agility @ sea

There are days of bliss and joy and there are day of hardship and sadness. Today was more the later.

It started OK. Jer got me up around 1:30 AM for my night watch and I kept the boat running pretty fast for a while. Around 10 knots and I’ve been a little more cautious at night so this was as fast as I’m comfortable running so at the end of my watch I put in an extra reef to keep the boat about 6 – 8 Kts. After sleeping a few hours the wind picked up and we were back up to 10 Kts but I was still a little tired so I just laid in bed and enjoyed the ride or as much as a captain can who hasn’t trimmed the sail or done a check of things in 4 hours.

In the morning the seas started to build and we kept sailing hard for most of the day 10 – 12 Kts most of the day. Jer made me two cups of coffee which is a real chore in choppy seas but got the job done with only one large spill. She gets the spiller Miller award today.

I found a burned out fuse for a problem I thought we had solved and emailed the yard and decided to removed the diodes (what the hell are diodes) and take the tricolor stern lite off the power grid. Kind of a bummer because to really fix it not only requires climbing the mast but some tricky electrical work that I’m not willing to try. So that’s another sort of minor boat electrical problem, but it’s something that I’ll have to leave for another day.

I tried to take a nap but only got maybe an hour because we were still going fast and had a few alarms go off. Bilge Pump, which is a chronic problem because the pumps don’t pump all the water out, they pump just enough to make the alarm stop but as soon a a little more finds it way into one of 6 bilges the alarms goes off so we’ve turned the alarm off for most of the trip. At least we have a light on the dash that lights up so we know and we check the bilges regularly.

At some point we decided it might be nice to sail by a remote island that’s on route called Isla Dulce that’s a few hundred km’s from Pitcairn. I had a waypoint and knew when we would be approaching. About 20 minutes before we would be there I fired up the ipad with the only detailed charts of the island and Jer was calling me to lunch, the GPS wouldn’t lock in on the ipad so I went outside to see if maybe I could spot what I expected to be a tiny speck of an Island.

As soon as I went outside, I yelled holy shit and Jer came running out.

Somewhat to my surprise and even-though we were pretty much exactly where I wanted to be, 1 km off the coast, I was shocked to see such a large island and the massive surf that I could hear. Maybe 30 foot breakers that were crashing right where I was thinking we might just motor by and perhaps have lunch. There was no real danger except when you consider that I wasn’t on visual watch until about a mile out and the Island was 10 times bigger and looked ferocious. Did I mention this Island has had many shipwrecks in its past?

So that got the heart going a bit and made me rethink my navigation procedures and I started creating boundaries around every island that we could possible come into contact with for the rest of the crossing to Gambier.

We decided to watch a couple episodes of Downtown Abby which we’ve done many times on this passage and the weather started to turn. We expected a 180 degree wind shift from a small front that we knew was coming though but didn’t expect it to be so instantaneous. We saw one storm cloud, navigated around it, the second cloud hit us and instantaneously we had the 180 wind shift. We changed course 180 at first because the engines didn’t seem to be providing propulsion but got that sorted out, ran the engines, charged the batteries and reefed down to scraps of the soft sail that were a little larger than the American flag we fly from the back of the boat.

During the windshift we recorded a high of 48.9 Kts of wind. Without the soft sail and only the mastfoils there was no issue but with the windshift came very confused sea. I think a confused sea is one of the worst experience on a boat and maybe even more on a cat. When waves are crashing into all four sides and all 4 insides of the boat from different directions it’s like Mister Toads wild ride except that you don’t always have a handle to hold onto. Sometimes the jerking comes in semi-automatic and sometime fully automatic, think 120 rounds a minute. Bop, bop bop bop bop, bop, bop bop.

During a confused sea, the waves also slap the bridge deck and hull so much so that things like the main settee table shutters and reverberates under the load. This at first is a bit unsettling but after a while it’s just annoying.

We also found two large metal safety bars used to protect from someone breaking into our escape hatch that were cleverly hidden but making an annoying noise that just sounded bad. Luckily Jerri was able to find it before heading to bed so that got resolved. Unfortunately, while we were doing that, a wave slapped under the inside helm where a lot of the electrical and instruments are and dumped two gallons of water behind he inside helm that traveled behind the refrigerator onto the cabin sole and drained into the bilge. We quickly got that wiped up and dried out, at least what we could reach, and determined to have another project next time we’re under the bridge deck to make sure water can’t come in that way again.

So I’m sitting here somewhat emotionally exhausted bobbing along at 6 kts because I’m too tired to hold on any tighter and Jer is hopefully getting some sleep. If we’re lucky the seas will settle into the new wind direction and tomorrow will be a slight ride toward our destination without any incidents.

In the time it took me to re-read this and check spelling the winds died town to 15 kts and the boat speed was down to two kts. I just let out most of the soft sails and we’re back to 5 ktns and back on Mr Toad’s wild ride.