Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

So what did we see today? Sea, sky, clouds, sun and flying fish.

The big event for day 10 was passing our half way point. There’s more than one way to define half way and we chose the point where the distance we’d covered matched the distance we had left to go. These two figures matched around 10:35pm during my night watch. We’d agreed to be all up for it and celebrate at that time rather than wait for the next day. I woke Helen and John and we popped the cork on a bottle of bubbly when the numbers matched. 1,463nm covered, 1,463nm to go.

The wind remained too high and the seas too bumpy for me to attempt rigging a new outhaul so we remain on a reefed main. Winds have died down overnight so hopefully today I can put one in as we now need it to maintain a decent boat speed.

It’s become significantly more difficult to find good times to get emails in and out via the radio as the nearest station is over 2,000 miles away. I’m still able to work stations 4,000 miles away which suggests the ones in New Zealand may become useful soon.

Apart from the outhaul the boat appears fine. I am watching the pin holding the boom to the gooseneck as it keeps working it’s way up to the cotter pin and putting pressure on it. This may be normal but I’m obsessing it as this could be a point of failure that could cause us a real hassle. I’ve rigged a line to prevent the boom from falling too far if the pin works it way out.

Another minor issue is my main amp counter for the house bank is counting the amps out faster than it counts them in. We’ve been charging solely on wind, sun and cross charging from the drive bank for the last 9 days. Normally the house bank would get a strong burst from the main charger each time we do a wash and the subsequent days solar charging often triggers a reset. Without the reset the meter thinks the batteries are dangerously low but the voltage remains handsomely high no doubt in a large part to the amount of amp hours we’ve made from wind generation. In the end it’s the volts that count so this remains a niggling concern which will solve itself once we arrive in Fatu Hiva and we play catch up on the washes. I’m denied Helen use of the washing machine at sea as I don’t want to put pressure on the bearings while we’re tossing around at sea. Fixing the machine will be hell so it’s to be treated very carefully and used only in a calm anchorage.

No milestones.
No events.
No visitors.
NO FISH!

The only thing John and Steve have caught is a cold.

Haven’t been able to read or stay on the computer for very long. The swells and winds have been quite high today making the dipping, rising and crashing over the waves very pronounced. I’ve been borrowing Steve’s MP3 and listening to music rather than reading. It’s nice to block out most of the continuous roar and banging of the waves with soothing music.

My night shift was a bit wild. The wind picked up and the swells increased to about ten to twelve feet. The moonlight lit up the wall of sea rising and falling behind me as we glided over the swells. Standing at the helm with the wind whipping around me I listened to my player. The music and elemental forces around me was like some madness. I found myself shrieking like a Banshee and dancing and whirling around like a Dervish. Am I going insane!

Today we saw sea, sky, clouds, sun and flying fish. That being said, we didn’t see much sun as it was mostly cloudy and the seas were big – in the 10-12 foot range – as a result of winds in the low to mid 20s for most of the day.

So, the outhaul story. Shortly after taking over from John at 5am I heard a bit of a thunk. That in of itself is not too unusual as in the conditions we were experiencing the odd hull slap or sail flap can occur. I checked around and soon found the clew of the main sail (bottom rear) flapping as a result of the new outhaul chaffing through. This was all my fault. The outhaul is supposed to control the tension in the foot of the sail. I had let it out quite a way to change the shape of the main considerably to improve our down wind handling. However, the pulley at the rear of the boom is not shaped for this angle and the line must have rubbed the metal surround.

I immediately called John back up for assistance – fortunately he was still awake wondering if I’d be need help reefing as the winds were really picking up. By point the boat more into wind and letting the boom right out we were able to relieve enough pressure on the main to put a tight first reef in. Without tension at the base of the main, the bottom few feet were flapping madly in the wind. I did not want to go up onto the bimini in the dark without being able to see what the sea was doing so I went forward and raised the lazy bag on the downwind side to collect up the loose sail. This seemed to work although it was not ideal. John was able to head back to sleep and I awaited dawn. When Helen awoke I was able to repeat the previous days maneuver heading up a little to put pressure on the main to minimise movement. This time I gave Helen specific instructions not to do anything while I was up there which she nearly followed. I was able to collect up the loose end of the sail and tie it down to the boom which stabalized the sail better than before. Given the rough conditions I was not prepared to try and fish the old outhaul out of the boom nor retie a fixed outhaul. That can wait for calmer conditions.

For most of yesterday we flew. We were often doing 12 knots as we flew down the big waves and averages over 9 knots were not uncommon. Around 11 knots the props seem to cavitate so we would slow the boat down by regenerating. We eventually had to stop as we were putting more into the drive batteries than we could consume and were running into an over voltage situation. I would occasionally look at the distance made in the last 24 hours by checking our track and at one point I saw 192nm – not bad when we’re getting our power for free. We haven’t been diligent looking at the distance log on the GPS which would probably show a slightly higher value as a result of the weaving of the boat through the waves.

I’d forgotten to mention that on day 8 I had started insisting we all practice steering by hand. If we lost the autopilot we would be plunged into it and that is not the time to be learning as chances are any failure would occur in extreme conditions. We all fared differently and some (perhaps a lot) of practice is required. The day 9 conditions were not conducive to practice so I didn’t insist.

Unless the winds die right down we expect to pass the midway point late today or early tomorrow. A few days I did a quick bit of trigonometry. Imagine a straight line from the Galapagos to the Marquesas. If you’re imagining properly this straight line goes right through the earth. The path we have to travel follows the arc of a circle rising over the straight line like a well rounded hill. The height of this hill turns out to just over 300nm. So we’ve just about sailed up this 300nm hill (45 times the height of Everest) and are about to sail down the other side.

We put a bottle of bubbly in the fridge for celebration – our one and only alcoholic concession for the trip. This celebration may have to wait till tomorrow as our midway point will probably occur at night.

No fish on the lines for the past three days.

Didn’t have the best rest, but was woken up by the boat moving around a lot.

Mum handed over the shift and disappeared. We were being pushed by the wind and quite hard 22-25 knots. Regen was on, which normally slows us down by at least a knot, but we we still being pushed at 9.5+ knots, with slightly touching 14.5 on the down hill bit of the waves.

I sat there in the dark for the first hour watching and taking in the numbers. Wind angle, wind speed, gps speed, speed through water, where we’re heading, where we’re meant to be heading and where we’re pointing. After an hour I calmed down, by that time I was used to what the boat was doing and generally how it felt in those conditions.

I keep on forgetting to say that the media player is hooked up to the chart plotter and has been for a number of days since our last turn for 2400 miles. Feeling better about the boat I settled down to watch a few South Parks and then listened to some music.

Towards the end of my shift the winds started picking up again to 23-25 knots, I shut everything down and then was looking at the numbers again and what the boat was doing. It was Steve’s shift and I woke him up promptly so he could deal with the rising winds. I debriefed him on what had been happening and asked if he need me to help him deal with the worsening conditions, he said that he was alright and I went to bed.

5-10 mins later he came down and asked if I could help as the Out-Haul-Rigger-Thingy had broken and our main was flapping around in the wind. We both donned our safety harnesses and buckled ourselves to the boat.

I’m sure Steve will go into much more detail about how we sorted it out. Steve did the main dangerous part of running around the boat while I manned the winches and brought in the lines so we could reef the main sail. It took us 30 mins of moving the boat in and out of the wind to put in the reef and haul the excess sail in to the cradle, but by the end of it we and the boat were safe. The main sail had been reefed and everything was back under control. I went straight to bed after that bit of excitement.

By the time I had woken up from my morning nap, Steve had tidied up the main once it got light, but the winds were still too strong to do anything else to it. We’ll just have to wait until the winds die down to fix it properly.

The afternoon was pleasant the winds quite high still, we were on a good angle to the swell and did a bit of swell surfing. This is when you make the boat go down the swell to pick up speed and then catch the next swell, surf down that and so on. If it goes right you can have a very smooth and fast ride, but sometimes you get out of sync and start crashing and slamming into the waves until you get enough speed back to catch the right timing again. We got it right for ages and were averaging 8-9 knots.

It’s like riding a mechanical bull, when you get it right it is like the slowest speed, gentle up and downs, some side to side movement, but very gentle. In general what it’s been like for the last few days is like a medium setting, still gentle ups and downs, but with the odd jerk to the side or a direction you weren’t expecting. Sometimes its been getting up to a medium/high setting of being flopped around in random directions with force, but not that violently. I hope that we will never see anything more than that.

No fish today either, we might have to rethink what lures we are using.

Still not feeling great, but the ibuprofen, fistful of multi-vitamins and a broken nights sleep, has made me feel a little better. My throat is red-raw though.

Steve did something to the main sail today, outrigger or something…. this allows us to change the shape of the bottom of the sail. Instead of it being fixed in one place we can let it out or bring it in.

We are still in between being pulled and being pushed by the wind. Not too sure if the outrigger added to our performance, it felt like we had a slowish day, but looking at the stats we did ok.

We saw some dolphins in the afternoon and a big fish jumping out of the water.

No fish on our lines today.