May 22 & 23

Tuesday, 22 May 2012  Today was spent either sailing slowly on a close reach or motoring into light wind and seas.  Despite the time and money spent in the last year replacing the acoustic insulation in most of the engine compartment, it is still unpleasantly noisy with the diesel engine and exhaust blower running.  Tonight the wind velocity finally came back up enough to allow the motor to be turned off and the boat to sail with reasonable boat speed.  So here I am,  standing in the cockpit holding on and relishing the cool breeze, the sound of rushing water, the sight of dimly lit white foam with speckles of phosphorescence racing past the hull and the dark starry night.  Looking ahead as SUNRISE relentlessly plows through the unseen water going due south toward the equator, the night sky is unfamiliar.  It will become very familiar to us over the next 5 months.  Life is good again.  Then again, having a good and reliable, though noisy, motor and blower and fuel to spare and making good progress toward good wind sure beats wallowing around with slatting sails, banging metal and rigging, no cooling breeze and going nowhere.

The boat is healed over 15 degrees.  But it is easier to move around because we are going upwind and the angle of heal only varies a couple of degrees one way or the other.  The boat pitches more than rolls.  We are not wallowing around and lurching as we do going downwind, but only because the waves are small.  The sails are sheeted in tight and the centerboard is down.  Both are foils in a flowing fluid environment.  If a wave tries to increase the healing angle, the sails see a lowering of angle of attack and the amount of lift drops.  So the ballast tries to make the boat more upright, countering the wave.  If a wave tries to reduce the healing, the angle of attack of the sails increases, the lift increases and the boat tries to heal more.  The situation is reversed for the centerboard.  But the change in force is synchronized with that of the sails  You may remember this from your high school physics class.  It is called positive stability.  They say that gentlemen don't sail to weather.  Actually, sailing to weather with low wind speed is not bad.  The boat speed adds to the true wind speed, allowing you to sail faster upwind than downwind.  What is really unpleasant going upwind is plowing into significant seas.  When you go the same direction as the seas, the frequency that you go up and down is determined by the difference in true speeds of the waves and boat.  When you go into the seas, the frequency that you go up and down is the sum of the true speeds.  You may remember Mr. Doppler's train whistle observations from your high school physics class.  The accelerations that you experience are proportional to the square of the frequency.  That is why no one enjoys plowing into significant seas.  You may be thinking, "Do we have to get a physics lesson every day?"  Sorry folks, that is just the way that my brain functions and how I experience the world.  From Lynne: I read it and think it's interesting. Guess that's why I married him.

In the evening, the winds back around to the east and we are heading south but now gradually going east as well.  The Marquesas are southwest of us.  I ease the mainsheet and traveller to allow the boom to move farther away from the center of the boat, ease the genoa sheet to let that sail move outboard and adjust the Monitor wind vane that is doing the steering to keep the wind farther off the nose.  Never-the-less, the compass course does not change significantly.  I ease the sheets some more, but same compass course.  The sails are not rigid anymore, but soft and flopping a bit.  The mainsail is more powerful than the genoa headsail and tries to make the boat head up into the wind.  This is called weather helm.  The windvane controlled rudder is constantly trying to turn the boat away from the wind, but all is stable.  I could reef the mainsail, reducing its size and power, but that is a big to do and requires waking Lynne up from her beauty sleep.  Eventually, the boat does fall off, but by 45 degrees.  With that course, we will sail to the west of the Marquesas and miss them.  After an hour, I give up, sheet in and figure tomorrow or the next day, it will be prudent to turn right 45 degrees.  I go to bed tired and let Lynne take a turn.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012 From L: My watch is 2 am until 9 am.  I'm thinking today we cross the equator. (I have clothes at hand this time for the pictures.) 7 am: What a great day!  Pure blue water, bright blue sky with a few fairweather cumulus, good wind E 15k.  Smooth fast 6 kt ride. I can hardly wait to email you our photos.  We SO appreciate your emails which Sheryl forwards via Sailmail. Barry awakes 9 am and the following is from him.  
By  mid morning, the wind has increased a couple of more knots, the boat is going a knot faster and seas are up matching the higher wind speed.  Now, the ride is less comfortable.  The boat is pitching fore and aft more in the bigger waves and each time the bow hits a wave, the boat slows.  The driving power of the sails to force the boat to go toward the wind causes the boat to lurch forward until the bow hits the next wave.  This happens about every two seconds.  It is like driving a car,  cruising along at constant speed versus stop-and-go bumper-to-bumper traffic.  This is what I wake up to in the morning.  When I haul the plastic trash up to its storage bag in the anchor locker, I get repeatedly doused by the water splashing across the deck.  Marine road kill report:  3 flying fish.  I go back to the cockpit and get out the bug sprayer.  Lynne puts a quart of luke-warm water in it, I pump it up and rinse the salt water off my body.  I use the remaining water to wash down part of the cockpit.  We are in the middle of the ocean, and the cockpit still gets dirty very fast. Hair, lint, food, fish scales, dirt etc.  I put the bug sprayer away, dry off and turn toward the companionway to go below.  That is when I get doused again on the back.  [Editors note:  Since this is a family-oriented report, the expletives uttered at this time have been deleted].

Reefing the Main Sail

 
 This evening before dark, we put one reef in the mainsail. That means that we pulled the sail down about four feet.  There are rings in the sail at that level to secure to the front and rear of the boom.  The  #2 and #3 reef points are further up the sail.  I re-tension the sail by tightening the halyard.  Then we turn right 20 degrees, easily falling off.  We are headed for the Marqueses.  The boat slows down ½ knot, but is now almost level and the ride is much smoother.  We are so busy dealing with many issues before Lynne goes to bed that before we know it we have crossed the equator.  We don't take the time to celebrate.  There are 660 nautical miles to go.


Position :  1 15.56' N, 134 00.44' W
Speed : 5.6 knots,  Course : 165 degree