Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

(My last blog said day 1 but it should have read day 0 – to be edited later)

My day 1 began with my 3 hour shift from midnight to 3am. It passed pretty uneventfully although during the shift the wind picked up enough so that we required hardly any push from the motors to maintain 4 knots. At 3am I woke John who’s shift follows mine.

I woke shortly after 6am, my normal time, not feeling as though I’d had enough sleep. Going upstairs I quickly agreed with Helen that we should hoist the Code Zero to make the best of the wind which was now a little behind us. Due to the previous days errors when dousing the sail the sail was not furled properly and hence had problems opening. In all it took us 90 minutes to sort the sail out and get it flying. In the process we caught it on the spreader causing a slight tear. I only noticed the tear while trying to establish contact on the mornings SSB Pacific net and immediately focused on that as a small tear could easily turn into something larger. Having woken John for the sail raising we again woke him to get it down again and patch the hole we’d made.

Once the sail was properly up it was now my 9am shift. The winds were up and for a while we were making 5.5 to 6 knots but this didn’t last. A lot of the day the winds were 6-8 knots and we were consequently making 3-4 knots under sail. Later in the day the wind shifted putting us 30 degrees off our ideal course. Around dusk we dropped the Code Zero and raised the head sail and motor sailed. Soon the winds had died down so much that the head sail was in the way and that was furled.

We had the lines out all day but had no luck. That’s about it for the sailing. I’m back on my midnight watch. We’re motoring doing our 4 knot trick running on batteries for 2/3 of the time. Just now the wind picked up a little (3 knots) from abeam – enough to warrant unfurling the head sail. Perhaps the winds will pick up some more.

The whole issue with the sail irritated me as it was one of those chain of events issues starting with mishandling the boat while we were trying to furl it on day 0 when the wind suddenly strengthened. The effectiveness of the crew ultimately is my responsibility so I spent today, probably annoying the hell out of Helen, by randomly asking her to tell me which way to steer to head up or fall off so that instructions will be less easily misinterpreted in the future. We’ll see.

It’s worth noting that we’re making a point of not reading each others blogs as make this crossing. The main idea is to ensure we maintain personal viewpoints and not be influenced by what others write. I’m looking forward to reading the results when we arrive in the Galapagos.

Also at the Galapagos may well be our friends on Jackster and Bristol Rose. The latter have resolved their mechanical issues resulting from running over a line at sea. They were on the World ARC but I think are now about a month or so behind schedule. Maybe this will mean they can take their time. Hopefully we will see them with the iguanas, tortoises and sea lions.

Helen seems to be enjoying the solitude of ocean sailing. I’m getting into the groove. John has had headaches for the last couple of days – perhaps due to dehydration from the sweatbox that was Puntarenas. We’ll soon see if ocean passage making brings him peace or insane boredom.

I’ll go and enjoy the night. The moon is high and bright so the stars are not as clear as they could be. The sea is pretty calm; small ripples over a slight swell. There’s lightning off in the distance somewhere – perhaps over southern Costa Rica – but nothing near. Peaceful.

We finally left the Costa Rica Yacht Club, Puntarenus by high tide. Steve managed to get our clearance paper with no more hick ups. John and I completed our last bit of prepping the boat. We fueled up to the rim and off we went.

As we exited the estuary we had some wind! Steve decided to get out the Code Zero (a large head sail) to give us some extra push in the light wind. Soon after getting the Code Zero up the wind suddenly picked up from about 8 knots to 18 knots. This meant getting the Code Zero down again. Not at all easy in strong winds as we had to be very careful of the light sail material which could rip. I was downstairs when all this happened but I could hear the sail flapping loudly so went up to see what was happening. Steve was at the front of the boat trying to roll up the sail while John was trying to control the line to minimize the sail flapping. When Steve saw me he shouted for me to fall off the boat by 20 degrees. Instead of turning the boat away from the wind which falling off means, I turned it into wind by 20 degrees. Well this made the flapping worse and Steve’s job harder. I realised my mistake when I heard angry shouting. Once I got the boat pointing the right way, we managed to bring down the sail. As you can imagine Steve was royally p*** off with me. He lectured saying I must learn and practice my terminology. Which I really must and hope that I learn falling off and heading into wind better than my left and right.

Although the wind was a bit strong for the Code Zero, it was perfect for our normal sails. Once we had all the normal sails trimmed nicely we were really sailing. We had originally planned to stop off at a nearby island where Steve and John could clean the props and bottom of the boat. However with such good wind we decided to stop off at Leona Bay the furthest place we could anchor before heading out into the ocean. It would have been nice not to stop at all but the water was so filthy at Puntarenus that we had to remove the growth on our hull bottom and props so as not to slow down the boat during our crossing. The sail to Leona bay was most pleasant. Flat seas and good wind, just how I like it. We saw a huge turtle, the largest I’ve seen in the waters and loads of rays jumping out and belly flopping back into the sea.

We made it to Leona in good time. John and Steve got into their dive gear immediately and started work on the boats bottom. I did a wash, tested out the air conditions and waxed the dodger which I had completed forgotten to do before. We managed to finish all our chores at the same time. John came out of the water feeling very unwell with motion sickness bobbing up and down under the hull. Not a good start for him as were about to head out into the Pacific.
Anyway we put away what we could, upped our anchor, raised the sails and headed into the setting sun. The wind died!