Author Archives: Matt

Bazzinga

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The painters tape on the jib car worked, the nut came loose again and the painters tape held the sail. đŸ€Ș That’s some magic green tape! (Might actually been the dyneema/ stronger than steel rope behind the tape: but I won’t tell if you don’t)

The morning continued with normal working sails, main sail and jib/genoa. Easy stuff. The mornings weather update showed lighter winds around midday.

The forecast actually showed 2+ days of motoring. Oh well, thems the breaks. Break out the light air sails, the spinnakers.

First up, a trusty white 125m2 spinnaker. Started with this one, to make sure we remembered how. Raised the sail at the top edge of the wind range where we would normally be taking it down. The forecast said it was going to be going lighter. So let’s go, goes up, flies well a couple of bobbles getting it trimmed, but all flying nice. After getting it soaring, the winds were indeed decreasing.

So
 let’s fly a bigger one, 170m2.

170m2 parasailor

A fresh, never been flown before. A newer bigger version of the 125m2, what can go wrong?

After a struggle getting it out of the forward hatch, setting up and launching was no problem. A beautiful sail flying in 10 knots of breeze. As luck would have it it’s getting near dark. So decision time for night time sail choice..

As much as I would like to run the spinnaker all night, given the nature of night sailing and dodging squalls it’s got to come down. Return the smaller one to service and set a high wind alarm at 16 knots.

As it gets dark, there goes the alarm..oh it can’t be real, just reset the alarm. Damn went off again, down she comes @ dusk. After getting all squared away, back to working sails. Which eventually get put away in favor of the iron sail. 5 knots of breeze and the swell no sail was going to stay full.

There is going to be a lot of rest in our future as the forecast seemed to forget about the wind in our neck of the ocean.

Butter chicken for dinner while checking into the SSB radio net listening to where the other boats are heading and what kind of conditions they have.

Still knocking out the miles, under 400 miles to go, and Bonus, the lack of Southwest winds, waves are getting smaller AND it’s warming up!

Definitely going the right direction.

Yup, there is weather on them oceans

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The forecast was for crossing some “troughs” at some point along the way, well we found our first one.

The wind slowed down, way down, the sails just flapped?!? What happened? Forecast said we should have 20 kts of wind. Oh well, roll up the jib, no sense having it flap about. Hmmm what to do with the main sail, it’s already double reefed, it’s. It flapping too much.

See a darker gray on the moonlight night, a head of us. Check the radar, it’s still 12 miles away
 on what the heck, store the main sail too. Turn on engines and top up the batteries..

Enjoy the mysteriously calm sea state and watch the batteries charge, no rain, not much breeze..

Check radar, ahh there it is 5 miles out, the radar shows a long blob, and it’s thick too, like 6 miles to go through. Too long to go around, guess we we will have to just get it over and go through.

Yes, the radar alarms were screaming on this one

Hmmm not much more than a sprinkle in the depths of the radar blob. But coming out the other side was a different story.

No wind, jumped to 40 knots, sea went from placid to “where did that come from”. I had lowered the cockpit rain shades, cause no reason to get wet in the placid drizzle, but now a torrential down pour and honking winds, making the shades shudder. Spent the next 20 minutes keeping the new rain shades from beating them selves to bits in the winds.

Eventually the other side cleared and unfurled the jib and sailed with just the head sail till day break. Not nearly the 200 miles day of the previous, but a respectable 170 miles, and no issues to report

The rest of the day was nice sailing, started out double reefs main and eventually shook it out to only 1 reef when the gusts to 25 subsided. Still a big swell was with us all day, it’s sort of going our direction, which helps with the motion.

We should really reach 1/2 by day break tomorrow, 530 miles left to go. All good on board, getting rest and nice hot bowl of gumbo for dinner.

Full day down

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What a morning sunrise. Not for the view, but for the squalls, lots of em. Driving rain, woke up (rather rudely I might add), to ease the sails and get drenched with cold water as the squall snuck up on us.

The radar was on, was supposed to warn of impending troubles,but I had noticed in the night when a cargo ship crossed our guard zones that no alarm went off. Figured I’d investigate in the day light. Well here we are, barely daylight and I should have investigated. So the fresh shower was my procrastination reward.

The radar has so many settings, over the years I probably have tweaked them all, either to show more I show less. I figured it was time to return to factory settings. Voila, all better was showing the tops of every wave in the ocean (not helpful), so a few tweaks for offshore sailing and we are back in business.

After a few hours of “dodge-squall” the skies cleared up and a nice day of sailing was in store. At our nightly SSB radio check in we were happy to report we knocked off 200 miles toward our destination since the last check-in. Yahooo, rocking along.

One bit of breakage, our jib/genoa car said he was tired of holding the sail and let go. The sound is like a guitar string, boing. This is happened on our first trip down to NZ, and once long ago. With some creative macrame(lots of rope and knots), a temporary fix was in place just waiting for a break in the 25knot winds. Added a new bolt, added lock-tite, but it doesn’t seem to be holding. I painted the top with some of Christine’s electric blue toe polish and can see the nut slowly backing off.

Fix part two, is a back up block ready to handle the job if Mr Lazy jib car gives up again.

I think the painters tape will hold, Right?

More weather, wind and waves scheduled for the night watch. Should be fun. Go sailing, it’s all cocktails and sandy beaches
😀

All good, running along, knocking out the miles. 775 left till Point Resolution Vanuatu.