04/03/2010, Approximately 1100 miles out.
Days 8 & 9 - Day 8 started out quite nicely with the gennaker still flying firmly at 7 knots with light breezes and sunny harm conditions. The sea state was 3 - 4 out of the NNE and it was as good a day of sailing across the Pacific as it could get. We continued this wonderful experience all through the day. We downloaded Clearpoint Weather at midday and saw that we would be having some clouds roll in as we approached 10 degrees North. At about 4 pm we noticed the sea state was changing and some fast moving rollers were coming through which tells you that they have come from a far off distance as a transient wave will move through the other waves much faster than the local waves. As the next few hours went on, the sea state grew tremendously fast to about 10 foot sets. Flying the gennaker under these conditions is not for the weak of heart. As the swell would lift the aft end, the gennaker face would touch down on the water and you could hear Lori chanting, "Oh my god...Oh my God...OH MY GOD!"
After a couple times of doing this and seeing that Lori would not be able to take another minute of the gennaker touching the water, we decided it would be best to take it down for awhile. This is when everything got exciting. When I went forward to pull the sock down and douse the monster, I quickly noticed to my great fear and severe concern that the sock was stuck!!! Yep, the seas were coming up, the wind was starting to blow harder, rain was on the horizon and the gennaker sock is stuck in the up position. Now keep in mind that the boat is on autopilot which is not able to anticipate swell...so, as swell would lift the aft end, this gennaker would pull the boat forward and down and the entire face of the sail would drag through the water. In addition, the deck is being heaved upward while I'm trying to pull down on the dousing line for the sock. Just as I had run out of explicative's, the boat swung to startboard and the sail folded onto itself and suddenly the sock was free. I pulled that dousing line so hard and fast to get the thing down that I fell on my back and stayed there holding the thing while Lori came forward and put the monster back in it's deck bag.
After that burst of adrenaline, we were back in the cockpit trying to decide what to do. In the few minutes that it took us to get the gennaker down, the seas state and winds had nearly double. We decide to gybe-off and head due south under genoa and main sail. As we cut across the swell, it became very obvious that our lazy days of sailing were done for awhile.
As the sun went down, the pitch black returned...only this time we had mountains of white water chasing us in the dark. We could hear these mountains of water coming, but we could not see them until they either slapped the side of the hull of poured gallons into the cockpit. This was not going to be a fun night! We stayed awake all night as the moon didn't show until around 2:30am and then it was behind thick clouds. It was a dark ugly night which continued into and long ugly day and then another long ugly day.
In the middle of the past two nights, we have encountered large fishing vessels off on the horizon. I believe they are Chinese deep sea fishing ships as they seem to make every effort to stay away from us unlike the Mexican fishing vessels.
This morning we are having our first cup of coffee in three days. The seas are starting to subside and the 25 knots of wind has calmed to 15 knots off our Starboard beam. Between Thursday evening and lastnight, the barometric pressure dropped from 1019mb to 0995mb...that should tell ya everything if you know our weather.
Oh yeah, we had our first rain squall which lasted 10 minute and drenched us both before we could close the cockpit.
We are now a couple hundred miles from being halfway...1300 something miles.
Days 8 & 9
www.sv-trim.com Posted from Ham Radio
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Comments [2]
04/01/2010, Approximately 910 miles out.
Day 7 - The days are starting to blend together and the night watches are far less relaxing when flying the gennaker. We are finding that we are growing considerably more tired as a result of the around the clock sail trimming exercise. Our watch schedule starts at 10PM just after the Pacific Seafarers Net. We do 3 hours on and 3 hours off and each day we swap who gets first watch since that one is usually the worst in terms of moon light, sea state and wind. The ITCZ is just a day or two ahead of us now, so we will probably get a break from the gennaker run. Judging from recent gribs, the best place to cross the ITCZ is around 125 degrees West. Two other boats that left 4 days ahead of us are just now making the dogleg across.
If the timing and conditions are right, I'd like to swim across the equator. Lori says she will watch from the deck of the boat. We listened to "A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"...wonderful entertainment.
The winds are steady at 13 - 14 knots all day and night, so we may be in the trades...but I'm still not willing to call it the trades yet. The boat is heeling a lot more and the ride has become considerably less comfortable. Even so, we are making some good time. I'd like to thank everyone for the responses...it is nice to know that someone is actually reading these. If someone could check our blog to see if these are getting there and updating, it would be greatly appreciated if you (Alex) could shoot me an email letting me know.
Day 7
www.sv-trim.com Posted from Ham Radio
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03/31/2010, Approximately 785 miles out.
Day 6 - This was a mixed day. The weather forecast for wind is not good traveling down the rum line i.e., the most direct route to Hiva Oa. In fact Wednesday and Thursday are predicted to achieve a glass-off condition a little ways behind us. I'd imagine most of the boats that were leaving behind us are postponing departures till things change.
The good news is that we have traveled down to 13 degrees North latitude and traversed across to 115.51 West longitude. This puts us at the edge of a wind system predicted to bring 10-25 knots through the weekend. We are no longer on the rum line as we have veered West to take advantage of the wind that we can find to keep the boat moving at night.
The other good news is that last night was our first 24 hour period with the gennaker flying. This is a huge improvement. We were able to keep the boat moving at over 5 knots all the way through the night. Since the moon didn't come out from behind the clouds till after 10pm, we were basically flying this enormous piece of cloth in the pitch black. Seriously...we could not tell what it was doing from anything other than listening to it. We would trim the sail by sound. If the leading edge was folding, it had a much crisper snap of the cloth than the slow, lower pitched trailing edge. All we could see in the cockpit was our dimmed instruments showing that the wind was indeed blowing at 8-9knots from our starboard aft quarter. I'm talking dark dark dark...pitch black as it gets as there is no ambient light from Los Angeles of Puerto Vallarta out here!
The other side of the news is that we broke our goose neck again. I know...what the hell is a goose neck? It is the piece of the boom that attaches to the mast. It allows three degrees of freedom of movement in the boom while holding it in place. If you remember, we broke this thing on our second day of the HaHa when we had an accidental jib on a big wave outside San Quintine. This time the break was due to fatigue. When I went forward to inspect equipment yesterday morning, I saw four 1/2" bolt heads on the deck. They we sheered cleanly off at the joint of the goose neck. Most likely this happened when we were fighting the big swell the night before and the boom was pounding as the boat rocked violently for hours.
To deal with the issue, I rigged-up a webbing-based solution using heavy duty webbing that Lori brought back from the US. We bought an entire roll of the stuff, and thank God we did. Webbing has to be one of the best engineered textiles in the world. It doesn't fatigue, it hardly chafes and it is stronger than many of the metal fasteners on the boat. So, we now have a goose neck made of 5 loops of webbing attached to the mast and the aft end of the boom. It seems to work quite well.
One additional change is that we have dropped the mainsail and left it down while flying the gennaker in these light breezes. It seems to work much better than with the main up. The improvement is most noticeable when the boat is being rocked by swell. When the main was up, a column of air would get compressed between the gennaker and the main and cause the main to back fill and make a loud popping noise as the sail reversed curvature. The is probably partly to blame for the goose neck failure. Leaving the main down, the light breeze is better able to keep the gennaker cloth full. We have been able to maintain 5 knots of boat speed with only 6.5 knots of wind. This is quite amazing for a big heavy ass boat like ours.
Yesterday afternoon following the fix of the boom, Lori and I sat in the cockpit watching the gennaker fly free without the main to obstruct our view. I looked over at Lori and she appeared upset and troubled. I asked what was wrong, and she said something along the lines of, "This is not good...we are only 4 days out and we are breaking things...important things." She then opened-up her bottle of Tums that she keeps beside her seat in the cockpit and poured out 3 or 4 tablets and swallowed then with some water.
I smiled...then tried to comfort her (which didn't work at all) and asked, "Did you seriously think we were going to do this without breaking anything?"
She replied "Yes!"
I just smiled again and sat back to enjoy the ride.
Day 6
www.sv-trim.com Posted from Ham Radio
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