The past 24 hours have mostly been a tale of light winds, variable in direction and generally so far astern as to be useless. Even if we felt like whipping out the Parasailor, we’d need at least 8 knots true just to get it to behave pretty well, and a few knots more to not require constant attention. We carry diesel and propulsion systems for a reason, and surprise surprise, we’re not what some would call “sailing purists”, so when the times demand, we’re not shy about firing up a Yanmar and turning 2.5 liters/hour into noise, exhaust smoke, hot water (bonus on the port engine), charging power for the house batteries and to run the watermaker, and 5.8 knots of speed over ground given flat water and no current. If there is a bit of wind and it’s not too far astern, we’ll generally leave the main sail up and as the apparent wind comes forward we may gain 1 or 2 knots from the help. In heavier wave conditions the main also keeps us moving when otherwise we’d slow appreciably upon slamming into waves forward of the beam. Motorsailing ain’t the best, but we’ve got to keep moving, get past the icky ITCZ.
We sure got tired of the noise, and when the wind finally began to fill in later this afternoon off went the diesel and out came the jib. Naturally the wind went from just about nothing to 18 knots in a flash, and off we went like a racehorse after the gun goes off. Woohoo! Now of course the wind has tapered back down to 12 – 13 knots, but also finally come from SSE up to East, and we’re sailing nicely along more towards Hawaii than Seattle. We’ll go there later. While I was getting my crew rest early this morning the wind did pop up for a spell, and Isabel went to raise the main but encountered a problem. She couldn’t get it to go up, and she couldn’t get it to come down. She awakened me to come and apply my engineering degree to the problem, and together we figured out that one of the batten box pins had come uncoupled from the mast track car, and was now snagged in the port side lazy jacks. Between the two of us we got the main down, then raised it carefully to continue sailing while I hunted for spare parts.
I don’t do too much before my first cup of coffee in the morning, and today was no exception. To boost my energy and level of enthusiasm for problem solving, Isabel plied me with the fruit cake she made just for the passage. It’s a great snack, but I’m always wondering if it might just spontaneously combust, given the amount of booze the ingredients were soaked in before cooking. I know cooking is supposed to remove the alcohol, but it sure smells like rum.
After digging around for a bit through our spares, the parts were in a little zip lock bag and the necessary tools at the ready. The wind had died off but there was a rather impressive NE swell, about 1 – 1.5 meters at around 10 second period. Isabel took the helm with both engines running and after we dropped the sail she motored directly into the swell so I could work at the mast base without the boat rolling. Pitching is easier to deal with. Sometimes replacing the little clevis bits and getting the pin and snap ring in place can be an absolute bear and it’s not uncommon for parts to drop and head for the sea, but today things went smoothly and in about 10 minutes we had the now-repaired main sail system back in action. Of course the wind was almost nil, but we were loaded and ready for bear.
Now the wind is behaving and is finally turning to the Northeast, my personal cue that we must be emerging from the primary influence of the ITCZ. We’ll be bending our course around the Northwest towards Hawaii over the next few hours, and should be pointed towards our objective sometime tomorrow. We’ve come 987 miles so far, and have 1183 to go, but once we’re finally on the rhumb line JollyDogs will gallop like a hungry horse headed for the barn at suppertime. Maybe we’ll still make it to the farmers market next Saturday!
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