06/07/2012, 10 27.893'S:138 40.060'W, Hanavave, Fatu Hiva, Marquesas
We are at anchor. Caught a Giant Bull Mahi on the north end of the Island as we were coming in. Kind of a fiasco. We couldn't get the fish in because it was too big, and was continuing to take line. So we had to slow the boat down. First we reeled in the screecher. Not enough. Then I tried to gybe the main, since we didn't have much room to turn the other direction because of our proximity to the island. After we gybed, we tried to just round up into the wind, but a good size wave, timed with a few good gusts, ended up with the boat going backward and before you know it, we broke the main sheet -- the 20000lb plus breaking stength safety line on the broken harken block popped!!!!! I think I'm switching brands of blocks. The thing nearly tore my arm off. I have a massive bruise on my left arm from flying wreckage. The boom whipped around and I thought we were going to take out a shroud and lose the mast. But the other main sheet held. The whole time we are still battling the fish. Finally landed the sucker, and he was a long as I am tall, and weighed maybe 70lbs (our scale only goes up to 50lbs). So we have enough fish to feed a small village. We are already handing it out to others in the anchorage.
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Comments [2]
06/07/2012, 10 13.078'S:138 14.201'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
Land Ho! We can see Fatu Hiva as of about 6:30 am this morning. We are about 6 hours out. Position is as of 16:49z. SOG 5.8kts. COG 253mag.
Can't smell it this time--the wind is blowing the wrong direction for that.
We had another block break this morning. I'm starting to not like Harken blocks. This time it was the block frame on a Harken Black Magic 75 series--it broke open and let the snap shackle free. I think I'm going to have to double up those safety lines that I have running through the block. This block is part of our main sheet system. A several hundred dollar bit of junk....
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06/06/2012, Galapagos to Marquesas
Mmmmm. Amy baked some delicious bread! We also just sailed past another sail boat. Tiesha II (phonetically...) came within about 100 yds of us. Its always weird to come so close to another small craft way out in the middle of no where. And here we thought we were the only people doing this.... Mental note, find something more original to do....
Still clipping along at about 7.5 kts. Making some water. Maybe do a bit of tidying up before we get in. The boat is in serious need of some cleaning.
For those of you planning a similar trip: Get Dyneema chafe sleeve from west marine. Many feet of it! Magic stuff. It is really just like having only the outer braid of a double braid rope--but made out of really slippery dyneema. We've found many places where a sheet might rub on rigging or superstructure, or even another sheet, so you slide a few feet of this over the line and into the appropriate position. Chafe--Gone!!! For example, the way our preventer is rigged, our screecher sheet rubs right against it. Slide some of the chafe sleeve into place on the screecher sheet and the wear from any chafing is gone. This stuff is really durable and really slippery. Just gets a slight fuzzing up with wear. It will also work well on dock lines or anchor lines/snubbers etc. It only seems to come in a couple of sizes that are a bit small, but it will fit over larger diameter lines pretty easily... Another example, we rigged our jib sheet around a shroud so that it w ould hold the jib open when well off the wind. Nearly chafed through the jib sheet in a day. I cut of that end of the sheet, slipped on some chafe sleeve, and re-tied on the sheet. Zero chafe after many many days of the exact same rubbing.
Also, now that we have had a high quality tylaska shackle shatter on us, we have made soft ties of all running rigging to the boat. That is, instead of clipping stainless shackles to stainless fittings like pad eyes, I have made loops of line at all attachment points and attach the shackles to the loops instead. This avoids some of the shock loading. Plus I have also run a back up line through the center of each block on the running rigging (for example a main sheet block) to the boat attachment point (typically pad eyes for us). so if the shack fails, or the loop that the shackle is clipped to fails, the back up line is there to catch the load before sending the block whizzing across the boat at skull shattering speed. Lose an attachment point on a sheet or a traveller and you could send your boom into your shrouds and lose your rig.... The shackle that failed on us was on our main sheet. Fortunately we have a weird double mainsheet set up--and no traveller, so the windward sheet failed and the leeward sheet caught the boom before it smashed into the shrouds. note that this happened in only 10 or 12 knots of wind, it wasn't a failure due to an undersized shackle--if anything it was well oversized. But shock loading, for example when the main fills in a sloppy sea, just popped the stainless where we had stainless connected to stainless. Hopefully the soft connections will prevent this. Another interesting bit of data on this front...I had a spare block to use when the tylaska shackle failed--with a standard snap shackle (a large harken snap shackle on a 75 series black magic block). The first thing I did was to run the sheet through it and attach it to the pad eye, with a safety line tied through the center of the block and through the pad eye--the damn snap shackle popped open within an hour of being set up. Another shock load--and mind you, not a bad shock load. I thought this must be a freak accident, so I just reattached the shackle. Mind you these are big harken snap shackles. It popped open again. Good thing I had the safety lines in place which caught the block each time. It was then that I made up the soft attachment points and the shackle has not popped open now after a couple weeks of heavy downwind trade winds use.....
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06/06/2012, 9 25.953'S:136 11.903'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
Position is as of 2043z. SOG 7.1k. COG 243 mag. We are about 160 miles from port. All is well.
Happy 20th Anniversary Amy. Did you ever believe when I talked about this before we were married, that we would actually do it?
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I'm in awe of y'all.
Most of the world has no idea.
06/05/2012, 8 57.843'S:133 47.258'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
Position is as of 2140z. SOG 4.4. COG 255mag. The wind has died and just as we are getting so close. We may have to break out the Spinnaker. (or the iron genny).
We are presently 300nm from port. We are melting in the equatorial sun, but otherwise all is well.
Today we are going to see if we can see the transit of Venus. The phenomenon apparently begins today around 2200z.
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06/05/2012, Galapagos to Marquesas
I thought that I should give my impressions of the the passage and a little update on how we're doing. It also gives me something to do at 1:00AM. The days have flown by but yet the passage seems never ending. Arthur says he's a bit bored but I find that there's not enough hours in the day to do everything that I want to do. Sleeping takes up prime daytime but then again watches take up prime sleeping time. I think having one extra adult for a night shift would make this a totally different passage.
Provisions have been holding up well in some things and not so well in others. We have plenty of meat in the freezer. Catching fish anytime we want it helps stretch that. What I would kill for is a banana. Those were gone the first week when my green ones ripened on day 2. I tried to save a watermellon for the second week, but when we got to it it had liquified -much to our dismay. I did not buy enough apples or potatoes. I have 5 potatoes that I've been hoarding and will roast tomorrow, and I have 2 hard green pears that I will spilt for an afternoon treat tomorrow and that will be it for the fresh fruit. I still have carrots and a few onions, one very wilted green pepper to keep my last wilted stalk of celery company, and lots of green oranges that are so sour that noone can eat them. I also have a big pumpkin that no one seems to like. I put it in soup and I roasted it but no one but me likes it. I forgot that I have three tomatoes that have finally ripened. I bett er use them tomorrow before they go bad.
The kids are doing well. We are craking the whip to make them keep up on their math and writing everyday. Rivers finished her history and science books for the year. Stephen has been dragging his feet when it comes to schoolwork. We took a break from the books while we were in the Galapagos and now he doesn't want to start back up. The boat motion also makes it hard to study but it doesn't stop him from devouring two large book series. He's finished the 10 book Arthur Pendragon series and is into book 6 of the Alex Rider series (thank you s/v Liberty and Jill for the books). We have limited electricity because the autopilot and navigation electronics use so much, so the kids can't watch movies and play the computer all day.
Tomorrow is Arthur and my 20th wedding anniversary. Maybe I'll bake a pumpkin pie to celebrate.
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06/04/2012, 8 28.367'S:131 29.463'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
We are getting there bit by bit. We are starting our 17th day out today. Before this, my longest passage had been 17 days, and that was back in 1987 on a very slow windless trip from the British Virgin Islands to the Annapolils, MD. Amy, Stephen and Rivers longest passage had been 7 days 5 hours from Panama City, Panama to Academy Bay, Santa Cruz, Galapagos, Ecuador.
Position is as of 2140z. SOG 6.5kts. COG 252 mag. Saw what looked like a couple of boats on radar last night. But no visual sightings.
We've slowed down a bit and are going wing on wing again. Which is actually a fairly comfortable point of sail for us. Waves nearly directly behind us, and we don't get much roll obviously since we are on a cat. It is a bit warm though...
Wind speed is in the mid teens. Seas are 2-3 meters.
All is well.
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06/03/2012, 7 45.057'S:128 38.927'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
time 2100z. Sog 7.7kts. Cog 248d mag.
Wind and seas have been consistently over 20kts and above 3meters. We've been flying along averaging just shy of 200 miles per day for the last few days. We are now a shade over 600 miles from the Marquesas. We are ready to get there. All onboard are a bit tired. But all is well.
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06/02/2012, 06 45.394'S:122 21.395'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
position is as of 16:11zulu. SOG 8.1kts. COG 260mag. All is well. Doing this post a bit earlier in the day, as it has been hot hot hot, in the cabin at noon time. A bit of a long tiring night last nigt. Seas are good size, and the wind is blowing in the low 20's. Actually pretty nice sailing conditions, but the ride is a bit wild. Surfed up to 13.9kts last night. Not bad since this thing is loaded like a container ship.
The Mahi we caught yesterday was delicious as usual. Nothing beats fish right out of the water and straight into the frying pan. And of course we caught it on the home made lure that I made out of the plastic tube packaging from one of my expensive lures. (its not completely ironic. The expensive ones have caught a lot of fish, just not as many as my home-made thing made from the packaging :)).
I think we are a little under 850 miles from our destination.
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06/01/2012, 06 45.394'S:122 21.395'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
Position is as of 2020z. SOG 7.5. COG 253mag.
Winds have picked back up again, and the angle has improved as well. So our speed is up where we'd like it.
Not much new. Last time I looked around we were still on a boat in the middle of the South Pacific.
All is well
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