidying up the lines I saw a light on the horizon and figured that it was probably a fishing boat out of the Falklands. However, the chart plotter reported it as another passenger ship, the Artania, also bound for Ushuaia. She was headed my way and would be passing too close for comfort so I hailed her on VHF 16. I told the man that I was a small sail boat about 5 miles ahead of him and he responded that the distance was actually 4.4 miles. I explained that I was making only about 3 knots and could I leave it up to him to avoid me. He told me not to worry. She passed less that one half mile off the port beam, all nicely lit up. I noticed afterward that her heading had changed from 221T to 218T.

The wind did settle down to about 20 knots so I rolled out a bit of headsail. We were now making 3.5 knots to the ENE. I was very happy with this course and the prospects of holding it for most of the day because we needed to move 4 degrees to the east in order to pass on the east side of the Falklands.

For the second consecutive day I tried to get a weather fax out of Rio and got no signal. Their schedule must have changed since Aug 2010. Just for the heck of it I tried CBV in Chile and got a beautiful signal. I revisited their coverage data and realized that contrary to my earlier impression, all of their weather faxes cover the waters on both sides of South America down to almost the pole. I take back all what I wrote earlier about their coverage. I think that I took 80S to be toward the equator rather than the pole. The coverage of their weather faxes is from 10S-80S and 030W-130W. I had been missing out on a valuable resource but would now start using their service until I crossed 030W. I would also start trying Rio at random times.

I spent an hour teasing out long lengths of heavy cord from the lazy jacks that I had brought down many weeks earlier. In La Paz I had tried to do the right thing by replacing the cords running from the mast steps to the shrouds designed to present a barrier to halyards that might want to wrap around the steps. Unfortunately the cord that I used was too light and much of it broke in the gales. I would have been better off leaving the old cord up. Anyway, the only heavy cord that I had on board was what I recovered during that hour. The hard part would be going up the mast and replacing all of the cord from the top of the mast down to the boom. Obviously I would choose the time carefully. This was a very important task because it would be a dangerous problem were the main halyard to wrap around a step while trying to reduce sail in rough weather.

At noon our position was 53S20, 060W24, giving us a n-n distance of 63 miles in the direction 068T. The distance was not great due to the weak winds but at least it was in the right direction. We were making about 5 knots in front of a fair wind of 22 knots and the prospects were for continuing moderately strong winds (low 20's) for the next 24 hours. Hopefully in 24 hours we would be far enough east for the real objective: to turn northward and make haste for lat 50S. Matt had correctly stated that doubling the Horn meant passing from 50S on one side to 50S on the other, not 55S as I had stated earlier. But that wasn't so important to me. In my mind the lat 40's represented milder conditions and more reliable westerly winds. I wanted to get away from the clutches of any monster low that might arise from the pole. I never would have thought that I would ever consider the Roaring Forties a refuge from rough weather.

During the engine run I keyed into the HF radio the frequency that Brenda and Stephen had sent me for Falklands weather reports. (530.0 KHz). I expected to hear a government station silent most of the time except when issuing official bulletins. Instead I got the Falklands pop station which presents a mixture of music, interviews, local and overseas news, weather, etc. I heard a fascinating account of the history of the Argentina-UK dispute over the Falklands and in the news I learned that a deep water oil drilling rig has just arrived. From the weather report I learned that there is a big high to the west of Chile that is causing the SW air flow over the Falklands. The overseas news was centered around England with some other international items. The music seems to cover the entire spectrum - but then it would, wouldn't it, given that it's the only station in town. I'm going to enjoy listening to this station as I pass by, and I expect to learn a lot about the Falklands culture.

I downloaded two weather faxes from Chile. According to the second one, the "Ice Report", there is no ice anywhere near my position.

An hour after sunset I reduced sail for the night and we were still headed east at 3.5 knots before an 18 knot wind. We had begun the passage across the meridians of East Falkland Island.

An hour after that I stuck my head out of the companionway to look around and saw the comet to the northwest, bright and spectacular as before.

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Day 88

I had set the alarm for 0700 UTC in order to try to download my first weather fax out of Rio. However, I was up at 0600 after 4 hours of sleep to the sound and feel of wind. Up on deck in the gloom of what passes for night I saw on the instrument that the wind was at 17 knots. Fortunately the boat had managed to lay ahull beam to the weak wind so we were still pointing in the right direction. Soon we were making a satisfactory 4 knots to the NE. I used the precise position and time data that I had recorded to calculate that we had drifted 6.2 miles in 6 hours in the direction ESE, 102T, so the current in this area was not set strongly to the north as I had expected.

A few hours later I was settling in for a nap when the chart plotter gave an alarm. I went to it, zoomed in, and Yikes! there was a ship less than 3 miles away. I suited up, went topside, and saw that it was a big and modern passenger liner headed toward the Horn. The AIS report was that it was the "Seabourn Sojourn", bound for Ushuaia doing 12.7 knots on course 241T, almost the exact reciprocal of my 045T. Even though we were passing 3 miles apart my boat must have yawed enough to momentarily give an estimate of less than 2 miles of separation, i.e. within my security ring. I thought of that ship with its complement of passengers much smarter than me in visiting the end of the world in the luxury of a modern cruise liner with all that it has to offer. ("Hmm. Shall I do my banking then catch up with CNN News on the satellite internet this morning? No, I think that I'll visit the spa before a Steak Chateaubriand for lunch at the restaurant then visit the casino for a bit of gambling. Anyway, when does this place get to Ushawa or whatever it's called?")

I visited the side deck with tools for tightening the shroud that I had jury rigged the day before. To my surprise it was nice and taut, even when the boat rolled to its side. That increased my confidence in the fix a little bit more.

At noon our position was 53S41, 062W04, giving us a n-n distance of 49 miles toward 044T. We were still over 100 miles from the southern shores of the Falklands. It was slow progress, no doubt about it, but at least the weather was good. For 2 days the winds had been much lighter than predicted by the grib and spot files. Just before the noon report the wind died down again. I took measures with our sails and course and managed to keep the boat moving at less than 1.5 knots. But at least the current wasn't dragging us back. I was making an effort to move to the east enough to pass to the south of Beauchine Island in order to sail up the east side of the Falklands. Beauchine Island is only 30 miles from the coast of East Falkland and I didn't want to risk being caught near a lee shore by a gale.

I tried as an experiment to run downwind with the headsail stretched out on the whisker pole but the wind was too weak and kept overpowering the sail. It was worth a try.

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Day 87 - D1 Shroud Jury Rig and Depth Sounder OK

I had a good night's sleep in segments of 90 minutes when the timer would wake me up for a look around. When I got up for the day I found a beautiful morning with a clear sky, a tiny sliver of a moon, and the sun about to rise. The wind was light, below 10 knots, and the sea was calm, with no heavy swell. Perhaps the South American continent and Staten Island were beginning to act as a giant breakwater protecting me from the relentless heavy swell on the west side of the continent. It was so nice that I stayed in the cockpit looking around and then looking up at the lower crosstrees thinking about some clever ideas Bob Carrol had sent to me about supporting the lower mast until I could replace the D1 shroud. ("Why didn't I think of that?")

I heard a familiar chuffing sound to my left and saw that it was a large dolphin doing his thing. It made me wonder how many dolphins, sharks, and even whales have passed by the boat while I was totally oblivious down below. (I remember spotting 2 whales out half way to Tahiti only because I happened to be at the first crosstrees doing something.) I thought too how in contrast to the terrestrial wildlife where the animals bark or howl or whine or honk or screech or roar or twitter or whatever, the deep ocean is a largely silent world where it seems like every creature plies his trade as quietly as possible.

Then I went back to the shroud problem and came to realize something that should have been obvious from the beginning. The D1 ("Diagonal 1") is the lowest shroud whose function is to keep the mast from moving to the leeward side due to either leaning or bending and seems to be under an enormous strain when sailing hard. But it seemed to me that it doesn't work completely alone. Obviously the D2 and D3 on the windward side restrain the mast from leaning, but it seemed to me that the leeward D2 and D3 shrouds also provide support because as the mast tries to bend, the leeward crosstrees push against those shrouds which resist the movement. It seemed to me that the absence of a D1 shroud would therefore put extra load on the leeward D2 and D3, but not lead to a catastrophic loss of mast. Wishful thinking? Maybe. I wish that I could speak with a rigger about it.

But wait, there was more thinking. The weather fax out of Wiluna in Queensland was again completely unrecognizable as even a fax. Then I got the idea of trying the Wiluna station in Western Australia and presto, I got a grainy but quite readable fax. (I could see tight isobars and another front at "gale alley" on the lower west coast of Chile and felt sorry for any poor bastard in that area desperately trying to get to the Horn.) So it looks like I may have passed a watershed where my communications with Australia are now orientated to my east rather than my west.

I had had my day of rest and was feeling better. After breakfast of buttered toast I would begin work on the replacement of the D1 by digging out the replacement (at least an hour of hard work) and re routing the restraining line to the mast to wrap around the port D2 or D3 shroud instead of the damaged D1. (I could imagine leaning back on either the D1 itself or the rope on the port side, the D1 deciding to part at that moment, and over the side I'd go.) If conditions were still calm when all was ready then I would try to swap out the D1 this day.

I started to work after breakfast and before long I had everything ready for doing the shroud replacement. Conditions were still calm so I proceeded with the job. The difficult part of course was making the swap at the upper end. I loosened the damaged D1 at the deck then went up the mast trailing a cord with which I would pull up the replacement shroud. Around my neck was a shopping bag with tools and materials. I wore my safety harness so that I could clip on to a mast step while I did the work. At top end I secured myself to a mast step then secured the damaged shroud with a lanyard so that when I freed it by pulling out the rig bolt it would not go crashing down on the deck. Everything went pretty well according to plan. I removed the cotter pin from the rig bolt, pulled the bolt out, the shroud dropped a few feet, then I hauled up the end of the replacement shroud with the cord. It took a lot of one handed fiddling but I got the shroud on using the same rigging bolt and a new cotter pin. I climbed down to the deck to savor the last few steps in my triumph and discovered my blunder.

The replacement wire was much too long and as soon as I saw that it was thinner than the D1 wire I realized that in Hawaii it was the Cap shrouds (D3) that had been replaced, not the lower ones. I also noticed that the lower fitting through which the rigging screw fit was split at the top of one of its two sides. I resolved the problem by in effect shortening the cap shroud by cutting off a section and joining the two remaining parts with bulldog clamps. I had one spare bulldog clamp in the hold. The inner forestay had 7 clamps on it, two of which did not clamp two wires but were there to prevent the sail from being damaged. I recovered three clamps from the inner forestay, leaving it with 4. That allowed me to use 4 clamps for the new shroud join. The result is that the port D1 now has 5/16" wire with a break load 5700 kg instead of the prescribed 3/8" wire with a break load of 7200 kg. But at least I've got undamaged wire in that position that will do the job as long as it looks intact. If the wire fails I've still got the other cap shroud from which I cut the bottom off for the inner forestay.

I was very fortunate in being able to work in the calmest day I've seen since the doldrums. While I worked I saw a lot of sea life including tiny black birds the size of sparrows which I'm sure were storm petrels and a totally white animal about 10 ft long that glided under the boat a few feet below the surface. There seemed to be a constant presence of those large dolphin except that the last one I saw was so big that I'm thinking that it must have been a whale, but I don't know enough about the size overlap between dolphins and whales to be sure. We were totally becalmed, with the wind an unworkable 6 knots. But the sun was out, the sea was calm, I had lots of sea life to keep me company, I had managed to do something about the damaged shroud, and I could rest, relax, and enjoy life on the boat. I couldn't complain.

At noon our position was 54S16, 063W02, giving us a n-n distance of 57 miles in the direction 024T. We had been becalmed for several hours.

After a light lunch in the cockpit I started to go into the cabin for a nap and heard the same light buzzing sound that I had noticed the day before. I tracked it down to of all things the ST60+ wind display. It was working fine but I thought this might be a good time to loosen the panel and have a look behind the instruments. The first thing I did was to pull out the Seatalk cable thus isolating them from the network with no room for doubt. This had no effect on the autopilot's "Seatalk Failure" problem so as far as I was concerned I had eliminated either of the two companionway instruments as causes of the problem. Just before I put the panel back in place I noticed a broken wire going into the back of the depth sounder. I jiggled the one next to it and it broke off with no effort. There was the telltale green color of corrosion at the breaks. I got out my electrical kit, put fresh crimp on fittings to the three wires, plugged them in and bingo! the depth sounder was working again.

I then wondered if the autopilot display, very exposed at the binnacle, might have a similar problem. I loosened the display from the mounting and found that the wire connections to the back of the unit were fine. I jiggled them around and they seemed firm. With that I thought that I had eliminated another possible cause of the problem.

As if on cue, the wind started getting some life as I was finishing up. Soon we were on the move again to the north at a modes 2.5 knots with an 11 knot breeze.

Unfortunately the breeze died and toward the end of the day we were drifting again. We must have been caught in a counter current because we were drifting to the south at 0.5-1.0 knots. I recorded our position at 0000 UTC to calculate the amount drift in the morning. The early morning weather fax showed that we were sitting under a 1010 mb high.

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Day 86 - Past Staten Island

I woke up to find the boat heading ENE. Outside it was cloudy and drizzly and the wind was at about 10 knots over a calm sea. I decided to tack but there was not enough drive to cross the wind so I "wore ship" and gybed to the other tack. I found that for the second consecutive morning I had called the wrong shot and put the boat back on her original tack, harder to the wind, and with more headsail. This raised the apparent wind to 12 knots and soon we were making close to 3 knots to the NE.

Back at the chart table I finally got my navigation brain into gear. Ever since the Horn my goal had been to get around the NE corner of Staten Island and head north. Suddenly I thought "Wait a minute. After the gales you've been through you decided that you no longer had concerns about passing to the east of the Falklands." I zoomed out the laptop chart and could see that the NE course since the Horn had been fine all along. The grib file prediction indicated favorable and moderate winds for the next 24 hours so I was optimistic about making steady if not spectacularly fast progress.

We were on a port tack which in light of the damaged D1 shroud was now the weak side. It would be on a day like today, 10 knot breeze and calm sea but without the rain, that I would swap out the shroud. I would put the boat on the starboard tack and I had already worked out most of the other details in my head. But I first needed a quiet day or two to get some rest. After the excitement of the rounding and the hard previous day I was a tired old sea dog. I was hoping that this day would be one of those rest days.

Two hours later I woke up and had to scramble. The wind had backed and risen to 18 knots. I had a lo,t of headsail out and rolled half of it in then moved the sheet car forward on the track. Jeff could not cope and had us on a beam reach but that was fine because the wind had backed. I adjusted the sails and Jeff and the excitement was over. We were managing to do over 3 knots and I would adjust the sail to maintain that speed and no more. Just before returning to the cabin I looked forward and saw land. It appeared to be tops of mountains. Down below I saw that Staten Island was 36 miles away. Zooming in with the Google Earth images of the laptop navigation software I could see mountains, with a few patches of snow.W

At noon our position was 55S08, 063W46, for a n-n distance of 71 miles in the direction 045T. The distance covered was not large because of the light winds but it had been from a good direction giving us an excellent course. At noon the wind was up to 24 knots and would remain so until midnight. I wound he headsail right in to minimize stress on both the sail and the ailing shroud, and we were making about 3.5 knots. Staten Island lay 30 miles to the north and we were an a good course to pass it to the east. This was the last position that I expected to plot on the paper chart that ended at 063W. After this it would be back to electronic charts exclusively.

During the engine run I attended to both still cameras. For several days I had been unhappy with the state of their carry bags. They both felt damp and clammy even after sessions drying them in front of the heater. So today I spent 30 minutes kneeling in front of the heater with both cameras in had, rotating them as the hot dry air blew over them. Then I got two clean Ziploc bags and gave them a dose of hot air too. The I got two plastic food containers, rinsed them in fresh water, then dried them too in front of the heater. So both cameras are now in carefully sealed Ziploc bags inside plastic containers into which I put grains of rice which Stephen tells me can soak up moisture. I'll soak the camera bags in fresh water at first opportunity to make sure that there is no salt in them. The video camera was OK because it always travels in its own plastic container.

Then I attended to the poor computer mouse. On a port tack when the boat is leaning to the right the mouse keeps falling off the task and onto the floor because I keep forgetting to put it in the shelf to the left of the laptop when I do not have it in my hand. It must be a tough mouse because it is still working. Nevertheless I decided not to push my luck and have now tied the mouse by its cable to the shelf above the desk with a piece of shock cord. The idea is that when the mouse goes over the side it will be held in mid air by the shock cord.

There have been many sea birds in the neighborhood of the Horn and this area near the east end of Staten Island is teeming with them. They tend to be relatively large, undoubtedly a mixture of albatrosses and the larger petrels with a few shearwaters. One common visitor that I have managed to identify using the marvelous book on sea birds that Brenda left on the boat is the black-browed albatross. Yesterday morning the boat was visited by a group of 6 or 8 unusually small birds. From the distinctive white marks on their backs I would say that they were one of the "white rumped" storm petrel group, possibly Wilson's storm petrel. I'm pretty sure that I've seen some sooty shearwaters too. Unfortunately I have not seen any dolphins or whales yet, but I minimize my time on deck for safety and comfort reasons.

By the end of the afternoon we were clear of Staten Island which we had passed 5 miles off the coast, headed NE with the southern edge of the Falklands only 200 miles away. It was my intention to pass east of the islands, not far from the coast.

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Day 85 - Gentle Wind, Busy Day

I went to bed tired and relaxed after the Rounding celebration with the champagne and a big hot meal of rice and sardines in sauce. The tack was taking me SSE and away from the Horn and according to the night's grib file would back in a few hours, but one cannot put the welfare of the boat in the hands of a grib file so I set the alarm for 3 hours. I woke up to another beautiful dawn with a quarter moon not far above the horizon. The wind had indeed backed and the boat had made a nice curve in its track and was now headed NW. The wind was down to 17 knots and now that we were off the continental shelf the sea was the calmest that I had seen in days. The calmer sea meant that we could carry the downwind sails better. I let out more sail. It was a good feeling to have everything going our way. The eastern end of Staten Island was 130 miles to the NW. I could see quite clearly on the chart that as I made progress to the NW I would could expect more and more protection from any strong NW winds that might come screaming down the west coast. I then went back to bed.

I was up at 6 AM and over two cups of coffee I came to the conclusion that it was time to drop the trysail that had carried us so well through the rough weather in order to run more downwind with the headsail. I decided to put up the whisker pole to improve the downwind angle even more and calculated that it was best to stay on the current starboard tack. That led to a strenuous and sweaty two hours of running back and forth between the cockpit and the foredeck. I started off by lubricating the piston on the whisker pole with WD40, then connecting the lanyard for pulling back the piston when it was time to drop the pole off the sheet. Then I set up the pole on the ring and left the other end sitting on the rail while I went back and rolled in the headsail. Back on the foredeck I connected the sheet to the pole and returned to the cockpit to roll out the headsail. The really difficult part turned out to be the dropping of the trysail. I freed the halyard but the sail would not come down, no doubt because of the pressure on it from downwind running. I went back to the cockpit, sheeted in the trysail hard, then set Jeff to run us dead downwind. Still the trysail would not come down. Duh! I had released the topping lift and not the trysail halyard. I brought the boom back up with the topping lift then dropped the trysail with little trouble. However, tying it along the mainsail and boom was not easy. The problem was that I was working on the leeward side of a heavily rolling boat. Thus I had to face the center of the boat but the rolls were trying to force me backward over the side. It was a cycle of doing a little bit more, stiffening up like a board and hanging on during the next roll, the doing a little more work.

Back in the cabin I was disappointed with the result. Either I had miscalculated or the wind had shifted. A gybing with the whisker pole was in order. I was tired and sweaty but it was important to get the boat set up for the day so I immediately went back on deck. I had never gybed the whisker pole but then again there are many things that I had not done before this cruise. There were more lessons learned. The lanyard would not retract the piston for dropping the pole and I discovered that it is important that the loop connected to the piston be on the correct side of the sheet. I swapped the pole, connected it to the sheet, then went back to the cockpit to find that Jeff did not have enough way for steering the boat so from then on I had to helm as I went. Because we were so off the wind there was agitation at the sail and the pole dropped off the sheet. The lanyard that I had set up to fire the piston had wrapped around a deck cleat, become taut, and done its job. Another lesson learned. I set up the pole again, returned to the cockpit, and began to roll out the headsail only to find that I had made another very imaginative mistake: I had put the pole on the wrong sheet. So I wound the headsail back in then went forward and sorted it out.

The results justified all of the effort. That whisker pole is GREAT. I can run dead downwind with it in a moderate breeze and in the run to Staten Island it will save me many hours of sailing if the wind behaves as predicted. Who knows, those hours saved might save me from another battering by a gale. I can't thank Bob Carrol enough for encouraging me to get a whisker pole.

The day was turning out to be a pleasant one. After a few early rain showers the day became partly cloudy and sunny. The sea was a little lumpy but remarkably calm considering our position. We were ambling toward Staten Island at a gentle 3.5 knots running before a 13 knot breeze.

I decided to dispense with boat time altogether and set the ship's clock to UTC/GMT time. I had been using La Paz time which was becoming more inappropriate as I moved east, and I saw no point in making clock adjustments as I crossed time zones. My "noon" reports have been based on La Paz time and correspond to 1800 UTC/GMT. I will continue issuing my noon reports at that time.

At noon our position was 55S59, 065W16, giving us a n-n distance of 88 miles in the direction 084T. We were making about 4 knots in the direction of the NE tend of Staten Island 95 miles ahead.

I decided to take advantage of the clear weather and relatively calm sea to do a fuel transfer. It's messy business without a proper fuel pump but I got it done. However, it took only 17 liters and my records show that I've put 35 hours of running time on the engine since the last top up. Either I did an intermediate transfer that I didn't record or the crossover pipe that joins the two tanks cannot keep up with the rate at which I filled the starboard tank. I would find that surprising because I ladle the fuel in from a bucket at about a liter at a time. The only way to find out is to do another fuel transfer soon. I have to be sure that I am at a known state, and without a fuel gauge or any way to plumb the tanks, full tanks are the only certainty.

The forecast was for a period of light winds from the north so I decided to put away the trysail and use the mainsail. Looking up I saw that several of the cords that prevent halyards from wrapping behind the mast steps had broken, so I had to go up the mast above the radar and patch things up. It's just as well that I went up because I found two broken wires on the port D1 shroud, the lower stay that goes to the bottom of the first crosstree. I was discouraged. The entire rigging was new when I sailed out of Fremantle 3.5 years ago. In Hawaii both forestays and both D1's were replaced. In Port Townsend the headstay was replaced yet again because of a serious mistake that the rigger in Hawaii had made that made me very lucky to make it to Pt Townsend without losing the mast. (He made a modification to the furler and put one screw in too far so that when I worked the furler the screw scored the wire. When this was discovered in Pt Townsend there was a neat score 2 or 3 mm deep completely around the wire.) Fortunately the only spare stay remaining on the boat is one of the D1's replaced in Hawaii. I'll need a day or two to make dig out that spare D1 and make sure that everything is in order with it, then will swap out the damaged wire when I get a very calm day. In the meantime, I'll have to stick with the trysail.

I have a long way to go to Cape Town and now I'll be babying the rigging as well as the headsails all of the way. This will cost me a lot of time but the important thing is to make it to Cape Town in reasonable shape. I do have one big thing going for me: the mast is big, heavy, and strong. The list for Cape Town keeps growing, and completely re rigging the boat is now on the list. Cape Town is about 4000 sea miles away, in contrast to the 6000 sea miles between La Paz and the Horn. However, the run is much more straight forward that was the La Paz - Horn segment. Averaging 3.3 knots for only 80 miles a day would require about 50 days.

I needed to resolve the fuel issue so I went through another refueling run. I managed to put in another 30 liters using the port tank filler. The tanks were really full this time because fuel was coming out of the breather. That's a hefty 47 liters of fuel in one day. The fuel situation with the Horn behind us is good. Both tanks are full, representing 140 liters of diesel. On deck are another 30 liters. The plan of carrying fuel on deck was a success and I don't know what I would have done without that extra fuel.

It was getting late when I finished the refueling (which included a lot of cleanup) and I noticed that we were now heading E rather than NW. That meant that the expected wind shift had happened. While the engine provided way for Jeff to continue steering I rolled in the headsail then dropped the whisker pole. I then hoisted the trysail again and rotated Jeff's air vane to put us beam to the wind. I rolled out a bit of headsail and set the sheets of the trysail and when it was time to shut the engine we were already sailing to the new wind.

It had been a busy day with no naps and no lunch, but I felt that I had taken good advantage of the gentle conditions, particularly to top up the diesel tanks and assess our fuel position. The wind had been very gentle all day and as the semidarkness approached we wer making maybe 2.5 knots against a wind of less than 10 knots. The sea was amazingly calm, with just a low, slow, and gentle swell.

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Day 84 - Round The Horn

Normally I sleep until 2 AM when it is time to prepare for the weather fax. This night I set the timer for 90 minutes so that I could check our position vs Diego Ramirez just after midnight. I had made a subtle adjustment to Jeff and yes, we would clear the island comfortably. Then on the chart plotter I saw the grey symbol of an AIS target It was the Lovina, a tanker, headed for Rio and 50 minutes away. He was a big brute, with length of 797 ft and beam of 140 ft, making 13.4 knots on course 091T. The chart plotter was constantly calculating the intercepts of our two vessels, which was continually changing as Pachuca varied her speed and heading from moment to moment as she yawed and pitched while dealing with the waves. The estimated closest point between us varied from 2 miles down to a few hundred feet. There were two ways to deal with this: make a subtle course change or keep an eye out for the ship. A ship passing a half mile away does not look nearly as scary in actual sight than it does on the chart plotter screen. Soon the "Dangerous Target" alarm started going off whenever the chart plotter calculated that the tanker would penetrate my 2 mile diameter safety ring within 24 minutes. This was good, because it would have woken me up.

I elected to suit up and go topside to sight the vessel and take manual control of the wheel if it was required. I turned on my VHF radio for possible emergency communication. From the cockpit I was amazed at how close the tanker was. We were on an almost parallel course which was not surprising, given that we were both trying to round the Horn. I hailed him on the VHF radio: "Tanker Lovina, Tanker Lovina, do you copy?" I got an immediate calm and polite response from a gentleman with a Spanish accent. "Good morning. I am a small sail boat off your starboard side. Do you see me? Over." His response was "Yes, I have you on my starboard side." "Thank you sir, have a good day." He wished me a good day too and the conversation was over. I could see that the tanker would cross my bow so I altered Jeff to take me 5 degrees to starboard. This opened the intercept to a steady 1 mile or so. Lovina was doing 13.4 knots to my 4.5 so even though we appeared to be running neck and neck only a half mile apart I knew that she would cross my path well ahead of me. Even though I had gone to bed at dusk 90 minutes earlier it was now a beautiful dawn in a partly cloudy sky and I'm sure that between Pachuca's tricolor at the top of her gyrating mast and her red trysail the Lovina would have had no trouble in seeing us. That was the first sign of human activity that I had seen in weeks.

For me the "night" was over. I put the kettle on for coffee to prepare for the coming day. We were well on the continental shelf with Diego Ramirez 20 miles off the starboard bow and the Horn 65 miles ahead. We had a fair wind of 20 knots and were moving well. I was confident that we would round the Horn in good daylight.

I tried to download a weather fax at 2.30 AM but it was a hopeless cause. The image was just a mass of random black and white pixels. I'll give up on weather faxes out of Australia for a while will try station PWZ-33 out of Rio. It provides surface analysis for the SW Atlantic Ocean.

The area had plenty of sea birds both in quantity and variety. This was not a surprise given the relatively shallow waters, proximity to land, and the nutrient-rich waters rushing by. The wave pattern was different too. The waves seemed shorter and faster, no doubt due to the relatively shallow water.

At 10 AM I went out for a look and saw land. I probably could have seen two hours earlier had I bothered to look. My part of the sky was relatively clear but to the north and east, over land, it was cloudy and misty. Seeing the mountains was a spooky sight after the solitude of the open ocean. I was headed slightly to the north of the Cape so an hour later, after putting a pan of bread dough in the oven, I gybed 23 miles from the Cape. After the gybe I took bearings to confirm what I thought I was seeing. Exactly to the north was the False Cape. Then sweeping to the right were the Hermite, Grevy, and Wolloston Island groups. At bearing 040T was a mountain that from the Google satellite photo I was fairly sure was on Wolloston Island. And to the right I was fairly sure that I was looking at Cape Horn. The bearing of 073T conformed to what the chart indicated. From my vantage it looked cone or dome shaped.

At noon our position was 56S07, 067W52, giving us a n-n distance of 103 miles in the direction 079T. We were 22 miles WSW of the Horn and at the SE course we were making we were approximately 23 miles from the meridian of the HORN, which would mark the official rounding.

After 2 hours I could see that the wind was subtly but steadily veering, so I gybed back and I could now just lay the Horn. Unless there was a wind shift I expected to get within 5 miles of the Horn before gybing back. To the NE of the Horn were some tiny islands which made the present course untenable even if I could just get by the Horn.

As we closed in on the Horn I went on deck and hoisted the Australian flag with the Fremantle Sailing Club Burgee underneath it. I was tempted to also hoist the autographed SCAMP pennant that Simeon Baldwin of Port Townsend had entrusted to me but I didn't want to risk losing it in the wind. Simeon can know that the pennant went around the Horn nice and cosy in a Ziploc bag. I had also planned to hoist Victor's storm jib for the rounding but without a functioning inner forestay that was not possible. Nevertheless Victor can know that his boat Chiquita's storm jib has been round the Horn.

When we were just within 10 miles of the Horn I managed to get a reasonable video of the flags with the Horn dead ahead. From the angle that I was approaching the Horn its profile was the classical one depicted in most photos, with a gentle slope on the left getting steeper to match the angle of the right side. However, the sea was becoming so rough that I gybed soon after to head for deeper water. At this point I had yet to cross the meridian of the Horn but that would come soon. Within an hour of the gybe the sea became noticeably calmer.

On 19 January 2012 at time 00:10:12 UTC/GMT the sailing vessel Pachuca crossed the meridian of Cape Horn and formally made the rounding of the Horn. I celebrated with a half bottle of French champagne (Piper-Heidsieck brut) that Jean Davies of Port Townsend had provided for the occasion. (Thanks Jean, superb champagne!) I drank toasts to Jean and her Blackberry the Cat, then to everybody who has followed this adventure.

There is plenty of time for me to reflect on this event in more measured words than I am capable of now. However, I will utter the two words that best describe my feelings at the moment: gratitude and thanks. I am grateful to life for allowing me this opportunity and for actually allowing me succeed. And I give my thanks to all who have followed this adventure and have given their support, often with very practical advice.

I don't claim to understand the psychic and spiritual realms, even though I know that they are there and very real. Having said that, I will say that wasn't alone in this. I had company and I had help.

Enough said for now.

Love Ya All, Folks.

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Day 83 - Closing In

Last night I spotted one of the fuel containers on the port rail on its side. I ventured to the side deck and found that it was an empty one, held on by cord around its handle. It seemed very comfortable there, protected from the wind by the two wooden planks used for securing the line of containers and rather than fiddle with the knots while exposed the weather I left it as is. Down below my attempt to heat water came to a halt when the gas cylinder finally gave up the ghost so once more I suited up and was soon laying down in front of the lazarette feeling in the dark for the swap over valve. Just in time I remembered to shut off the empty cylinder before opening the fresh one. That little cylinder will support me for weeks until I find a calm day in which to swap the large cylinders. The empty cylinder will replace the full one on the stern rail but I'll have to figure out a different way to secure it since it does not have a mounting bracket.

When I got up for the 2.30 AM weather fax the worst was over. We would continue to have gale force winds for another 3 hours but the trend was downward. I could tell that the boat had taken some terrific wallops while I was asleep because the computer mouse which I thought I had secured had been thrown across the laptop and was dangling by its cord. The computer had stretched out its restraining shock cord as I had expected. There was water on the companionway landing and galley floor indicating that water had flooded through the main hatch.

The weather fax was a failure. The signal had been steadily degenerating over the past weeks to the point where I could barely make out the big and important things, and this morning there were was no recognizable signal. I didn't hear the warning tone, I couldn't see the characteristic wave pattern, nothing. I think that I am just too near the South Pole for communication with Australia. The loss of the fax was not too important at this point because the distillation of the weather fax data as expressed in grib and spot files was more useful in these close quarters.

I stuck my head out briefly through the companionway and everything looked OK. The wind was still gusting to over 35 knots. I decided to return to bed, the best place to be in a hove to boat.

I woke up at 6 AM to find the wind down to 20 knots. There was blue sky and sun. Time to start sailing again. After a big bowl of rolled oats (with powdered milk and honey) I suited up and went topside. I noticed that I had lost a fuel container from the starboard rail, which was surprising because that had been the lee rail. I'm pretty sure that it was an empty container and I'll be able to confirm this when I take an inventory.

I gybed the boat, set some sail, put the boat on a heading, and then engaged Jeff to take over the steering. One reason why I pamper myself with rest and food is to be 100% functioning when a crisis comes up. Today it was Jeff's turn to give me a scare. Jeff would not hold course. He looked like he was working but always would let the boat slowly round up to a beam reach. Then I looked back and noticed that the water paddle was not locked down and was bobbing up and down in the water. The trip line to free it from lock was broken too. I fetched the boat hook from the cabin and used it to force the paddle down into the lock position. The paddle would reach the lock position but would not lock in. Gulp. Any problem with the locking mechanism would be extremely difficult to fix or work around because it was all only 3 inches above the waterline and bobbing in and out of the water constantly. I had visions of hand steering the boat around the Horn.

I rolled in the headsail and let the boat heave to under trysail then clipped on and went over the back rail onto the Monitor frame to have a look. I couldn't do much with my hands, particularly with the danger of losing a finger when the paddle straightened into the lock position with a thud. However, using my boot somehow I got it to lock. (My leg went into the water up to my calf but no water found its way to the inside of my boot. I'm very satisfied with my wet weather gear.) Back at the wheel I still had trouble getting Jeff to steer. Looking back I noticed that the water paddle was swinging with full travel in one direction but very little in the other, even if I tried to force it the other way manually. Back over the rail I went again, being extra careful because we were now under sail making over 4 knots. The quadrant was OK and none of the welds or metal supporting it had failed. Whatever may be wrong would have to be in one of the hidden parts of the mechanism that I didn't fully understand. I returned to the wheel and worked more with Jeff and when I looked back I was happy to see full travel by the water paddle. This had been a case of lack of confidence causing me to scare myself. Later I realized that the night before for the first time during this voyage I unclipped the steering lines from the wheel hub. That may have been a mistake because it removed a restraint on the movement of the paddle during the gale.

It all took an hour but by 7.30 PM we were on the move to the SE doing over 4 knots. The wind was expected to back taking me more to the east and following the edge of the continental shelf. There would be a point when the wind would veer slightly an if at that point I could lay the Horn I would steer onto the continental shelf directly for the Horn. This would take me near Isla Diego Ramirez. The latest spot report for 56S, 072W predicted westerly winds for the next 4 days, and at only one time over 30 knots (30.2 knots). Let's hope that this transpires. I knew from the experience of the last 2 days that once I got to the Horn I would be sheltered from those gales winds sweeping down the west coast. The conditions in this area are counter intuitive. The further south one goes the weaker the NW winds because they spread out to the east once they clear Tierra del Fuego. Similarly all the data that I've been seeing in the last week indicates that conditions are much gentler at the Horn than here in what I call Gale Alley.

I was thinking last night that the better play to have made would have been to sail in the gale in a broad reach directly for the Horn. Conditions would have steadily improved as we got under the lee of Tierra del Fuego. That would have saved probably 3 days of sailing. The problem is that it would have required many hours of hand steering and I would not have wanted to risk exhaustion in close waters with the strong current in rough conditions. (I have twice hand steered solo a boat to the point of hallucination and it is neither pleasant nor safe.) This is a case where a crew of two would have been able to make much better progress. Having said that, the 4 hours of hand steering that I did do paid off big dividends. It got me 12 miles farther south and put me far enough off the continental shelf that I could allow the boat to heave to pointing toward the east, gaining me 2.5 miles every hour.

Incidentally, yesterday's position report which I posted shortly after my 4 hours at the helm was not accepted, and rightly so. I filed it for the 15th instead of the 16th as it should have been. This is the kind of mistake made that one makes when tired.

At 10 AM the wind unexpectedly strengthened to 25 kt and veered to put me on a heading of 170T. I figured that if I gybed I'd have a good chance at laying the Horn so that's what I did. My new course was 180T which was just about the rhumb line for the Horn 137 miles away. My turning point was at latitude 56S26 which if fortune went my way would represent my deepest incursion into the high latitudes.

I visited the side decks and took inventory of the fuel on deck. I was very relieved to find that the 83 liters that I had estimated just two days earlier were still on deck. Nevertheless I regretted losing any container because they would all be useful to me in the final leg between Cape Town and Fremantle. This had been a salutary warning and I would visit the deck this day with extra lines and make sure that the fuel containers, in particular the full ones, were very securely lashed. The Zodiac was still well secured and with so many independent lines crisscrossing it I didn't expect it to get loose. Even though it was a bright and sunny day the sea was still too rough for me to attempt a fuel transfer, but I was certainly awaiting the first opportunity.

At noon our position was 56S24, 070W56, giving us a n-n run of 59 miles which was amazing given that we were hove to under trysail most of that time. Happily, the movement had been in the right direction and we were now approximately 125 miles for the Horn. We were just beginning to cross over start of the rise of the continental shelf and were making more or less directly for the Horn in front of a fair wind. It was a bright, crisp, clear sunny day and my spirits were high. I was starting to get excited.

After the noon report I spent an hour on deck attending to the fuel containers. I must admit that the two little 10 liter ones were in peril and would have been the next to go over the side (empty).

I had a big spaghetti meal then lay down for almost 2 hours for a refreshing nap. At 4 PM I was up to find the boat ambling along at about 4 knots on the same course of 085T, perfect for threading our way between Isla Diego Ramirez 60 miles to the right and Cape Horn 110 miles to the left. We had left the 4,000 meter depths and were approaching the 1000 meter contour. Not far beyond that would be the 200 meter contour. The Horn was inside the 100 meter contour. I was wondering what the set and strength of the current would be on the shelf. One component of the current was sweeping down the coast from the north to join the main body set to the east. I would keep a close eye on our position in relation to Diego Ramirez.

Now the ST60 depth display is giving trouble. I tried to turn it on thinking that it my be a good idea to have depth readings in these waters and the display part would not function. I could tell from the beeps I was hearing at power up and when changing the background light intensity that the logic is working - it just can't show anything. I probably got a dose of salt water during the recent bout of high winds. If so it was an aberration because the instruments are made to survive out in the weather. The wind instrument next to it is OK and the autopilot display/control survives OK on the very exposed binnacle. It may dry out and come good. In any event, it is not a vital instrument for the deep waters that I am plying. I have excellent electronic charts of South Africa so I should have no trouble in getting into the marina.

Then at the nav station I sat on part of the shower curtain and ripped out a ring hole at the top. I punched a new hole with a Phillips screw driver and reversed the curtain. But that was the third such repair and I was sick of tippy toeing around the curtain all of the time so I got a pair of scissors and did what I should have done on day one: cut the bottom off so that it hangs to just above seat level. That means that I can no longer walk or sit on it. I've learned not to waste anything that might be useful so I used the offcut to make a plastic cover for the laptop to replace the garbage bag and yield a very tasteful matched set.

At 7 PM we were still moving along nicely and the Horn was less than 100 miles away. The forecast predicted this kind of wind for days so I was cautiously optimistic about sailing within sight of the Horn then proceeding on to Staten Island without any wind dramas.

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