Rough Night, Good Progress

It turned out to be a much rougher night than I had expected. There were squalls, winds over 30 kt, and the occasional wave hitting the boat hard. But we were running downwind and the boat handled itself magnificently, though there was the inevitable rolling and agitation.. I didn't step on deck once, though several times I stuck my head out and had a look around behind the protection of the spray dodger. Had I known what was coming I would have been more conservative in the amount of headsail I put out for the night, but just as well because the amount of sail turned out to be perfect. When the wind got down to the low 20's we would still be making almost 5 kt, and when it got up to the mid 30's the boat never exceeded 6.9 knots to my knowledge, and never seemed to be in danger of being overpowered and broaching.

I was in the bunk trying to get some sleep when chart plotter gave the "Dangerous Target" alarm. It was the Sevilla Knutsen, a tanker, headed for Melchorita Peru at a speed of 19 knots. On the screen the situation looked very spooky, with a flashing ship symbol bearing down directly on me. The numbers were more reassuring: it would pass a mile from me in 20 minutes. Still, that was too close for comfort so I hailed the ship on VHF 16 and got an immediate response. I told him that I was a sailboat about 8 miles ahead of him, and did he see me. He responded that he did see me. I told him that I had limited maneuverability and I would for any instructions that he might give to me. He told me that they would look after me and I thanked him and bade him good night. I put on my life vest then stuck my head out to see his lights and realized that we were in the middle of a squall complete with rain and wind speeds over 30 knots. Fortunately the boat coped with the amount of headsail that I had out and our speed didn't go above 6.2 kt. The tanker crossed my bow almost exactly one mile away as predicted. Thank Heaven for AIS. Thank Heaven that I had dropped the mainsail.

After that I Really had trouble with getting to sleep so I put in some time investigating a problem with the MarinePlotter (MP) software that had been preventing me from the "Roadmap" Google images stored in my cache. I had been working with Dave on the problem but he would not be able to devote all of his attention to it until he finished work on another project. After a frustrating hour I read two sentences in the MP "Help" facility that gave me a clue to the problem, and 5 minutes later all was functioning properly.

Dawn brought a partly cloudy and sunny day. The temperature was chillier. The apparent wind had dropped to 10 kt but we were still on a good course making 4 kt. I would roll out more headsail after my second cup of coffee.

At 9.30 AM our position was 32S40, 050W35 and we had covered a satisfactory 130 miles in the last 24 hours. We were now 470 miles from MdP and 600 miles from Ilha Bella. The night's favorable wind had given us a course almost directly for the island. 130 miles made good directly down the rhumb line is as good a cruising day as I can hope for. I flipped MP to "Roadmap" tiles and saw that we were now well within Brazilian waters. The coastal city of Rio Grande was 85 miles away on a bearing of 293T.

Boring news: the marine head has blocked up again. The problem isn't with the head itself. The seals in the pumping mechanism are in as new condition and in fact the pump exerts so much pressure that there is a danger that if I pump too hard the pressure will blow back and invert the joker valve. As before, the problem is in the outlet to the sea. I had trouble closing the outlet valve, suggesting that material has packed up at the outlet. When I dealt with the problem shortly after arriving in MdP I discovered that the scale that naturally builds up inside of the outlet pipe had broken off and overwhelmed the outlet, plugging it up with the gritty sand-like material. As before, I am not willing to risk uncoupling the outlet hose and clearing the obstruction while out at sea. If the waters around Angra are warm enough I'll dive over the side and try to clear the obstruction with a long screwdriver. Otherwise I'll work from inside of the boat when I am at a marina. In any event, a replacement outlet hose will be on my shopping list for the U.S.A. I cleaned everything as best as I could, to the point where the boat reeks of chlorine bleach.

Oops, a ship headed my way with ETA of 41 minutes and CPA as small as 291 ft, which I consider a collision course. She's the FSL Hamburg a tanker making 11.8 kt for Recalda PSTN, wherever that is. She'll pass behind me if I can keep up my boat speed. I'm not too worried because we are in clear daylight and I have the VHF radio ready. ... I started the engine to guarantee my boat speed but found that our CPA was more sensitive to my course. I contacted the tanker and as usual the response was prompt and cooperative. Actually seeing the ship was much less scary than looking at the electronic reports. I could see that even if I stopped the boat dead in the water the ship would miss me. Nevertheless I think that I owe it to the oncoming ship as much as myself to advise them of my presence. It is a possibility that they otherwise would not notice me, and a minor course correction on their part could spell disaster for me. The tanker crossed my stern at 1.2 miles.

While the engine was running I headed into the wind and raised the mainsail with one reef. We then set off on a broad reach in a marginal wind that allowed the boom to flog. I soon dropped the mainsail again and we ambled for the rest of the afternoon under jib only doing about 3 knots. The combination of light airs under 10 knots and a lumpy sea is not a good one for sailing. We had been sailing just to the east of North for almost 24 hours and now we were on the continental shelf 50 miles offshore. I expected the wind to change well before I would be forced to gybe 70 miles ahead.

I brought out the Monitor cruising spares kit. The part in need of repair is called a "latch". There was a latch spring in the kit, but no latch or small pin to go into the side of the larger latch pin. It is that pin that disappeared, given that a hands and knees search of the cockpit revealed nothing. The beauty of these modern wind steerers is that they manufactured from stainless steel components and are amenable to repair by any competent machine shop. I'll contact Scanmar about the latch problem in the knowledge that if forced to I can have a snug fitting side pin machined so that I can tap it into place when I refit the latch. In the meantime I have modified the latch hold-down cord arrangement at the wheel so that I can release and reinsert the latch relatively quickly. ...and speaking of machine shops I would very much like to have the Rutland wind charger taken down for repair because it could have been very, very useful in the recent winds. The removal problem is this: The circular shaft of the wind charger slides into a stainless steel tube on the bimini designed for the job. Bolts pass from each side of the tube to hold the charger in place. I am not able to back the stainless steel bolts with an allen key. I can't simply knock the heads of the bolts off with a grinder because that will still leave enough bolt inside to prevent the shaft of the wind charger to slip out of the holding tube.

Tonight I'll do a beef stew. I've been soaking the kidney beans for over 24 hours so they should cook very soft. I'll throw into the pot what I did before: potato, onion, carrot, celery, and a bit of broccoli. The meat, cheese, vegetable, egg and bread supplies are holding nicely, and I expect to eat very well on this passage.

At 6 PM the boat was ambling along at 2.5 kt under a bit of headsail and a 7 kt breeze of the port quarter. Jeff could not cope with steering in the light conditions but fortunately the autopilot was managing fine. Our position was 32S07, 050W27. Another 5 miles and we would be at the same latitude as Fremantle, Western Australia. (Similar to San Diego, I think.)

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