Day: 2 July 2018

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