May 13

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

From Barry:  We have had 4 days of low wind speed and have either been motoring or sailing slowly with the sails noisily flopping around.  Wind or no wind, the seas overtake the boat and it rocks from side to side and fore and aft.  With low wind speed, the sails flog back and forth as the boat rocks. Not only do the sails noisily flap and snap in the wind, but the sheets holding onto the sails snap and flog and the sheaves, blocks and other hardware that the lines pass through jerk back and forth. The overall sound effect is that of various types of hammers pounding on the boat.

We have moved out of a high pressure area and the wind speed is up.  We have good wind, 16 knots coming over the port side of the boat just aft of beam.  We are broad reaching with six and a half knots of boat speed.  The boat is rocking from side to side as it does when broad reaching and pitching fore and aft a bit as the faster waves from the rear quarter overtake us.  The wind is putting enough pressure on the sails that they are nearly rigid despite the rocking of the boat, which changes the speed and direction of wind that the sails see.  The boat is steering itself with a Monitor wind vane, a vertical plywood blade edge-on to the wind.  If the blade gets blown to one side or the other, it causes a small rudder in the water to rotate one way or the other.  The water flow moves this small rudder to one side or the other as it rotates, pulling lines connected to the boats steering wheel, which turns and changes the direction the boat is going, to keep the wind edge-on to the blade.  We did a lot of work on the boat's rudder system last year to give this self-steering system a good chance to work and it is working amazingly well for the first time since we bought SUNRISE 12 years ago.  This simple wood blade is steering us across an ocean. Simple but beautifully engineered. 
It is a half hour after midnight.  I am standing in the cockpit in the dark, hanging on to the leather-covered railing attached to the back of the canvas spray shield.  I had spent a whole day last year sewing the leather onto the rails.  Now, I thank myself for the soft, sure, comforting grip.  The only sound is that of the water as it quickly rushes by.  It is comforting to hear.  The moon is not up yet and most of the sky is covered with clouds, incredibly black with just a few stars showing through gaps.  All you can see of the ocean is the dimly-lit white foam on the water streaming past the hull along side the cockpit.  More than 5 feet beyond the hull, the water is as black as the sky.  It always seems that the boat is going a lot faster on dark nights like this than in the daytime.  There is a dim glow from the red light on in the cabin and the green glow from the compass light.  The wind is driving 13 tons of rocking and rolling boat through the water relentlessly on a steady course.  No electronics. No motors.  No human input.  The boat is alive!  To me, it is a magical moment. 


13 May2012  Today, the wind crept up into the low 20s.  In nautical terms, it is called a "fresh breeze".  The seas are accordingly up too.  Gnarly.  SUNRISE is rocking and rolling even more than she was yesterday and everything is creaking and groaning from the strain.  Something even sounds like a bleating lamb.  Boat speed is up in the high sixes and into the sevens, with occasionally low eights.  The deck is wet and occasionally the cockpit gets splashed.  The companionway is closed up to prevent salt water from an occasional splash finding its way below.  I am not savoring the experience like I was last night.  Today, we are just hanging on.  It is Mister Toad's wild ride.  Later, at midnight, I realize that I should have reefed the mainsail before Lynne went to bed after dinner.  Now it is dark and the wind is up to 24 knots and SUNRISE is "smoking" through the water.  We are definitely overpowered, from a prudence standpoint, but still riding relatively flat.  I roll up all of the headsail, leaving SUNRISE with a very unbalanced sail plan.  Never-the-less, we slow down a knot, the boat is a lot quieter inside, and the self-steering system continues to handle the situation as well as before.  Definitely, a case of lucking out.
   
Although the sky was covered with a layer of clouds and a bit dreary today, sundown is bringing a brief pinkish cast to the clouds and seas.  No green flash (when the last bit of orange sun disappears below the horizon) for today.  So far on this voyage, we have seen the green flash on two evenings and captured one with the camera.
We keep a chart spread out on the salon table that covers the east Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to the Marquesas Islands.  I plot our current position on the chart twice a day.  Each day we get an inch closer to a tropical paradise.  We are well past the 1/3 point already.


Position :  17 32.60' N, 129 31.92' W  Speed : 4.0 knots,  Course : 194 degree