PPJ Day 8 - Sail repair, a wrap, real-life video games, weather prediction
10 April 2016 | The Pacific Ocean
Vandy
This was a busy and interesting day.
It began with the sail repair that I hinted at in yesterday's entry. This morning's patient was our spinnaker, which had acquired a hole near the top, where the collar that holds the snuffing sock had chafed it. This job was easier than the other two, as it was already packed in a bag and all I had to do was drag the bag to the hatch and hand down the affected part of the sail. Eric applied some ripstop sail mending tape, and we were done. The spinnaker was put to use immediately, and flew like a champ for the entire day...
...except for the few hair-raising minutes this afternoon that it spent wrapped around one of the forestays. Eric was napping and I was keeping an eye on things - really I was - checking the spinnaker every few minutes, to be sure that it wasn't up to any shenanigans. One time when I looked up, uh oh!, the sail was twisted around the furled jib. This was a serious event that could ruin the sail and/or necessitate someone climbing the mast (in these rolly seas, o joy!) and cutting the spinnaker off from around the forestay. Not good.
So I woke Eric up and between his tugging on the sail and telling me which way the boat needed to go to unwrap it, and my making the boat go there, we managed to get it unwound without incident. When it finally filled with wind and flew again in all its green and blue glory, we were relieved. I know that the spinnaker is sometimes the best sail to fly for the conditions, but I still don't trust it. It's always looking for an opportunity to do something it's not supposed to.
In a usual year, at this time, this place on the Earth would be blessed with sunny weather and lots of those dependable NE tradewinds, extending almost all the way to the Equator. But for some reason (El Nino? random happenstance?), right now, while we're wanting to travel through it, it's not. Right now, just south of us, and extending east and west of us for hundreds of miles between where we are and where we want to go, is a very large swath of nasty, unsettled weather. It has managed to mess up all the usual wind patterns for hundreds of miles north and south of the Equator. But that's weather for you...you can make predictions, but when you actually get there, you have to deal with what's actually there.
Which is one reason that I am really loving our weather satellite radio. This is the radio that receives pictures from NOAA satellites IN REALTIME as the satellites fly over, with our current position noted with a yellow X on the picture. (Long-term readers may remember that Eric built a special crossed dipole antenna for this radio, when we were anchored out during those Northers last winter.) The pictures are processed in different ways and then saved as files on our computer. One of the processes involves color coding of areas determined to be more likely to spawn thunderstorms (aka convection or squalls). Using the pictures taken over a series of hours by the satellites, as well as some of our other weather products such as Grib files for our area, Eric and I made the decision to alter our course to the WSW (we had been traveling SW), to say north of the nasty weather and in the last of the remaining NE tradewinds. That proved quite a good decision. All along our port side, to the south, where we would have gone had we not altered our course, the sky was dark and ominous; off to starboard, and where we were, the sky had broken clouds. A few convection cells still strayed into our area, which allowed us to spend the afternoon playing a game called: Avoid the Squalls.
Here's how you play: first, turn on your radar. Set the range at about 24 miles, to get a big picture. Storm cells appear as dark blobs on the radar. Once they appear on the radar, you can watch where they are going. You can tell if they're getting closer to you or farther away. You can watch them form and dissipate. If you have enough speed and steering room, you can alter your course as needed, to make sure that they don't intersect with you. With our rascal of a spinnaker flying, we were able to maintain at least 7 knots, which kept us out of harm's way. It was fun. If you're not going very fast or don't have much steering room, you will just be able to watch the squalls catch overtake you. With the infamous ITCZ still waiting for us near the Equator (more on that when we get closer), we'll probably be playing this game a lot.
One of the cells did eventually catch up to us later on when the wind died down a bit, but it was just a rain cloud, without any wind or lightning. So we got a free boat wash, with none of the theatrics.
After the rain, the wind was light and fluky for the rest of the night, and we sort of meandered around keeping things as quiet as possible, so the off-watch person could sleep. Near sunrise, when the wind finally clocked to the NE again, we checked the latest satellite pictures (which showed that we had successfully skirted the top of the nasty weather and could go more south again) and the Gribs, and set our sails to travel SW toward Hiva Oa.
Deck Check: one flying fish, one squid, both expired; one curious immature booby perched on the bow pulpit since yesterday evening Miles in last 24 hours: 100 Miles we've gone: 1185 Miles remaining: 1695