Life at sea. Dec. 1

Dec. 1, 2007 04:45

I had just retired to bed after my watch and reading for a few minutes when came in and asked for all hands on deck. The spinnaker had blown! There was a large wind gust of up to 30 knots and it was too much for the 10 year old spinnaker. It started a rip somewhere in the worn fabric and then ripped the length of it vertically and a large part of it was dragging in the water under the boat, between the 2 amas. When all four of us were up and had on our foul weather gear due to the rain, and our life jackets, we clipped into the jack lines and moved to the front of the boat and started pulling the sail out of the water. It took a few minutes to get it up and a few more to untangle lines and finally we stuffed the wet mess into the bag and dragged it into the cockpit. Next we pulled in the jib, and raised the main with a double reef. This was a trickier move, as we had to turn the boat into the wind which meant the boat began bucking and lurching wildly. Wendy and I went forward and then up onto the roof of the salon area to pull at the lazy jacks so the main wouldn’t tangle in them and held on for dear life. Once that was accomplished we let out the jib again and turned the boat back off the wind and she settled right down again into the usual lurching and swaying. I had small bowl of cereal and went back to bed to sleep at 06:00.

19:00 We caught our first fish, a 4 pound dorado.

Dec 1, 2007 02:00

We have been at sea for 5 days and are one third of the way across. Today for the first time we put up the spinnaker and that helped to change our direction to a more southerly course. We had been traveling close to the lay line on a west to southwest trajectory. Now our goal is to move further south in order to catch the trade winds. We have been making up to 170 miles a day, with an average of closer to 150 miles. I believe that our speed is on average around 7 knots with a top speed of 16 knots. We attained that speed twice. Once on the first day and again earlier this evening while the spinnaker was up. At this moment our boat speed is 9 knots. Each day becomes warmer and the weather gets better.

There a number of problems with systems on the boat. I had been looking forward to the fact that we would have a watermaker, however, it broke last summer for the last time. Water capacity is only 100 gallons, 50 per side. Today is the first time I have had a shower or washed my hair since Saturday evening. Dishes are being washed in salt water and glasses and silverware are rinsed in fresh water.

The freezer had been having problems for quite some time, with several attempts to fix it, most recently in Las Palmas. But, it will not freeze, just get cold. Our food is thawing, some it that was never frozen had to be cooked right away. We have already cooked up all of the chicken, because it was delivered to the boat unfrozen. We threw away the shrimp and fish. Tomorrow we will take out the rest of the food in the freezer and inspect it. Then we will cook or toss whatever is left. It also seems to use a lot of energy and draws our batteries down causing us to need to run the generator more often.

The generator hasn’t been running right for the last two days. Lee changed the fuel filter thinking that it was bad fuel and while he was at it, tightened some belts etc. Today Lee and Sebastian worked on it for 3 hours and have come to the conclusion that it may be the fuel pump. In order to charge the batteries we have been running one of the motors in idle at 1500 RPM’s.

When we left Las Palmas we had good reception on the Globalstar satellite phone, however 2 days ago we lost reception. We weren’t using it for phone calls but were sending out emails. Now we cannot send out emails. On previous passages, including crossing the Atlantic from Bermuda to Europe the phone worked the whole way.

The Single Side Band radio gets reception, so we can tune into the ARC weather and position broadcasts, however we cannot send out a signal. Therefore our only method of communication at the moment is the VHF. Depending on the size of the boat receiving and sending to us, our range may be as far as 35 miles. In order to get our noon position report into the ARC we are having to hail somebody on the VHF to relay our report in to the ARC.

I am thankful to be on such a fast boat. Being a catamaran we are traveling as fast as many of the big monohulls in the racing division. Hopefully we will make landfall in 2 weeks instead of the predicted 3 weeks. Our electronic charts are always calculating the ETA (estimated time of arrival) for us, and usually it is guesstimating at around Dec 9 to Dec 12.