Post 35
January 17, 2010
08:00
We've sailed into the guessed-at area of low winds that was forecast to be sitting just outside the gates of landfall. By the tale of the satellite phone's weather maps, we can paint a picture as to what exactly is going on around us. A cyclonic system from the North Pacific is running southeast towards Hawaii steered by the jet stream far above, but it's been stopped dead by a high pressure zone that's squatting right on top of Hawaii. It will soon be shoved north and east along the edge of the semi-permanent North Pacific high that lays southwest of California and it will probably smack the west coast with a fury. All it does for us though is disturb our smooth sailing. Over the last couple of days, the wind has slowly dropped from twenty-five knots (a rock-and-rollin' ride) of the day before yesterday to a mere ten knots (a put up everything we've got kind of ride) at sunrise this morning. Kind wind and waves are a blessing to any sailor, but our speed over ground of 3.2 knots is not.
Luckily, Mike had an ace up his sleeve. His ace didn't come in the form of diamonds, hearts, clubs, nor spades, but in the form of a massive sheet of nylon emblazoned with Brazil's national colors. That's right, we pulled out Jennifer the gennaker (a hybrid between a genoa and a spinnaker). After extending the bowsprit (a metal pipe the sticks out horizontally from the bow of the boat) and running the appropriate sheets to the winches, the "sock" was hauled aloft from the forepeak (the foremost cabin on a sailboat, also my current sleeping quarters) on the spinnaker halyard. It took a little tugging and pulling to get it around the forestay to its proper position, but it was done and I made my way back to the cockpit to handle the sheets while Mike hoisted up the sock to expose the sail to the wind. Foul, oops! We brought the sock back down, spun the tack around the sail and reset. Beautiful. Mike remarked that it was a bit more work than usual (due to the fouling), but as I had previously noted: what's setting a spinnaker without a little rasslin'?
11:00
That was a wonderful forty-five minutes of spinnaker sailing. Shortly after setting Jennifer, the sun warmed up the trades and the wind picked up. It was nothing major, but a seventeen knot gust overtook Alfred the autopilot and rounded Walk On's nose right up into the wind giving the gennaker the full force of the wind on the beam. This rapidly ended breakfast preparations as all three of us scrambled into the cockpit to try and make our little, floating world relatively upright again. In seconds Alfred noticed his mistake and brought her back off the wind to put us back on only a slightly-askew plane. After a few more gusts, we realized Jennifer had to go. It only took a minute to douse her with the aid of the sock and it was only a few minutes more before she was dropped right back into the forepeak. I hope to see her again soon. How beautiful she was.
January 18, 2010
11:28
We've fallen into a complete calm since yesterday evening. We had a fine moment where we sailed under wing and wing through the sunset, but, like the gennakker, this was short lived. All is hauled tight and the motor is pushing us towards Hilo in a near dead calm.
January 17, 2010
08:00
We've sailed into the guessed-at area of low winds that was forecast to be sitting just outside the gates of landfall. By the tale of the satellite phone's weather maps, we can paint a picture as to what exactly is going on around us. A cyclonic system from the North Pacific is running southeast towards Hawaii steered by the jet stream far above, but it's been stopped dead by a high pressure zone that's squatting right on top of Hawaii. It will soon be shoved north and east along the edge of the semi-permanent North Pacific high that lays southwest of California and it will probably smack the west coast with a fury. All it does for us though is disturb our smooth sailing. Over the last couple of days, the wind has slowly dropped from twenty-five knots (a rock-and-rollin' ride) of the day before yesterday to a mere ten knots (a put up everything we've got kind of ride) at sunrise this morning. Kind wind and waves are a blessing to any sailor, but our speed over ground of 3.2 knots is not.
Luckily, Mike had an ace up his sleeve. His ace didn't come in the form of diamonds, hearts, clubs, nor spades, but in the form of a massive sheet of nylon emblazoned with Brazil's national colors. That's right, we pulled out Jennifer the gennaker (a hybrid between a genoa and a spinnaker). After extending the bowsprit (a metal pipe the sticks out horizontally from the bow of the boat) and running the appropriate sheets to the winches, the "sock" was hauled aloft from the forepeak (the foremost cabin on a sailboat, also my current sleeping quarters) on the spinnaker halyard. It took a little tugging and pulling to get it around the forestay to its proper position, but it was done and I made my way back to the cockpit to handle the sheets while Mike hoisted up the sock to expose the sail to the wind. Foul, oops! We brought the sock back down, spun the tack around the sail and reset. Beautiful. Mike remarked that it was a bit more work than usual (due to the fouling), but as I had previously noted: what's setting a spinnaker without a little rasslin'?
11:00
That was a wonderful forty-five minutes of spinnaker sailing. Shortly after setting Jennifer, the sun warmed up the trades and the wind picked up. It was nothing major, but a seventeen knot gust overtook Alfred the autopilot and rounded Walk On's nose right up into the wind giving the gennaker the full force of the wind on the beam. This rapidly ended breakfast preparations as all three of us scrambled into the cockpit to try and make our little, floating world relatively upright again. In seconds Alfred noticed his mistake and brought her back off the wind to put us back on only a slightly-askew plane. After a few more gusts, we realized Jennifer had to go. It only took a minute to douse her with the aid of the sock and it was only a few minutes more before she was dropped right back into the forepeak. I hope to see her again soon. How beautiful she was.
January 18, 2010
11:28
We've fallen into a complete calm since yesterday evening. We had a fine moment where we sailed under wing and wing through the sunset, but, like the gennakker, this was short lived. All is hauled tight and the motor is pushing us towards Hilo in a near dead calm.
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