Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

279nm to go.

This feels like drawing teeth. The wind is right behind us. We’ve been sailing wing on wing most of the time and we’re covering almost exactly the distance required each day to arrive at sunset on May 3rd. It’s frustrating to think that we would probably be making landfall today if it wasn’t for our own home goal. I want to fully recharge the batteries on arrival so that opens up the possibility of running the genset for a few hours before we arrive and make up any shortfall on the last day – as long as it is a short shortfall. We’ll just plod on.

A few days ago I calculated that Fatu Hiva, on a perfectly clear day, should become visible over the horizon at a distance of 75nm. That means our first glimpse of land could be at dawn on our last day. That will be something to look forward to.

We performed another wash on day 19 as the seas remained calm. This allows us to play catch up on the battery charging as we’re still unable to regenerate at these speeds and we’re not making much from the wind. What rubs our noses in it is to hear that practically all the other boats in our little fleet that we hear from on the daily net are experiencing winds in the 15 to 20 knot range whereas we and just one other boat are down around 10 where our standard sails leave us under canvassed. I harp on.

It’s interesting to note each day the order in which the list of email radio stations appear. We’ve passed the point of equidistance between Panama and New Zealand so we see more and more New Zealand stations appearing near the top of the list although the nearest are still in Hawaii and California. That won’t last for long. I’ve tried accessing the NZ stations from time to time but have had no luck so far.

As a result of not hearing the ‘nut alarm’ on day 18 when we caught the second tuna I made a second alarm today. Using clothes pegs, some copper strip, some old telephone and network cable and connecting these to the ‘choo choo train’ noise maker for our mexican domino set I created an alarm that will set the train noise off if one of our two lines takes a hit. It went off accidentally once so the system works it seems. No fish though.

An inspection of the pin on the boom gooseneck revealed the retaining pin to have broken and the pin partially out. We fixed this making a new metal washer to hopefully place less stress on the replacement pin. Not sure about corrosion as we now have two metals there so this will need some further examination further on down the line. All this wing on wing sailing puts some stress on the rig as we get occasional back winding of the sails. Despite the use of preventer lines tied down to the cleats this does put stresses on that concern me. Once we’ve made Fatu Hiva we’ll have a whole set of different sailing angles to go on which will get us out of this mode.

Here’s hoping the weather gods favour us with a little more wind today so we can get ahead of our timetable for possible arrival in two days.

During the night, the wind picked up, not by much, but enough to sail at around 4 to 5 knots. I thought it was quite pleasant, the boys though it was too slow and sedate. Steve feels that for days he’s been expecting landfall in three of four days.
While on my morning watch, I saw something fly up from the water and hit the back deck hard near the cockpit. It was a skip jack tuna. Not very big, about two pounds or so, but enough to feed the three of us. The impact was so hard that half of its head was flattened and blood had splattered all around the deck and the cockpit area. After Steve cleaned and gutted the tuna, I got down to cleaning the splattered blood. The smell was pretty unpleasant as the fish blood had sprayed everywhere including on our seat cushions. The smell lingered for the rest of day. By dinner time, neither John nor I wanted to eat fish. I dug out the beef patties I’d been saving and we had cheeseburgers instead! Typical really, for days we’ve been dying for fish and when we catch one, we’re not in the mood.
After dinner just as Steve was bringing in the fishing line, we caught another bigger tuna! Typical!

This was one of the possible land fall dates, when we were going fast.

When we were doing 8,9-10 knots, ok for 24 hours a day, we were getting a bit bashed about, had sleep deprivation, constant 90 decibel roar of the sea, which is very close to white noise.

Add an orange jumpsuit, oversized sack cloth hat and a daily 15 minute water boarding session and it would have been the ideal CIA extradition package holiday.

I would rather have all of that, plus the CIA extras, than sit here plodding along at 2-3 knots. We sometimes touch 4-5, but not for long. Very very bored with this now.

May the 4th seems to be the land fall day. Totally rubbish.

On the upside, during mum’s morning watch, a tuna decided to have a fight with our boat, flew out of the water and head butted the deck, one of the metal poles, then the deck again. Steve promptly gutted it and put its bashed in head/body into the freezer.

In the evening we actually caught a tuna on one of the lines, but didn’t realise until Steve brought them in for the night. That too has been gutted, de-tailed, beheaded and is in the freezer awaiting a date with me and the filleting knife tomorrow.

If we can get our speed up a light bit and catch more tuna/fish, I just might be happy with the crap arrival date.