Day 5, (12:00 25th June 2018), Pos 35 – 52N, 146 – 40E Daily Run 176 nm. Weather, Calm and Sunny

Day 5, (12:00 25th June 2018), Pos 35 – 52N, 146 – 40E Daily Run 176 nm. Weather, Calm and Sunny.
Yesterday was meant to be very calm all day according to the forecast, however within a few hours of posting the blog we had strong winds from astern, The sea was a bit more stable and we took off like a rocket, we were doing 7 knots over water at a minimum, and we had a good 3 knots of current, by 18:00 the waves were big and the wind was in the high twenties, so we were belting along, averaging about 9 knots over ground, often registering 12 knots on the GPS as we were pushed by the waves. Kathy thought it was a bit too much, but I was happy as when I rechecked the forecast, it had it right now, and the weather was going to peak that evening. Also with the waves and wind being strong, but steady on the starboard quarter, the motion of the boat was quite gentle and reasonably predictable. Of course there’s always one massive wave that comes out of nowhere and sends something flying inside the cabin that you didn’t expect. I have now packed the wooden spear away in the quarter berth were it won’t be bothering Kathy again. It actually started to die down around midnight, but the big waves continued until the morning. Im glad it was dark last night, as when I could make out the waves they were big! Now we have a calm (ish) sea, and a gentle 6 knot breeze, we are making about 4 knots over ground (SOG). At the 12 hour mark, we had done 110 miles, setting us up for our first 200 mile day, but the light winds of this morning stopped that happening, instead we managed about 176nm
Casualties of the night:
1. Wind vane self steering system, the wind vane course control chain was stiff, I didn’t realise this and when I tried to turn it the chain snapped. I thought I had a spare, but don’t. I have managed to fabricate a link using the middle of a SS rivet and bending it to the right shape, however it’s not great and I think there is something else amiss with the system that caused it to jam. On the plus side, it’s only the course control, the system will steer itself, just maybe not to where we want to go. We do have the the electric autopilot, but that uses a lot of electric, and I don’t know if it will work in a heavy sea at night when we only have batteries. For now we will run with a mix of the two. 2. Genoa sheet. We had to gybe in the night and in the pitch black I didn’t see that the genoa sheet on starboard was rubbing on the lifeline, this has rather scuffed it, no big deal, but I need to be more careful in the dark to check everything.
All in all another test of the boat and it did reasonably well. Right now I have my clothes hanging out to try in the first decent sunshine we have had since leaving. Something has started generating noise that is making HF reception difficult, we found a decent signal from BBC World service last night on their East Asia service and ascertained that England still had a chance to get through to the next round, but we are yet to hear the result. We sit here with our little union jack flags on sticks eagerly anticipating the results (not really).
Paul Collister