Days 9 & 10, April 15 & 16 2010
Latitude: 14 44.045 N
Longitude: 117 19.71 W
By the way, our Find Me Spot is taking longer and longer to upload to a satellite. Use the Pangolin link on our Blogspot for daily position reports. Please let us know when Spot no longer seems to be reporting.
Conditions:
The last couple of days have been difficult. After our at-sea repair of our loose gooseneck, we were in good shape. Our weather charts and grib files are not exactly in sync, however, with what we are experiencing. The wind is stronger and the seas are bigger. So much for being the Coconut Milk Run. It's more like a milkshake run. Thursday morning about 11:00 a.m. after my 1:00 - 7:00 a.m. watch, I was just laying down for a nap. Garyn and Russ were making a sail change and wanted to head into the wind and reef the main sail. We usually turn on the motor to help us stay into the wind when reefing. Well the motor wouldn't start. It would crank, but not start. Long story short. Our exhaust pipe sucked water into the engine. We had not had a lot of following seas so Russ had not closed the exhaust check since we have been starting the motor a little every day. Apparently our heavier passage boat allowed water to get in whether the seas were following or not. We closed this off immediately so we wouldn't get any more water, and will have to turn the exhaust check valve after each engine use.
No one got to take naps. Russ had been up until 1:00 a.m. and I had been up since 1:00 a.m. We worked on getting the water out of the bilge (not a lot, but enough), out of the engine, taking apart the fuel injection unit, removing the fuel injectors, and cranking over the motor to get water out of the engine. Russ was looking exhausted, but hoped to get the motor going before night fall.
Well, that wasn't going to happen. We had been running a beautiful wing on wing downwind course with 15 knots of wind when within 5 minutes the sea state and winds changed dramatically and faster than we could depower our main which already had one reef. A huge fast moving swell caught us and twisted the boat and the whisker pole snapped and broke. We pulled in the jib, and pulled the boat into the wind and swell so that we could put in another reef then fall off and be on a broad reach. It wouldn't be going south but west and the swell would be at our stern or beam most of the night. Coming into the wind without motor assist was impossible. After three tries, we muscled the main down to a double reef. (And yes, we are all harnessed up with life vests and clipped into our jacklines). We fell off and debated about doing a jibe, but decided it was getting dark and a jibe would take us to the south east not the south west. We decided to just go west and set up Heidi our wind steering system.
Heidi worked well in the beginning while we went inside, closed down the engine repair business for the night, and put everything away, tying down as much as possible. Thank goodness I had made lots of Mexican soup, and only had to reheat it. To give you an idea how rough the seas were, we ate the soup out of cups with lids. (No where near the computer!) By dark, the winds were gusting 24 knots, and the seas were 9-12 feet high steep and six seconds apart. Heidi couldn't keep up and we knew we would be hand steering most of the night. We are all tired. Garyn was the most rested and did the lion's share of the steering from about 4:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m. Russ came on at 1:00 and steered until 7:00. Garyn spelled him for an hour during that time. I stayed up with both of them, recording in the log, making coffee and hot chocolate and dozed for about two hours..not enough for a gal who likes her beauty rest. 2 hours in 36 isn't enough. Russ hasn't had much more. As I write this we are all very tired. We've decided to suspend engine repair today. The Honda is going, the sun is out, and water turbine are cranking out the amps. Heidi is back on duty and for the most part is doing a good job steering the boat as the winds and seas have dropped a little bit.
We are safe and very happy to have a pilot house steering station. The boat is dry and handling the seas well, although we are uncomfortable with the rail to rail rolling. Fortunately, no one is scared or sick and none of us are taking any sea sickness pills, so we are thankful about that. We are keeping hydrated and are taking turns napping and catching up on sleep today because it doesn't look like the winds and sea are going to calm down until tomorrow so we have another long night ahead of us.
For now all is well but could be a little better on Worrall Wind.
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