Day: 14 July 2018

Day 25, Sat 14th July. 48-34N, 161-06W. Daily Run: 155 NM. Weather: 15 Knots W, Cold but Sunny. 1494 NM to go
A great sail over the last 24 hours, the winds picked up to 25 knots and we were flying, of course the waves followed suit and now the wind has dropped back to 15 knots, the waves are still up there. We managed a good daily run of 155 miles, using just the main with one reef and the staysail for most of the run.
The iPad is playing up now, the screen repair I had done in Osaka seems to have failed as the device is generating random screen touches when you hold it. It’s ok if you keep it flat on a surface, but that’s a pain itself a with all the rolling, it keeps changing orientation like that. Sadly a sequence of keystrokes it generated went along the lines of select inbox, delete all, select trash, delete all. Un f** ing believable. I watched it delete all our emails in a split second. To be fair to the shop, they did say that the frame was distorted when I dropped it and they couldn’t guarantee the repair. I’m not buying a new one, not unless Apple are going to take care of my pension plan, seeing as they are taking all my pension funds in keeping their devices going. I gather the iPhone 7 onwards is waterproof, but probably not drop proof. I managed to read the latest emails, and I compose the blog on my MacBook and then airdrop it to the iPad for transmission, so lets hope that works, otherwise blog posts might get thin on the ground.
In other new, my morning inspection of the boat revealed a shackle pin sitting on the side deck. This means there is a shackle that has parted somewhere on the boat, but I can’t find it. I expect it will let me know where it is at some point 🙁
The wind vane has been steering us now for several days, it’s doing a good job, and worked well during the very strong winds last night.
For the radio hams out there, I heard a W2/7 New York old timer in California calling for DX (long distance or rare contacts) last night on 20m, I gave him a shout and had a nice chat, lots of QSB on my signal but he was strong. I think I have problems with my rig here though as he complained of awful audio and I can see the lights on the display dim terribly when I talk, so I think the supply wiring needs attention. Still it was good to know the SSB works at some level. I heard quite a lot of west coast hams in the afternoon.
We are making a steady 7 knots now, and the TTG (Time to go) display is moving between 7 and 9 days for ETA, which is nice.
This morning sw the end of Kathy’s bread, it made wonderful toast, and now we need the sea to calm down so she can bake some more. It’s one of the things we are really looking forward to in the USA and Canada, some real, sugar free, decent heavy brown/wholemeal bread. something that is hard to get in Asia.
The only job I have on today is to put some anti chafe on the starboard shrouds then do a gybe to starboard, I got some onto the port shrouds yesterday and it seems to work well. however my temporary patches seem to be wearing thin now. I remember reading that if you plan to sail your boat back to the UK/Europe from the Caribbean after doing the milk run, as they call it, you should allow about £1000 for wear and tear. This journey is twice that distance, so I presume I should expect to pay a fair bit. So far I think a few hundred pounds in a sail loft should sort out the batten pockets, and a few hundred pounds more for all the sheets and other lines that have chafed. A new iPad could come under wear and tear I suppose?
The recent days have blurred into each other now, today follows the same pattern, with bigger winds expected tonight. However we can see we are on the home strait now, I’m hoping it’s fairly straightforward for the next 1500 miles.
Paul Collister