Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

I’m trying hard to remember anything that set yesterday apart.

We started the day with a lot of squalls which caused a lot of activity aboard the boat keep the boat and crew safe. As a result we decided it wasn’t good to have my shift overlap the morning radio call so we all got an extra 15 mins on a shift which pushed the shifts all forward an hour.

Helen and Paul both had a bout of queasiness around dinner time. The seas have been a little rough recently and the boat movement had become tiresome. We are all ready for land.

Today is Sam’s birthday. Helen will cook up a curry which will no doubt please him no end.

Tomorrow we plan on making landfall around midday. Oh, the excitement of it all.

No problems today. In fact, quite the opposite. We caught a small but dinner for four sized mahi mahi which Helen cooked up very well. I also had an excellent response from my efforts to source and deliver new battens for our head sail. After lots of offers from friends up in Opua and Whangarei we now have spares aboard Endless who, due to our mutual schedules, we’re certain to meet around Denarau in June/July if not sooner.

Haven’t made any progress on the batten cars as I’m not getting any responses from the guy I last conversed with on this. Ordering parts for the traveller repair will have to wait until Savusavu.

A milestone passed yesterday was the halfway point which is now over 100nm behind us. With better second half speeds we should be in Savusavu next Tuesday.

The winds have moved round more to the east than the forecasts suggest putting the wind ahead of us and making the ride a little bumpy. We’ve kept two reefs in the main overnight, despite rarely needing any, to reduce stress on the traveller. It’s all holding up ok so far. If it all survives this trip we can look to have spares sent to Denarau where we’ll be in June.

All is well aboard.

Each day brings us something new. The shipboard joke about heading to Tonga was getting stale and had been replaced by our now heading to Niue. The winds were refusing to shift from the South.

Early afternoon the winds died to almost nothing and we ended up motoring for a while. But this didn’t last long and the winds resumed from the WSW, right behind us where they’d been for the last couple of days. Forcing us further and further east.

To gain a better heading, at one point I put the boat wing on wing which is not my favourite point of sail. Everything ran well for about an hour until we were hit by a squall that came out of nowhere. I’d already tied down the head sail and main to minimise the effect of any accidental jibes. These preventers did their job as the wind shifted violently and rose to nearly 30 knots apparent (nearer 40 true) as we flew away from the squall. The preventers also prevented us from getting out of the wing on wing straight away. I managed to release the head sail preventer and put us onto a port tack (now on our way to New Caledonia). On a broad reach that gave us a breather to remove the main preventer and jibe again to put us on the best course to Fiji which was of course somewhere between Tonga and Niue.

Soon after the winds finally shifted around and on a broad reach we were on our way to Fiji. Later, after dark, we discovered somewhere in all this we had bent two of the main batons and the sliders attaching the head plate to the mast had also broken. By now the winds had picked up and we had a reef in the main. We decided we were better off doing nothing in the short term. During my 11pm to 1am shift the winds picked up considerably requiring me to put a second reef in the main. Because of the earlier damage I had to be extra careful. It seemed to take an age to do it all right. By the time the cause of the extra winds (another squall) had passed I was exhausted. When the winds eased we were again heading to Niue. At the time I felt demoralized. We were struggling to get to Fiji and the mainsail was damaged.

By the end of my shift we were again pointing to Fiji. I went to sleep considering our options.

By the morning I decided we needed to bring the main down, fully assess the damage and attempt what repairs we could. We woke Sam up to help as he was on next and Paul joined later. We furled the head sail, dropped the main then put the head sail out again to keep going. The top two batons were indeed snapped in two. We duct taped them together and reversed them so the stresses would be in a different place. The two sliders at the top of the main had also both broken. Fortunately I had a couple of spares which, with Sam’s help, I replaced. To get the top of the main back into the slider we had to remove the remainder of the sliders and install them all top to bottom. In a marina this is awkward. In 3m seas it was a pain. But we managed it.

Now the mainsail is up again with a couple of curious kinks where the top two batons are broken and taped. Better still the wind is in the right place and we’re sailing to Fiji. We have about five days of good winds ahead of us so fingers crossed, no more drama. There is a front sitting over Fiji which we may encounter in the day prior to arrival. But that’s a future problem. We’ll think about and deal with that when we’re closer.