Rover

Passage to Abreojos

08 April 2020 | Punta Abreojos, Baja California Sur, Mexico
Eric
We left Bahia Santa Maria at 8 am 4/4/20. We planned a passage of three
full days and two nights underway to Punta Abreojos.

We'€™re conserving our fuel so we set sail within a half hour of raising
the anchor. And set the watches by 9 am. We'€™re using a modified Swedish
watch schedule that Linda came up with. We have individuals on watch
during the day with a designated "€œhelper"€ on call. In a larger sense,
everyone is on call while off watch, with a secondary duty of resting to
prepare for their own watch. All the watches are 4 hours long: 6 am-10
am, 10 am to 2 pm, and 2 pm to 6 pm are the day watches. At 6 pm we all
have dinner together, a meeting if necessary and switch into "night
mod e": lights and radar on, red lights below, tethers in the cockpit.The night watches are: 6 pm to 10 pm, 10 pm to 2 am and 2 am to 6
am. Two people are on each night watch, with Rod or Eric as watch
leaders, Kay and Linda as watch standers. A little pencil and paper work
(that Linda did when she designed this system) will show that with 4
crew members and 3 watches of one person during the day and 3 watches of
two people during the night, the crewmembers will rotate through all the
watches and be on watch with various people, with the constraint that
Rod and I never stand watch together. Another feature of the rotating
nature of the Swedish schedule is that everyone gets at least one
eight-hour period off watch (sleeping) and that every fourth day each
person gets twelve hours off watch.

One of the downsides is that it'€™s a complicated system, so a schedule is posted
on the clipboard by the galley along with standing orders, sail plan,
and latest weather.

Chores are also assigned to each watch, so as crew rotate through the
watches, the chores automatically rotate among the crew.

When we'€™re offshore, we rotate through the watch changes, night watches
follow the day watches, and everyone gets behind on solid sleep. As the
wind rises and falls, and even as we tack in strong winds, extra hands
are sometimes required and the short sleep cycles are interrupted.

On passages we don't see a lot of wildlife, but when it does appear it
is spectacular. A large pod of dolphins showed up at dawn as Kay and I
furled the stays'€™l at the bow, and Rod steered. They danced around the
boat for us as we did our work and then we watched them until they
disappeared into the distance.

We'€™ve seen many whales at a distance but two of them made a close visit
while Rod was on an afternoon watch. He called "€œWhales"€ and Kay and I
rushed up the companionway to see two humpbacks paralleling our course
within a boat length. They sounded and then came back in a few minutes,
a couple of boat lengths away. Their curiosity satisfied, the next time
we saw them they were a hundred yards away.

We carry 90 gallons of fuel and may have to stretch it back to San Diego
if we can'€™t get more enroute. We'€™re self-quarantining in our (very) low
earth orbit capsule, and don'€™t want to expose ourselves by going ashore to
fill jerry cans and shuttle them back to the boat if we can help it.
With that in mind, we sailed as much as possible.

Sailing even with unfavourable wind leads to tacks, which lengthens
our actual distance travelled compared with the "crowflies"€ direct
route. We also sail even through low wind conditions, slowly. During
nighttime we reef (reduce sail area) to prevent midnight drama if the
wind comes up and allow easier motion for sleeping. We also had some
stretches when the wind was ideal for our sail plan and we blasted
along. High speeds were 7 and a half knots, although at that speed we'€™re
looking to reduce speed (and reduce stress on the boat and nerves of the
crew) down to around 6 knots. In calms, we saw 2 knots, in the wrong
direction.

Altogether the direct length (crowflies distance) was projected to be
175 miles, tacking resulted in an actual distance of 289 miles. Total
length of time underway was 77 hours, 14 minutes. Out of the 3- day
passage we ran the engine 6 hours, to charge batteries (it was overcast
half the time) and get in and out of the anchorages.

We arrived at Punta Abreojos at 1300 yesterday (4/7). The anchorage is
protected from the prevailing wind and seas by the point. We cleaned up
the boat, had (solar) showers, dinner and a game of cribbage and
everyone was asleep by 8 pm. The crew slept in until about 9 this
morning. Today was a day of boat projects until 2 pm (making freshwater,
yoghurt, muffins, brownies, minor repairs and improvements). At 2 pm, the
crew was stood down for the rest of the day FOR naps, reading books and writing blogs.

Depending on weather, tomorrow may be the start of another overnight
passage.

--
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Comments
Vessel Name: Rover
Vessel Make/Model: Valiant 42
Hailing Port: Seattle. WA
Crew: Eric and Linda
About:
We're making a big change to a cruising lifestyle. Eric retired in 2012 after 32 years in R&D (mostly) at HP. Previous passions included flying and bicycling. Linda will retire in 2013 from Oregon State University. She's been active in Zonta, was a Scoutmaster, and is a champion baker. [...]
Extra: Linda was barrel master and Eric participated in the Jackson Street Vintners; a group of friends that made wine from 2000 to 2013
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