PPJ Day 13
15 April 2016 | The Pacific Ocean
Vandy
Thursday was a squally, rolly, surprising, expensive day.
The sky was cloudy when the sun rose, and stayed that way pretty much all day. Squalls dotted the landscape like floating gray Wallace and Gromit sheep, now and then venturing close, sometimes dropping rain on us, sometimes just teasing us. There is very little wind here, so we motored some of the day, to make some progress. Hopefully, these 24 hours will be the LAST time that we have to spend in the ITCZ. That damn thing has been following us around like a puppy. Which would be fine, if it were cute and cuddly like a puppy, but it's not.
A big storm off the coast of California has sent us big swells from the NW. This means that when they intersect SCOOTS, who is traveling along on a SW course, they will arrive from her starboard side and give her a really good roll back and forth, back and forth, before continuing on. Then, maybe 15 seconds later, the next one will come along and roll her all over again. Imagine trying to do everything you normally do in your home or workplace, with this happening four times a minute. Yeah, there ya go. We eventually changed our course a bit to give ourselves some relief.
We were really surprised this afternoon, when a voice hailed us on the VHF radio. The VHF has a range of maybe 50 miles, and we hadn't heard anyone for more than a week. There were no vessels displayed on our AIS for days. We answered the call. It was the crew of the sailing vessel Jade (who were not transmitting on AIS), sixteen days out from La Paz, also bound for French Polynesia. They were hailing us because they saw our sails...they were about a mile and a half away...and they wanted to say hello. All was well on board. We could see them as they passed by, a pretty ketch with her sails up. Wow, all this ocean and we both end up in the same space! Pretty cool.
During my first night watch, we were flying our Code 0 sail in the light winds; we had taken the mainsail down, to reduce the banging and crashing that happened every time a swell came through. I was keeping an eye on the apparent wind, because if it rises consistently above 13 knots, we take the Code 0 down and put up the hardier Genoa jib instead. The wind was staying in the 9-10 knot range, but it was a bit switchy, and when one of those swells would roll through, it would throw everything out of whack. The Code 0 would lose its wind and luff uselessly when SCOOTS rolled, and then fill up again when SCOOTS stood upright.
About midnight, when I looked up to check on things, I saw that the Code 0 was now composed of an upper and a lower triangular piece, instead of its usual one large triangle. It had ripped almost all the way across, about two-thirds of the way up! I was perplexed at how this had happened, when the wind speed hadn't been an issue...
I tried to furl the sail in, but could only get it about halfway in before something jammed. So I woke Eric up and explained the situation and went to work to get things under control. When he tried to turn on the foredeck light, to get a better look at the situation, the breaker blew immediately, so something was also amiss with the foredeck light, which sits about halfway up the forward side of the mast. We made do with a flashlight.
He went on deck and took a look. The Code 0 was wrapped around the foredeck light, which had probably caused the rip when the sail had snagged there during one of its luffing sessions. Though Eric initially thought he might have to climb the mast and cut the Code 0 off -in the dark, while pounding into big swells and rolling - he instead worked with the wind, He pulled the staysail out, which steadied the boat a bit, and also blocked the Code 0 from any further access to the mast. he had me head up into the wind and then having me steer to port and starboard, to get the Code 0 unwrapped from the light. Sometime during the process, the Code 0 ripped the foredeck light off the mast and flung it overboard. Once it was no longer tangled up with the light, I was able to furl in the Code 0 the rest of the way.
Having that attended to, we pulled out the Genoa jib and collapsed into the cockpit to let our heart rates return to normal. Darn, that was our favorite sail. We'll take a look at it later, but first guesses are that it's not going to be repairable. And it will certainly be expensive to replace.
Deck Check: 2 flying fish, no squid Miles in last 24 hours: 126, for an average of 5.25 knots Total miles: 1894 Miles to go: 986