Week Two
It’s been a week of ups and downs…and side-to-sides, and pushing and shoving. Paul has described the sea state in his weather reports, along with the meteorological reasons and explanations for the rough conditions. I prefer to focus on the drama such weather created. There’s only so much you can do with words to get across how dramatic it was/still is, at times. When it began to get choppier, I carried on regardless, remembering how I dealt with this type of thing on the Atlantic crossing. I adopted the stances I used then, such as standing with feet placed well apart, body leaning against the sides and moving with the motion of the waves when preparing food or cooking in the galley, which feels a lot more graceful than it looks I suspect. A golden rule is never to try to do things with two hands – make sure one is always holding on to the many wooden ‘hand-holds’ dotted around the boat (otherwise it won’t end well). I had even got a bit blasé about it all because I had learned to sense when a convenient lull in the rocking was imminent simply through getting used to the rhythm of the waves. This would allow for a quick ‘letting go’ to carry out a two-handed task such as chopping veg or doing dishes. So far, so familiar then.
Gradually the force of the wind and waves increased, bringing with them some alarming noises and a motion that I found scary and extremely difficult to move around in, let alone do anything more ambitious than inch my way to the toilet with my back against the wall. A couple of days before the worst of it, I had prepared and cooked some tasty evening meals, and got on with daily routine stuff with only the odd annoying jerk or jolt to catch me unawares. By Saturday (30th June) I had written in my journal that it was becoming hard to sleep with all the rolling, and that movement was more restricted so we were reading and dozing a lot more during the day. It began to feel chillier, too and the sky was grey and foggy with drizzly rain falling. We put the heating on for longer intervals and played offline scrabble on Paul’s iPhone; all very cosy and the speed we were doing showed we would reach our destination a week earlier than expected. I helped Paul to change the sail set up that afternoon, which was pretty hairy with the boat listing from side to side at such sharp angles. I felt sure one of us would get tossed over the side but even that fear couldn’t detract from the spectacular sight of the Albatrosses circling around us. They were beautiful, and so huge! I’m almost sure they were Albatrosses but I could be wrong. In an effort to picture them, I found myself smiling while remembering a Monty Python sketch which features John Cleese selling Albatross as a cinema snack instead of choc ices. I also wondered how the Ancient Mariner could have been so cruel as to shoot such a lovely bird.
July dawned with the roughest day yet, and a realisation that this was a much more challenging passage than the Atlantic crossing. Sitting in the cabin I could see and hear the water crashing into the cockpit. The waves had reached about 4 metres in height and the swell was strong. The wind was also strong and the boat was hurtling through this turbulent sea (it resembled the state water looks like when boiling in a pan) at breakneck speed. The difference from any other sea state I’ve experienced was that the waves were coming from all directions, so that it was like sitting on one of those ‘bucking bronco’ machines whose main aim is to throw you onto the floor. Sunday’s journal entry plaintively and somewhat melodramatically states that ‘moving and staying upright now requires a good deal of planning, motivation and effort’. Earlier I said that it’s hard to put words together to convey how trying it was, but some of the words and phrases that came to mind as I sat there being reassured by Paul that this was nothing to worry about might help: pitching, tossing, corkscrewing, plunging, slamming, banging, crashing, bouncing, ‘being lifted off the seat’ ‘high walls of water’, waves breaking over the top of the boat, listing from side to side at speed…you get the picture. We didn’t eat much that day, but hadn’t done much to work up an appetite anyway. The only thing to do was sit it out below while Paul carried out regular weather forecasts. I have to confess I’m a touch sceptical about these forecasts, but looking at the complicated weather charts and faxes as they come through made me think you need a degree in meteorology to make sense of them.
Neither of us got seasick I’m pleased to say, and difficult as it was I’m still feeling good about the whole thing. I think much of my concerns come from not having the knowledge that Paul has about the level of danger. The loud noises and the turbulence in a storm at sea serve to make it seem more alarming than it actually is. It’s also frustrating being rendered immobile when things need doing and the thought of the whole journey being like that was disturbing to say the least. In the end I did what I always do to escape in stressful times – read! We take turns choosing music to listen to in the evenings, and I have come to appreciate more of Paul’s choices (as long as it’s not cello music or Ivor Cutler). I think he now enjoys Neil Young because he hasn’t described him as ‘whingey’ lately 😉 . The World Service provides the only source of news we get, but is sadly lacking in its World Cup coverage so I have to rely on emails about how England are doing. We’ve also listened to some entertaining old podcasts from radios 4 and 6. I’m looking forward to picking up the American radio stations when we get closer.
Things have been a lot more calm and pleasant for the last two days. I’m back to creating meals from our vast store of provisions and have been recording details of our evening meals to include in a separate blog entry later on.
We’ve changed time zones again and are now another hour ahead, in Noumea time (New Caledonia). Paul tells me we’ll be crossing the international dateline in a few days’ time and will gain a day (in Groundhog Day fashion?). I really can’t get my head around it but it will be interesting to experience when it happens (or maybe not). We were a thousand miles from anywhere yesterday, and today we are 37% of the way across. I do enjoy those sort of statistics and facts, and still like to study the route and progress on the electronic charts. We’ve only been alerted to three other vessels in the last week so we really are ‘alone on a wide wide sea’ (another apt line from ‘The Ancient Mariner’). We did, however, finally see some whales and dolphins this morning. It was worth being called out of my warm cocoon to see them. The whales were too far away to see properly but their size and spouts distinguished them from dolphins.
We head into week three with good winds predicted to push us along and with gales and hurricanes far enough away to cause us no great alarm. The main concern at the moment is that we’ve almost run out of bread and Paul would prefer to wait until next week before we use any large amount of gas to bake any. Luckily we have plenty of longlife naan and pitta breads and tortilla wraps to see us through. Just hope it’s not too rocky when the time comes for mixing, kneading and proving dough.
Kathy
Category: Uncategorized
Day 15, 5th July. 40-48N, 172-00E. Daily Run: 90 NM. Weather: 10 Knots SE, Sunny, Fresh. 2727 NM to go
Day 15, 5th July. 40-48N, 172-00E. Daily Run: 90 NM. Weather: 10 Knots SE, Sunny, Fresh. 2727 NM to go
Yesterday was very calm, no wind at all, so a day for drifting and doing jobs. I dropped the sails to stop the clanking and flapping and turned the engine off for the afternoon. The sea had calmed but there where still enough waves/swell to keep the boat rocking and rolling. It was a day for jobs, I went around the boat checking for chafe and damage. At the bow I found the anchor rubbing on the whisker stay, there was a bit of plastic there to prevent this, but it had slid out of the way. Next we unrolled the genoa and I climbed the mast a little to reach the clew, where the sheets are attached, I moved the bowline knots a couple of inches along to move the chafe point out of the ring in the sail. There wasn’t any chafe as such, but a distinct compression of the rope, I hope this will be good for the rest of the passage now. I had noticed the topping lift was getting difficult to use, on this boat the boom and sail are too heavy to lift by puling the topping lift by hand at the mast, and the boat came with a block and tackle 4:1 at the rear of the boom, that connects to the usual topping lift. The topping lift is used to lift the boom up in the air when putting sails up, so the sail can be tensioned without the weight of the boom pulling it down. It also helps a lot when reefing. Anyway one of the blocks had smashed its sheave. My fault I’m sure, as I’m often cranking in the main, when the topping lift isn’t slack enough and putting a lot of strain on it. That was fixed, but I noticed I’m getting low on blocks now. The schoolboy wooden box for bits and pieces that fell off the pedestal was cobbled back together and tied to the pedestal, that’s better than having nothing and a box flying around the cockpit sole. Finally I fitted bungee cord to Kathy’s bookshelf in the hope it will stop her books doing kamikaze dives on each big wave.
Later in the evening there was a few knots of wind, so I raised the mainsail to see if that might help stop the rolling while we slowly motored east, however the sail jammed. This has happened before and my temp repair had failed, as I expected it to. Basically the top runner for the head of the sail is attached to the metal plate at the sails head with woven tape, however the slot in the plate has right angle edges that are perfect for cutting fabric, which they have done, twice now. I repaired it with new tape and doubled up on it. It can break when it’s up fine, it’s only a problem when raising the sail. I need to take a file, or maybe the dremmel is the answer, to the metal and round off the edges. I also need to write to Rolly Tasker, the sailmaker and point out the problem with their sail design/construction. After all that, the main only flapped itself to death and had to come down again.
So for the night we ran with the engine ticking over, making 3 knots east, for no other reason than the fact I can’t sleep when we are drifting aimlessly. We saw one ship yesterday, Closest point of approach (CPA) was 5 NM
6AM this morning and I popped on deck to check all was well and was delighted to see a huge school of dolphins all around the boat and many more further away, then a few hundred metres in front of the boat I saw two big whales coasting along, very gracefully, making a heck of a speed too. The sea was calm and the sun had not long risen on a clear sky. It was quite a magical scene. The wind was slowly building and by 7AM I had the main up and the genoa out and we are close hauled making a healthy 6 knots in 10 knots of wind over a lovely calm sea.
The forecasts show that a deepish low is moving up on us and will meet the pacific high around the same time as us, the charts have the word ‘GALE’ over the convergence area where the low pushes into the high. 30-40 knot winds are forecast, and I guess big waves too. My plan is to try to stay south of this, and at the moment I’m plucking 42deg North as the highest latitude I should go. Once the low has passed we will turn to the north (NE) and follow it’s tail through and pass north of the high and onto our destination. That’s the plan anyway. There’s plenty of typhoon activity over near Japan right now and a hurricane off Mexico, but where we are we should be very safe and out of their reach.
At midday here, the wind has picked up to a good 10-12 knots and we are flying along. Today marks our 2nd week at sea, these two weeks seem to have flown by, in the next few days we hope to reach the halfway mark.
Paul Collister
PS I had the wrong title for yesterdays blog, should have been day 14
Day 15, 4th July. 40-11N, 170-12E. Daily Run: 116 NM. Weather: 2–5 Knots Northerly, Sunny, very calm. 2816 NM to go
Day 15, 4th July. 40-11N, 170-12E. Daily Run: 116 NM. Weather: 2–5 Knots Northerly, Sunny, very calm. 2816 NM to go
As expected the winds dropped last night, and by this morning we were becalmed. However for most of the night, despite only having winds of about 6 – 8 knots we were able to put in a decent daily run of 116NM, however by 10AM the wind had gone completely, leaving the sails hopelessly flapping, the boat and more annoyingly the boom rolling from side to side, driving me nuts. So down came the sails and on went the engine, just low revs, enough to keep us moving along at about 4 knots. I wanted the excuse of giving the batteries a good charge with the engine, but the sun has come out now and we are getting all the juice we could ever want.
So we are pushing ahead, I’m getting better at reading the weather charts, and the ones I get from Hawaii are great at seeing the bigger picture. It seems the low that was giving us so much trouble has headed of to the NE now, and we are in-between it and the pacific high, but far away from both such that we aren’t seeing much wind. As we head NE towards our goal, we will be squeezed between the high and low and should see some very good winds, If I keep towards the high, the winds should be less and more pleasant. We shall see. Hopefully we won’t have many more calm days like today ahead.
What did we break in the last 24 hours section: Well, when I put the mainsail up yesterday, I noticed a lot of black marks on it, most disappointing as it was squeaky clean new white before. It seems when I dropped the sail in the night, I hadn’t noticed that the reefed bottom section, that hung over the side of the boom had got trapped under the boom, squashed against the gallows. The gallows are a trestle like arrangement that the boom sits in, just forward of the cockpit, and stop it swinging around. The cutout in the gallows had previously been covered in some kind of black rubber/leather to protect the boom, now for a couple of days it had been rubbing against the sail. Looking at it today in sunlight, it may only be cosmetic damage. I topped up the engine oil today, something I haven’t done on the move for a long time and let the oil funnel roll over and drip on one of the cockpit cushions, stupid I know, and I only mention it because Kathy thinks if I’m going to mention spilt pot noodles I should also cover my own spilling mistakes.
More importantly, what did we fix in the last 24 hours. Well first off I dismantled the connectors and cable harness behind the steering pedestal. The Garmin chart plotter and the bow thruster conectors were caked in salt and grime, so I cleaned them up and sure enough they are both working fine again. This time I have bagged them up and I don’t think they will be affected by spray again. I will build a little compartment to house them at some point. Next onto the water maker. I suspected the supply of salt water to be the issue, and on checking there was no water in the fine pre-filter to the system. It seems the pressure pump wasn’t able to draw water up from the hull and through the filter. I have bypassed the filter, so the water travels straight from the thru hull to the primary raw filter to the high pressure pump, I think I’m reasonably safe doing this out here where there will be little to get sucked in. This solved the problem and so far today I have made 12 litres of water, not a lot, but not bad for a couple of hours running. As it stands we aren’t using enough water to need the machine. The calm weather has allowed me to transfer 40 litres of Diesel from the cans on deck to the tank, giving us a full tank, and 40 litres reserve on deck. Hopefully we won’t use more than 30 litres today to get past this calm spot, then the rest is for emergencies and touchdown. Yesterday, due to a very grey few days, the battery hadn’t reached 100% recharge, so I decided to move back to the Monitor wind vane steering, with my dodgey chain repair in place I set it up to steer us on a course of about 70deg True. It worked really well and ran for about 15 hours before the wind had dropped so low it couldn’t cope. I have attached a picture of what happens to your course when both crew sleep and leave the driving to a machine in low wind!
The previous bad weather had thrown all of Kathy’s books off her bookshelf and they were piled up in a terrible mess behind the bookcase windows, now I have to devise some mechanism to keep them in place, I have bungee cord and a toolbox, so off we go. Last nights calms allowed Kathy to do some proper cooking and we had a lovely meal, as close as we ever get to a Sunday roast onboard!
Paul Collister.
Day 13, 3rd July. 39-20N, 168-57E. Daily Run: 85 NM. Weather: 10-15 Knots Northerly, 2935 NM to go
Day 13, 3rd July. 39-20N, 168-57E. Daily Run: 85 NM. Weather: 10-15 Knots Northerly, 2935 NM to go
Things are improving here, we had another rough night, big waves and a lot of rolling. I wanted to get the main up, but worried that going up on deck in the night with such big waves tossing the boat around wasn’t worth it, and also that the waves would cause the main to slam around too much. The forecasts all seemed to point to a lessening of the wind and waves over the next 48 hours as the Low moves away from us and weakens. By morning the wind was down to 10-15 knots, not much at all, but the waves were still a few metres high and the boat was rolling badly, I decided to get the main up, with one reef in it, this turned out to be a simple enough job in the end. First I have to get the boat pointing into the wind and waves, this needs the engine on, but the headsail has to be put away first, which can be a pain in bigger winds, but as I only had a partial staysail out, this went in easy. On the coachroof, it was quite rolly, but I have a guard rail around the bottom of the mast, which makes it very secure there. Up went the main with a single reef, back to the cockpit, engine off, main out, and genoa unfurled to about 50% and we were off again. This time on a faster reach with a nice heel to starboard. Back in the cabin you could feel how much better the motion was, we went from 3 knots speed to around 5-6, and the rolling was much reduced. Looking at the weather forecast, the great circle route takes up back into the low we are trying to get away from. So I’m going to keep going east for a day or two until the High pressure system ahead of us kicks in, I think this is the pacific high, and we will turn north when we reach that and follow it around until we are north of Seattle then probably make a direct course for Juan de Fuca straits. There are more lows heading across, and I expect the typhoon about to hit Korea will head our way at some point as a much weakened depression, but all in all, I’m hoping for a calmer ride for a while.
Casualties/Damage A few bruises from being thrown around the cabin, a few coffee stained items of clothing/fabrics. The batteries are only just providing enough power to run the auto helm and the heating system. The eberspacher draws quite a lot of 12v power, despite being a diesel heater! The solar power is reduced a lot under these very grey skies. Still we haven’t had to run the engine for a charge since the panels were installed earlier this year. We are discharging the batteries by about 50-55% overnight right now, which is more than I like, but still fairly acceptable under the circumstances given that they do generally get a full recharge each day.
I have replaced the missing bolts on the solar panels and they are back in place and I have realised that the problem with the bow thruster will most likely be at the control unit in the cockpit. When the wooden box/tray fell off, it exposed the wiring behind the binacle/pedastel to the spray, the Garmin navigator is playing up now as one of the sockets, in the same area was exposed on its back. Both of these are not an issue, we don’t use them on passage and as I say to Kathy, once we get becalmed, I will do all the delicate jobs while she gets on with cooking the soufflé and baking my multi tiered birthday cake, with intricate England footballers holding a small iced world cup aloft! Kathy cooked up two wonderful pot noodles yesterday, and as an experiment, she used one of them as floor polish, I think that’s why she was spreading it around the galley floor, then wiping it up again 😉 I have attached a picture of Kathy in our sea berth seeming to be coping quite well
Yesterdays daily run was a miserable 85 miles, but hopefully we can start improving on that now.
Paul Collister
Day 12, 2nd July. 39-19N, 166-08E. Daily Run: 95 NM. Weather: 15-20 Knots wind, rain, cold. 3000ish NM to go
Day 12, 2nd July. 39-19N, 166-08E. Daily Run: 95 NM. Weather: 15-20 Knots wind, rain, cold. 3000ish NM to go
Conditions deteriorated throughout yesterday, The wind strengthened up to 25-30 Knots, the sea built to good 4 metres with waves coming from several directions. The boat was being thrown around a lot, but worst of all the main big waves were on the beam, coming from the NW. This caused the boat to roll a lot, so much that it got quite worrying and I changed course to head East so the big waves were on our port quarter. This reduced the rolling but added in the corkscrewing affect you get when the stern is lifted up and dumped back down somewhere else. We couldn’t cook dinner, and a sandwich had to suffice, Kathy couldn’t get her wine into a glass so had to swig from the bottle. This morning things aren’t much better, the waves have dropped a bit and we have got more used to things, but sleeping through it all seems to be the best approach right now.
Damage Report: Well not a good night really, a spare halyard undid itself and went flying, I couldn’t reach it, and as it had a stopper knot in the end, I hauled it up the mast where it will remain as a spare shroud, until it’s calmer and I can climb the mast to retrieve it. It’s used to get the dinghy on and off, so no big deal. More worrying was the solar panels, two of the three bolts on the port side of the port panel got fed up with the waves and departed. I just caught the panels as they tried to follow, and they are now held in place by a few lengths of rope. Not a big deal now, they are still working fine, in fact pumping 30A into the battery as I type, thankfully the sun is popping out once in a while. A more worrying matter was the screaming noise that came from the V berth earlier today, it woke me up, and I rushed up to the cockpit to see what was going on, I assumed a torn sail or some calamity at the bow, but all looked fine, jumping into the v berth it was clear the noise was internal, so the only thing I could think of was the bow thruster, I pushed the cut out switch to OFF, where it should have been anyway, and the noise stopped. I have no idea what is going on, but again it can wait until it calms.
Later this morning I did a full tour of the deck, re-secured a diesel can, tidied up the dumped mainsail, checked everything I could see and noticed a fair bit of bird shit on the coach roof. At least someones getting the benefit of us being out here. We saw our first albatross yesterday, I wasn’t sure until it spread it’s wings, which were massive.
It’s too rough to spend any time in the cockpit, the cap rails are constantly being dipped underwater and waves splash over all the time, so we haven’t done a lot of whale watching yet!
Again the forecasts for the next few hours tell me what I knew already, but further ahead than that, I only have a rough idea.
Paul Collister
Day 11, 1st July. 39-16N, 163-45E. Daily Run: 127 NM. Weather: 25 Knots wind, rain, fog, cold. 3096 NM to go
Day 11, 1st July. 39-16N, 163-45E. Daily Run: 127 NM. Weather: 25 Knots wind, rain, fog, cold. 3096 NM to go
Yesterday the wind was on the beam and I put up the mainsail with 1 reef and 50% genoa. This worked well and the boat sped along, well balanced until the evening, by midnight the wind started gusting very strong and the sea had built to 3 metre waves. The boat was tending to round up, that is turning into the wind on the bigger gusts, the auto helm was then giving up. Around 1AM I went out into a rather rough sea and dropped the main completely, The genoa was reduced to about 25% and the boat chugged along nicely at about 5-6 knots. The wind has continued to strengthen and the seas are now about 4 metres with some cracking big waves running us over every now and then. So all in all, not a very comfortable day today.
My improvement to the sliding kitchen drawers yesterday resulted in one of the drawers ejecting itself across the galley today, the catch had stopped working, so I have a bit more sympathy for the original bodge now. The draw will need a small amount of glue applying at some point 🙁
Today a big cargo ship passed by within a mile, pic attached, the first in a few days.
The low pressure system we were heading across was meant to go north and weaken, instead it has moved slightly east and in our way, it’s also squeezing up against the Pacific high making for a very windy route east if we go that way. Again the forecasts are not much use, A low or high only needs to change its course by 10deg or deepen / weaken faster or slower than expected, and the wind we experience can vary massively.
The connection to the sat phone became unplugged last night and the battery went flat on it, I expect if you are following our dots on the map, you might have seen us stop reporting. This got me to thinking that if the sat phone breaks a lot of people might worry for us, but it’s more likely the satphone will break before we get into trouble, and should we get into trouble we would activate one of the two EPIRBS we have on board, so I wouldn’t worry too much if we disappear from the map.
Currently we have passed the 25% point, but our keenness to escape the typhoon zone around Japan, meant we did great speeds then, so I would think in reality it going to be another 4 weeks sailing, arriving probably during the last week in July.
Paul Collister
Day 10, 30th Jun. 37-58N, 161-32E. Daily Run: 143 NM. Weather: Foggy and swelly. 3224 NM to go
Day 10, 30th Jun. 37-58N, 161-32E. Daily Run: 143 NM. Weather: Foggy and swelly. 3224 NM to go
This is going to get boring soon, another good daily run of 143 miles, the sky is pretty grey with fog reducing visibility to a mile or so. We should be keeping a diligent lookout, but we mostly leave that to the AIS now. I think statistically the chances of us hitting another boat are pretty low, much more likely we would hit some debris in the water. I believe bits of Fukushima are still floating around out here.
I did my usual check of the boat yesterday morning, mostly looking for chafe, and was a bit disappointed to find my once brilliant solution to a broken mast-spinnaker pole fitting, was actually sawing its way through the spinnaker pole end fitting. It had cut in about 5mm and if left alone would be through to the other side in no time at all. I squeezed a bit of leather into the area it was cutting and checking this morning, that seems to have fixed it. I’m going to rig the pole up differently though, that fitting was not intended for the job. Instead I’m thinking of running a rope from the fitting to the samson post, with a place, a foot in front of the mast, where I can attach the spinnaker pole, if I use a heavy rope, this should work out ok. We will see.
We gybed yesterday onto a port gybe and are being propelled by an overtaking low which may get a little stronger tonight, but then reduce, the forecasts predict light headwinds then becalming for a couple of days next week, but I have given up on these forecasts for anything more than 1 day ahead. Perhaps when we are further away from the Asian continent things might settle down. Right now a new typhoon (1807) has kicked off in the Philippines and is heading for southern Japan and onto S Korea. It’s quite possible we will meet up with it in a week or so when it has died out and just become another east heading low. Right now it poses no threat to us. We have turned onto the great circle path directly to the entrance to the straits of Juan de Fuca at Cape Flattery.
My main excitement today has been that I fixed the drawers in the galley, they had been sticking and getting worse each day, I think because they are wooden runners in wooden grooves, the more damp atmosphere causes the problem due to the wood swelling a little. It’s quite pleasant sitting on the cabin sole (floor) while doing a spot of carpentry 1000 miles out into the Pacific ocean. The problem was that the runners had been modified so they were closer together at the rear, making them grip more as the drawers went in. I only mention this because I hate poor engineering, and I suspect this mod was made to stop the drawers sliding out in a rough sea. That did work, but also prevented them from being opened north of 40deg, and I suspect that the reason the mod was done, was because the actual catches that are meant to stop them sliding out were broken. I, with the help of Tim a while ago fixed these catches and now I have removed the packing, everything works wonderfully. See I told you it would get boring soon.
We listen to the news on the BBC world service each night for 10 minutes, this being our only source of information on whats going on in the world, now it’s the weekend perhaps we will hear how England are getting on in the world cup. They have been absent from the news all week, is this down to shame we wonder? We also play a history card game that Max, our friend back in Birkenhead gave us as a present, some time ago, but specifically for our long passages. you basically hold four cards, more if you are clever, and each card has a historic event but the date of the event is on the rear of the card. The object of the game is to place your events in historic order, i.e. was the battle of Agincourt before or after the moon landing, I got that one right. Obviously some of the events are a little harder than that. So I hope that conveys some of the thrills of ocean crossings, card games and fixing the kitchen drawers!
Paul Collister
Day 9, 29th Jun, 37 – 03N, 158 – 48E Daily Run: 134 nm. Weather: Grey, and bouncy. 3362 nm to go
Day 9, 29th Jun, 37 – 203N, 158 – 48E Daily Run: 134 nm. Weather, Grey, and bouncy. 3362 nm to go
A less than stunning daily run of 134nm, but anything over 120 is fine with me.
Weather and routing: I’m now getting a decent signal from the NOAA Weather transmitter at Hawaii, this gives me charts for the eastern side of the North Pacific, Japan only shows me the west and some middle. Consequently with all these charts, and the downloads I get from Predictwind.com via the satphone, I’m getting a better picture of the weather systems we are encountering and how best to get to our destination. At the moment we are skirting over the top of a high, not the pacific high, that’s next. This high isn’t moving much, but theres a low pressure above us moving ESE, but will shortly move to the north. We will hopefully hitch a ride on that as it goes north, then move east onto the western side of the pacific high, and ride that until we can smell the coffee (Starbucks I presume) of Seattle, then follow whatever winds we can, probably from the NE down into Seattle. Thinking about it, we won’t smell the coffee if the wind is from the West or NE. Oh well.
Not a lot else has happened, the wind has calmed to a steady 15 knots astern, but the rolling isn’t great, but thats improving. Kathy continues to work wonders in the kitchen, and I found some grips for the stove today, which we had lost. They will help hold the pans in place on the gas rings. Talking of Coffee, I managed to brew some fresh, in the cafetiere today, a first on this trip, as we had been wary of breaking the glass, easily done as this is our third on this boat, and spare glass jugs are hard to come by out here 😉 The last baguette has gone, fortunately the Japanese sliced bread is good for another year to two, not quite sure what they put in it to stop it going off, but it can’t be good for you.
My repair to the uphaul on the spinnaker pole didn’t work, it was jamming the release pins for the ends, so I’m on Mk3 now, that is up and running ok, however I suspect the chafing will still come back to bite me. I also fixed the batten in the boom sailbag, he isn’t going anywhere in a hurry now. The wooden box/tray behind the wheel fell off, as Kathy said, this looked like a schoolboy project to start with, cheap delaminating plywood that had rotted, screwed together with non stainless screws, and mounted to the pedestal stand in a well dodgy way. I have been waiting for it to fall off for years now, just so I have an excuse to make a new one. I feel confident of my skills here, as such a box was one of our first woodwork projects at school, one of only two subjects I got an ‘A’ grade for. It had dovetail joints, and was finished with a french polishing. I’m hoping Kathy won’t look at my creation and declare it to also look look a schoolboy project!
I’m currently reading ‘Passage to Juneau’ by Jonathon Raben, to pass the hours. It’s a great read, made better by the fact we will be following his route up the inner passage around Vancouver Island shortly, and I can drop marks on my Navionics chart at the places he describes that I want to visit. I recommend the book to anyone with an interest in Nautical travels, Nautical History, Native American history, Captain Vancouver and Discovery and the Vancouver Island area in general. I must thank John and Carol on SV Nerissa in Miri for giving me the book.
Paul Collister
Week One (by Kathy)
Week One
We left the port of Kushimoto in Japan a week ago today after a final provisioning trip (involving the town’s three supermarkets) for bread and fresh produce. In a departure from our normal routine, we shopped separately, each returning to the boat to deposit bags and then cycling off to get more. This method worked very well for lots of reasons 😉 . While stowing it (and adding it to the inventory in my notebook), I became convinced we had enough food for a return trip and an Atlantic crossing as well!
Anyway, as I type this on Thursday 28th June, I note that the conditions are the same as those we experienced once out into the open sea on the first day of our passage. It’s cool, cloudy and we are rocking from side to side. Waves are rolling in from the south and hitting the starboard side with some force. On that first day, I wrote that the wind propelled us along and we made good progress, which is happily still the case. Paul said earlier that we are about a fifth of the way now, which if things continue as they are shaves a week off the original predicted time.
This first week has been all about adjusting. Implementing the four hour watch system didn’t really kick in until a few days into the trip. This was mainly due to Paul needing to work on the sails and fix one or two things early on, making it tricky to keep a strict four hours on, four hours off when things needed sorting during my watch. There were also shipping lanes to negotiate, and some huge fishing vessels that Paul had to steer us round when their lights made me lose perspective in the dark. These obviously petered out, the further away from the coast we got, and now it’s quite exciting when a ship pops up on the AIS (usually about 60 miles away). We’ve also had to adjust to an erratic sleep and meal regime. I imagine it’s a bit like working night shifts and feeling rather disorientated until the body gets used to it. Early on, I found it difficult to sleep at 8am after doing the 4am watch. I wanted my usual morning coffee and I knew that would keep me awake which would would then make it hard to be alert for the midday watch when I craved snoozing. It’s also strange to be feeling hungry for ‘breakfast’ at 3am. I have dealt with the irregular meal times by simply eating little during the day and preparing a meal for both of us to eat at 7pm. Gradually, we’ve learned to be flexible about watches and make the most of the fact that one of us is invariably wide awake while the other is feeling drowsy. It’s working well so far, and in truth the watches are easy at this stage (easier for me than Paul I know).
A more literal adjustment concerning time has been moving it on an hour. I found it disconcerting one morning to see that the sun had already risen by 4am, when previously it hadn’t been until much later. Consulting the chart, we put ourselves onto Saipan time which is in the Australian time zone. Moving an hour forward will continue periodically throughout the trip, which is what we did on the Atlantic crossing to avoid confusion.
The days in-between this lurching from side to side on a rough sea have seen us enjoying/experiencing beautifully calm, sunny days, warm evenings, torrential rain, foggy afternoons and the up and down motion of the boat pitching from from stern to bow. All of this is familiar to us and completely expected. It’s a challenge to do things sometimes but one that I quite relish – like pitting my wits against the jerking and shoving to produce a meal for example. Both of us continue to watch for whales but have yet to spot any. There have been lots of birds, though. Big, and brown and white in colour, they circle and glide and swoop all around the boat, increasing in number as the day goes on. Paul thinks they associate boats with fish being thrown over the side and are waiting to dive for it (there’s not much chance of that happening on this boat 😉 ). Today, though we haven’t seen a single one.
All in all we are coping well and enjoying the passage. Paul fixes things as they break, which have thankfully only been minor things. It made me smirk last night when he used the word ‘when’ as opposed to ‘if’ during a conversation about things breaking. I confess that I miss news from home, chatting with family on messenger and the instant information the internet provides when you just have to know something, so spoiled have I become by online distractions. The upside is there is all the more time for reading. I’ve gone from having six or seven books on the go to ten or more, which includes those on Audible. Audible is wonderful for a trip like this; no lights needed, no reading glasses needed, and that blissful comfort of having a story read to you.
Hopefully by the time I come to write about the second week, we’ll have seen whales or sharks or dolphins and will still be zooming across the Pacific a lot faster than we anticipated. I’ll also elaborate a bit more about provisions and the challenge of cooking meals in ‘bucking bronco’ conditions.
Kathy
Day 8, 28th Jun, 36 – 25N, 156 – 01E Daily Run 167 nm. Weather, Grey, and rough. 3485 nm to go
Day 8, 28th Jun, 36 – 25N, 156 – 01E Daily Run 167 nm. Weather, Grey, and rough. 3485 nm to go
We have now been at sea for 7 days, 7 days since we cast off in Kushimoto. We have travelled 877 miles, out of 4632, leaving 3485 to go, so we are 20% of the way.
I must say it feels more like 3 days than 7, often the days blur together, last night I was up for a lot of the night worrying about the sails and mast and trying to make sense of the weather, consequently, I don’t have a normal concept of the start and end of a day.
If we can maintain these sort of speeds, which I think unlikely, we will indeed take another 4 weeks or less to reach our destination. A quick check on fuel, water, gas and food shows us to be well stocked.
The wind continued to increase on the starboard bow yesterday until it was around 20-25 knots. This made for an uncomfortable passage as the waves grew in size as well and we were pounding a bit into the sea. I had put the mainsail up to make the most of the conditions, something that is needed when going upwind. However by the time I came to take the genoa in, due to the force of the wind, I found it was too late and had to winch hard on the furler to douse it, unfortunately this put the sail on too tight and I ran out of furling line. So I had to content myself with a small headsail of about 1 metre for the next day, with its sheet sitting in the way of the staysail. However with the main and staysail, we chopped along at a decent 6-7 knots for most of the day and night. By the early hours, as the sun was rising I was able to put the staysail away and let out more genoa as the wind had turned behind us. I also brought the mainsail down, this had been bothering me, firstly the batten in the sail bag/lazyjack bag was trying to escape aft, it has tried this before and I thought I had sewn the strap on well that retains it, but it has ripped it apart. Secondly there was a groaning sound coming from the mast as we rolled and the big gusts hit us. I spent an age at the mast, being thrown around trying to find the root of the noise, but I came to the conclusion it’s a halyard vibrating inside the mast. More investigation is needed when it’s a bit calmer. The current setup with just a genoa flying at the front of the boat with the wind on the starboard quarter works well, and there are only a few things to break.
We have passed 155 deg W which is the point I had in mind to start our turn towards the great circle path that takes us to Seattle. The great circle path is the shortest distance between to points on a sphere/globe. However when the same route is plotted on a normal mercator projection chart, it looks like a big arc going way off course. (Pic attached). So I have started edging towards that route, but only slowly as I want to try to stick closer to the currents for a little longer. By tomorrow we should be aiming directly at the Juan de Fuca straits some 3500 miles away. All we have to do now is follow the winds keeping as close to that route as possible. Our main consideration is to ride over the top of the Pacific High, that’s a high pressure weather system, not the latest Californian trend. However I don’t know where it is yet, thats a job for later.
Other than that, not a lot to report. we spend our days when the weather is like this just lazing around, trying to read, and downloading wx forecasts. I have put off the water maker repair until its calmer, we put the clocks forward an hour, Kathy didn’t like the sun rising at 3AM. We are now on Chamorro Standard time.
Paul Collister
