AROUND ALONE DAYS 121-122-123
Total miles sailed so far=16,477 NM.
Miles sailed last 3-days=326 NM.
Distance left to go to East Cape, New Zealand=445 NM.
Top Speed so far= 14.1kts.
THE REST OF THE STORY:
DAY-121= 24hr.Run=78 NM.
Pos. Lat.45*41’S. Long.150*58’E. Weather=Wind=5-15kts. from all directions. Seas=8-15ft. S. Cabin Temp=58*-65*. Bar=1020mb
Have you ever had one of those days you just wished you had just stayed in bed?
For me it was day #121.
This day was dominated by light winds out of the SE, the direction we needed to go.
I consider myself a pretty good sailor, but in my life on several occasions I have found myself not being able to get there from where I was under sail.
This night the air was light on the nose with a 15 ft southerly swell with some current against us. I have no Genoa to put up yet, and the main boom is broken. With the wind vane I need about 7kts of wind for it to perform and we have 5. The only two directions it seems I can go is either NE or NW and I want to go SE. The wind will eventually fill in from the north, but in the meantime I’m going the wrong way.
I took the helm and if I was really careful I could go SW-SSW which was better than nothing, but it was now dark and I needed to sleep. It seems after about an hour of experimenting with different sail trim and adjustments on the Monitor wind vane I at last was able to get the boat sailing itself to the SW, and knowing the wind was going to fill in from the North I could at last get some sleep.
It finally got light and I decided today I would pull “Patches” [the genoa] down for repairs. I grab a quick cold cereal breakfast and then set about gathering up what I needed to patch the sail. Once up on deck I noticed the sheet line to the staysail was failing as it was down to the center core.
Now I must pull everything out of aft compartment, the 60lb CQR Anchor, 1000 feet of line, and miscellaneous other apparatus, to get the much needed replacement sheet line. I replace it and reverse the other one as it seems in the past storms it chafes on the forward lower shroud on the main mast.
I get the caulking gun with silicone and suddenly here this POP and there goes the main, as the main sheet had parted and the 4-inch block that is attached to the clew is flying wildly about. This is an easy fix as I have plenty of main sheet and only lost about 7ft of it.
At last I roll out “Patches” and get her down on the deck. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that she only has the one rip in the sail not like usual where I find 2-5 more once it’s down.
Soon the patch is back on and I begin to feed the sail into the furler foil, this is not easy single handed, and after about 6 trips to the foil and back to the mast, I have the sail about half way up. I pull more slack and line up the luff cord so it will enter the foil once again and go back to the mast and start to crank it up, when suddenly a gust of wind about 15 knots hits us, and blows the sail off the deck and over the side.
At first I’m not too concerned as I believe there isn’t enough sail to even reach the water, but much to my surprise we roll to starboard as a 15foot swell is coming through and patches scoops up a ton of water and disintegrates right before my eyes.
I mean she tears all along the foot just above the UV cover of the sail, and up the leach of the sail, she blows a seam in the middle of the sail and another section just rips from foot to leach,so I drag the pieces aboard and look at the tatters and the bottom paint all over it, and for an instant I can see me throwing the whole “damn thing” over the side.
No! I can’t throw the sail away, so now I have about 60 feet of repair work to do on the sail. This might take a week, but we can do it, so why not?
DAY-122 =24hr.Run=121 NM
Pos. Lat.46*23’S. Long. 153*43’E. Weather=Wind=N 12-20kts. Seas=6-12 ft N
Cabin Temp=58*-67*. Bar=1012mb
Today Sailors Run is sailing along nicely on course for West Cape New Zealand. I spent over 8 hrs sewing on patches making some progress. Today was also the warmest day I have seen in the Southern Ocean 67*.
I have a very interesting study going on with various types of mold found aboard, and have come to realize there are some major differences.
Now take the green mold that grows on the cheese and 4-month old bread, this mold has kind of a sharp bite to it, like extra sharp cheddar cheese, but let me tell you it is nothing compared to the black mold that was lurking in the bottom of my oatmeal box.
I took a bite of my charcoal colored oatmeal and “Holy Damn” that was a “Wild Assed” taste. I was spitting that stuff out and could not get that taste out of my mouth and throat. It was after about 15- minutes my lips started feeling numb and my face started to tingle. My hands even felt tingly, I was starting to get worried. I had already chucked the oatmeal overboard and had eaten a bowl of cold cereal, thinking that would absorb whatever little bit of this that went down my throat, but it seemed to be getting worse. I finally made myself a cup of lime juice and put a couple of shots of rum in it and guzzled that down and remarkably that seemed to make me feel much better. I don’t know what to say except to hell with that “waste not want not”, program I had going.
DAY-123=24hr Run=127 NM.
Pos. Lat.47*11’S. Long.156*30’E. Weather= Wind=N. 8-25kts. Seas=N 8-12 ft.
Cabin Temp=57*-63*= Bar=1005mb
Sailing along nicely today, and spent another 10hrs working on “Patches”. We did get some rain as some of the remnants of the cyclone Winston, that had hit Fiji drifted our way.
Other than that, mostly just pretty tired.
Just hanging in there the Jefe’
