and time to write something of the last 10 days.
I think Sandy’s spirits are on the rise because in spite of the awful rolling
we’re doing and the pirate language floating from the galley,
totally justified I might add, I’ve just been presented with a fresh,
hot date scone with melted butter!
“The next ones will be better”.
It looked perfect to me and I picked off a few crumbs to taste... perfect too.
Then I tried to pick it up and discovered the problem. She didn’t use enough glue.
It was so light and crumbly that it just came apart. I don’t have a problem with
this at all. Squish a bit together and pop it. I still reckon they’re perfect, but Sandy’s mum is a killer scone maker and that’s a tough benchmark for her.
The important thing is, this is a sure sign of returning emotional stability, probably triggered by the first frigate bird we’ve seen in weeks. They nest on land!
They feast on flying fish and are fun to watch. They look like WW2 Stuka
dive-bombers with their kinked wings as they circle and plunge when a
school/flock breaks the surface and takes flight. Their strike rate is lousy but
there is such an abundance of opportunity they do well enough.
This one thought he’d hit the jackpot because we were trailing yet another bright gold and green, meter long Dorado. He hovered up there for ages with the cogs in his little brain ticking over.
If only he could get it home, how would that look on the wall at the fishing club! Honorary life membership for sure. You could almost hear him sigh as he gave up and returned to annoying the flying fish.
It’s been 4 weeks since we touched land and both Wind Wanderer and crew could
use some R and R. (Rest and Reconstruction). While I’ve no doubt we could carry
on if we had to, it’s time.
We’re sailing on the Yankee headsail and mizzen and doing 4.5 knots. After 4 weeks of good behaviour the mainsail outhaul chafed through... again. Usually this happens in a few days, but in Ecuador I found the villain and made the modifications needed. It worked and on the mizzen it's still fine.
But once again a small failure has avoided a much bigger one.
Somebody up there likes us.
The main sail let go at 12.30am and Sandy was sound asleep. I had to get her out the way to access the winch I needed to furl the wildly thrashing sail, which happened to be jammed in it’s behind mast housing too.
Eventually it came free and we got it furled away, cursing the fact that my latest modification looked to have failed.
It was only this morning that Sandy asked if I’d seen the piece of split ring on the side deck. I hadn’t, but something was about to let go if we couldn’t find it. Examination of lifelines and rigging revealed nothing, and I started searching around the main mast. The gooseneck pin was being held in by half a split ring!
If that boom had come crashing down we would have had a fully extended sail attached to the outer end of the 20 ft boom and the mast end doing a whirling dervish around the deck. I’d rather fix the outhaul one more time anyday.
Apart from the gooseneck and outhaul we have a few jobs to do in Nuku Hiva, a tiny village with 1800 people and no facilities to speak of.
Fortunately most of what needs to be done we are equipped to do, but there are a few things that will have to wait until we get to Papeete in Tahiti, about a week’s sail from Nuku Hiva. There we will have to get a rip in the hem of the Yankee stitched, as well as a repair to the furling mandrel itself. Two of the sections have separated so furling is
‘interesting’.
We’re only 150 miles from Nuku Hiva and have to make a dog leg approach to make sure our timing gets us there in daylight. As things are now we’d get there midnight on Tuesday, so we’ll head more southwest for a few hours and back northwest
to make it work.
In the last 10 days we’ve only had a few really comfortable sailing days. Most have been pitch and toss and that is just unpleasant and exhausting.
It was no fun having to open up the generator when it overheated and replace the impeller, and Sandy’s gourmet galley creations are minor miracles.
I don’t know how she does it.
Our worst day of the trip was a foray into the heart of the trades. We’ve been using the edges with light and variable wind for the most part and taking advantage of a favourable current. We’d heard reports of boats being hammered by 45 knot winds further south. That’s the stuff of horror stories.
We were having a particularly difficult night and were getting thrown around. Neither of us was getting any sleep when off watch.
By heading off course in a southerly direction the boat handled the seas better and we could sleep a bit.
Just after dawn I decided we’d better start heading back to our course when all of a sudden we had a wind gust that was way too strong for the amount of sail we had up. As it eased I took in the mizzen and brought in the pole from the yankee.
The next moment we got the full brunt of it. We had come too far south and were
being belted by the full force of the trades, about 25kts and gusting gale force. The seas
had built even bigger and we were being knocked about mercilessly.
It felt like being in a shoebox in a concrete mixer!
We tried every sail setting that might work and I was playing jack rabbit from winch to winch. In the middle of all this chaos the auto pilot started failing. It couldn’t hold a course, even with the engine running. Every time it dropped out we’d spin off on a new heading and have to drop everything to coax it back into service. It only takes 15 seconds but it feels like half an hour by the time we’re back on course.
On one of the occasions we gybed so violently we smashed a deck fitting the main sheet attaches too. Fortunately it’s a 3 point system and the other 2 held. Throw into the mix green sea racing down the side decks, enough to wash away one of our prized fibreglass propane tanks... I’m sure you get the picture.
In the middle of all this the AIS alarm was ringing incessantly because a 30 meter Japanese fishing boat was heading straight for us and was less than half a mile away. We’d been watching him earlier as he pitched and tossed too,
but he had to turn 90 degrees to come straight for us. We ignored him, not that
we had a choice.
With hindsight he was either just working his lines and they do move in all directions, or he possibly saw our erratic behaviour and was coming to see if we needed help.
We furled the yankee to get some of the pressure off and hand steered using the engine and main sail only. As the boat settled down we could hand the steering back to ‘Aut’... Sandy decided he’s an important part of the family and was just looking for attention, so now he has a name.
We powered north for 5 hours until we found manageable wind, but the seas were still huge. By evening we'd found our old latitude, plus a bit for good measure, killed the engine, altered heading again and reset the sails. We knew the seas would eventually settle and at least Wind Wanderer was behaving like her old self again.
We collapsed exhausted in the cockpit, with one more beautiful Pacific Ocean sunset.
Not only was that our worst day, but also a costly one. One very good fibreglass propane tank washed overboard, one deck fitting ripped apart by the gybe, one life line fitting failure, luckily we wear harnesses when we go out in rough stuff, and a rip in the edge (hem) of our yankee headsail, which is vital to us but fortunately still serviceable until we can get to a sailmaker for repairs.
Are we having fun yet?
Well, yes we are.
I've been tempted to get the big asymmetric spinnaker/gennaker up in the light air,
but was a bit concerned about getting it back down in a hurry if the wind picked up.
As it happens, I have never actually launched and recovered a big light air sail or
even watched it being done.
Tom and I opened up the sail at the dock in Maryland on a windless morning so I know how the whole thing works.
Well, around midday on a light air day we decided to tackle the beast.
It's 1.5oz fabric and huge!
Once we had it all worked out we dropped the stays'l, brought in the pole and furled
the yankee.
Up went big Bertha, like clockwork. She is a beautiful, rich, plain blue, but with a dirty great rabbit on it. It’s not even a nice looking rabbit, just a profile of a running rabbit like you’d see at a fun fair shooting gallery.
The previous owner’s surname was ‘Hare’, but I guess there is enough of an Aussie connection with rabbits...
At first I was disappointed because we were only managing similar performance to the
poled out yankee and stays'l, but after tweeking it and messing with main sail positioning, it settled down and we had a 5-6 knot comfortable run to sunset.
It was an exhilarating ride and before dark we brought it in with its recovery sock very easily and reset the yankee for the night. In the right conditions we will be using this sail a lot more.
Only a couple of days to
go...