Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

So far I’ve been pretty good at staying on track during my watches. In previous trips I’ve tended to go off my own way thinking that the boat sails better in that direction or that it looks quicker that way. Since then I’ve learnt better and realised that Steve has calculated these tracks based on current, wind direction and potentiality wind speed. Although it may look like its a longer route, it is in fact the quickest way to our destination. Still whenever John takes over from me, he looks in trepidation at the chart fearing how far we’ve wondered off. Today to his relief it was only twenty feet!

The wind has been consistently in the late teens and from the south east, so we continue to make good progress.

No special visitors today although we see lots and lot and lots of flying fish, sometimes providing amazing formations and patterns as they skim over the waves.

We caught four fish today. Three got away and one was too small to keep. Fishing is definitely a male thing. I haven’t met one female on all the other boats we’ve become acquainted with who has any real interest in the fishing process. We certainly like cooking and eating the catch and even get quite excited when a fish is being caught. However men can spend hours talking about fishing gears, making lures and playing with their tackles!!!!

My night watch was dark and tedious.

If we weren’t numbering them the days would now be all a bit of a blur as the amount of distinction between one and the other is rather narrow.

I did do an analysis of our track yesterday and discovered that our best 24 hour run so far ended at 7am on day 6 covering 172nm. That included a light night and quite a few hours of regen.

At one point we saw a school of small mahi mahi on the go. Off the hook we only see them when they torpedo through the air. Within moments we had three on the lures. Two got away but we managed to get one in. It was too small to eat so we let it go. There was a fourth one on the lines when we pulled them in in the evening but it too escaped before reaching the boat.

We continue our course along the rhumb line to Fatu Hiva. The miles are slowly going by. We passed the quarter distance mark today which didn’t get much fanfare – certainly not as much as half way will bring. As the first two days were pretty slow there’s a good chance the remaining 3/4 of the trip will be less than three times as long as the first 1/4.

Hundreds of miles from anywhere and thousands from most places we feel very safe in our little bubble of human life out here in the Pacific. Dignity is doing her side of the job very well. On the net we hear of other boats with odd issues (radio problems, freezer problems, etc.) causing them to consider returning to their port of departure. The Galapagos is not the best place for repairing boat parts but then nor are the islands this side of Tahiti. On that front our replacement light air sale is now fully ordered and due to arrive in Tahiti late May, a couple of weeks before our likely arrival.

Woke up early today about 01:30, The morning shift was a bit of a pain, we now have the wind coming from behind/to the side of us, this means our semi protected cockpit does nothing now…. 15-19 knot winds blow straight on to whoever is sitting up there. I’m starting to get a bit chilly up there, might even break out the jumper and jeans at some point.

Winds were swinging around from 90-120 which mean that if it goes above 110 the sails stop acting like wings and start acting like parachutes. To get the best out of the winds and for the safety of the boat, when the winds are coming more from behind you have to change the sail setup, which takes time, but as I said, this morning the winds were swinging all over the place. So this morning I must have change the setup 10+ times, but as I finish changing the setup the winds had gone back and i would have to change to the other setting. In the end I settled for a balance of the 2 settings, it didn’t seem to effect our speed much.

After my morning nap, I’m not feeling that great, feels like the start of a cold, sore throat and little sniffily.

Bit of a nothing day….

Caught 4 fish, 1 was let go, 3 got away (2 of which got away while letting the 1st fish go)

Mum’s been complaining about the roughish ride we’ve been having and said that it always gets rougher when I take the helm. I’m just doing what I’ve been told to do, stay on course and trim the sails. It’s not my fault that during my watch the winds pick up, so do the seas/waves and that I manage to get 8-9 knots of speed out of 15-18 knots of wind.

We are covering a great number of miles now per day, but we are all starting to feel the rough bashing we’ve had over the past few days, you definitely have to hold on to something at all times if you are in a upright position now.

Trying to draw or do photos is a big no no in these conditions. 5+ mins of looking at something other than the sea or horizon will make you feel pretty sick soon enough.

Wind, wind lots of wind. Its amazing how obsess we get about wind once we’re under way. We have perfect wind speed for our boat at the moment, late teens to twenty knots. On my shift I was making about 8 knots an hour. Waves are still a bit choppy but we’ve turned west slightly away from the wind and waves so the ride is more pleasant.

In the afternoon we caught a small mahi mahi. It wasn’t worth keeping so Steve decided to use it as bait. We didn’t attract any more fish but we did attract a large pod of Short-finned Pilot Whales. There must have been about fifteen of them. They chased and swam by our boat for about thirty minutes. They weren’t too big, on average about fourteen to sixteen feet long. We saw a mother and baby. The baby was about six feet long. They swam like dolphins and had a white making on their back. We all felt quite high after their visit. It really was an amazing sight.

Day 5 was by far the best day of the passage so far for a number of reasons. In no particular order :

* I had a decent sleep without being woken by a shredded sail or a wet fish in the bed

* We hooked three mahi mahi. The first escaped. The second was rather small so we used it as bait but it either escaped the hook or was eaten off. The third mahi escaped the triple hook by breaking two of the hooks off. All fun.

* We made our turn to the Marquesas. It was only about 20 degrees but now we’re no longer purposely going further south than the straight line would suggest. We feel we have good seas and winds and it’s time to run on in. Just another 2,400nm to go.

* The absolute highlight was being accompanied by a pod of 15-20 short finned pilot whales for about 30 minutes. We saw at least two babies amongst the group who were easily keeping up with our 8-9 knots of boat speed at the time. At times we would see four or five of the whales surfing down a wave. When the whales were close to the side of the boat they were easily seen beneath the clear water as well as being very obvious when they came up for air. On a couple of occasions a more energetic whale would almost clear the water. The larger whales were about half the length of the boat. It really felt like we were the visitors in their domain as they appeared to be simply having fun alongside us.

* Last but not least I have finally had motions of some consistency since we left Ayora a week ago. Not really blog material but after a week of the alternative the occasion left me feeling pretty pleased.

I heard from our friends Richard and Kristie aboard Lileth that both their autopilots have failed and they still have a 1,000nm to hand steer to the Marquesas. We wish them good luck. They’ll surely kiss the soil when they arrive.

In the end I spoiled my day a little by dropping a winch handle overboard. We have another big one and a couple of crappy backups but I’d rather not have lost the first and best one. Will have to make sure we don’t lose the next one before Tahiti.