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Fiji Bound Day #02

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Gorgeous day, still light winds and moderate seas. Super comfortable sailing. At day break, time to hoist the downwind sail. We were really close to dead down wind so we used our smallest spinnaker 125m2, still about 1000 sq feet of sail cloth. Without a squall one on the horizon the spinnaker danced and pulled Sugar Shack along in the right direction all day long.

Today the GPSs on board started freaking out, more exactly couldn’t pick up a GPS position. Maybe there are too many starlink satellites in the sky and obstructing the GPS signals? 🙂 There are countless devices with GPS positioning on board. From hand helps to VHF to AIS. Lots of GPS receivers. Also the iridium go! satellite tracker has a device, and if you look at our track lately it looks like we are drawing crazy star patterns with the boat, and going every which direction. So far, I think we are still going in the right direction. :). The magnetic compass still says so. Seems better now, at least onboard, not sure what our predict wind track looks like, but I bet it’s amazing.

As darkness approached, decision time. Fly the spinnaker in the dark or drop back to white sails. We let it fly for a while, then the when the wind threatened to increase we swapped back to white working sails. Slowed down but still a very comfortable night.

Closing in on the 1500 miles to go mark, should break that barrier in a coupe of hours.

All well on board.

[tag Live,Passage,underway]

Sugar Shack has left the Bora Bora, next stop Fiji

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Off to the wild blue and beyond. After 3 great years, time has come to move on. Well we “could” stay but we would have to import the boat into French Polynesia so next stop Fiji.

The weather is going to be light at least at the beginning and wants us to go some 300 miles out of our way to keep the wind flowing. Started down that road, but quickly wanted to tick off some of those 1600+ miles it will take to arrive in Fiji. That is without the extra 300 the weather models suggested we take.

First night is in the books, it was a nice and calm-ish run til the winds got really light and the swell/waves made the sails make a lot of racket. No worries in the morning day light we will fix that and switch out the sails for more appropriate for downwind action. Only a couple of squalls in the night gave us good fun to pick up boat speed in the right direction and only 1 of the 4 actually drizzled on the boat.

Had a nice BBQ chicken enchiladas and rice that would give “Rockin Ruthann’s” from Maudies in Austin a run for the money.

Started with 1664 miles to go as the crow flies, almost like a Flight from Austin to Chicago, only the flight takes 3 hours, it will take us about 2 weeks.

Live Blog: Quintero to Valdivia Detour

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Too much wind and waves to continue the slow going on to Valdivia, so we turned around and headed for a sheltered bay.

After a beautiful day, sunny and virtually no waves and simply dodging the fishing fleet, 60+ Meter long fishing boats the sun was setting and the clouds were rolling in. Hmm. Strange sight, not used to that. Dropped the main and continued on motoring south just past Lebu. Waves picked up from every direction, could not find a comfortable point of sail that made forward (south) process. Tried toward land, out to sea and of course straight on, nothing was comfortable. Salt water was washing the boat, and I had just washed it down with fresh water during the beautiful day.. 🙁 The current was also running against us so we were going no where fast.

The final straw was when Auto lost the angle, wind and waves caused a ‘off-course’ alarm and the wind and waves were too much to get us back on course. I took over swung it around into the wind and continued on for a few moments thinking of the best course of action. Grabbed another weather report, it was supposed to get worse, more wind and we were already near 30knots. It was over 60 hrs (120 miles) more at our current pace to arrive Valdiva. 30 miles behind there was shelter, 30 miles ahead a small island that didn’t really have a good protection and with the wind getting stronger didn’t make good sense, so we tucked our tail and headed back.

What a world of difference going with the weather instead of beating in to it. Opened the jib and cruised along comfortably at 6-7knots. Made getting rest a whole lot easier. Followed one of the ‘tugs’ on AIS into the bay here instead of going the long way around the island. AIS create track from boat you are tracking is an awesome feature.

Dropped the hook, made some pulled pork sandwiches with a beer and took a nap. We are anchored in about 4 meters of water at high tide, down to 2 meters twice a day. Long beach and small town of Bahia LLico, hopefully we can brave the cold and take the dinghy ashore and explore some while we wait till what looks like Wednesday before continuing on.

56F degrees this morning, fired up the diesel heater and made the inside a tropical 80F.

Cheers,
All good here. Now 160 miles to get to the mouth of Valdivia River when the weather decides to cooperate :).

At 2/24/2019 @ 1:16 PM
Our position: 37�11.32’S, 073�33.31’W
Traveling 0.5 heading 207T