Tag Archives: catamaran

Let us make lemonade

When Mother Nature decides to not follow the recipe in the forecast and gives you lemons you make lemonade. Though I prefer limes for margaritas. We improvise and make do.

We have plenty of dead dinosaur juice, so we are not winning any “green card” awards today. Maybe 1/2 of one, since we are only running one engine to keep knocking off the miles. The original forecast was for lighter winds at the second half of the journey, but what we have here, is a failure to maintain that end of the bargain. Which is perfectly okay because the waves and swell is down too so it is perfectly comfortable out here in this big blue puddle.

Made the best of it, Christine trimmed up my mullet. I took the trimmers to my mane and coiffed a perfect Kiwi mullet that would have fit in perfectly at “Frings” on a Friday night. She wanted to take pictures for proof, but I declined as I didn’t want to upstage Joe Dirt.

Worked on a little cosmetic gel coat beautification from where we replaced the bathroom accessories.

Found some important missing safety pins (split rings) that keep the mainsail attached to the mast, so replaced the worn and missing split rings. Replaced some aging bungee cords that had long since lost the spring in their step.

Removed the base layer of clothing, yup, the lack of cold southern wind it is warming up nicely.

All in all a very nice day on the water but maybe too productive, will have to find more projects for tomorrow as well since there looks to be another 🦖 burning day.

Under single engine at efficiency speed we only make about 5 kts, while burning 3 liters per hour, so we are not winning any races and the last 250 nm will take 2 more nights on the water before finding a place to drop the hook and clear customs. And of course we want to arrive in daylight hours … just a juggling act, toss em up in the air catch as many variables as you can.

Yup, there is weather on them oceans

The forecast was for crossing some “troughs” at some point along the way, well we found our first one.

The wind slowed down, way down, the sails just flapped?!? What happened? Forecast said we should have 20 kts of wind. Oh well, roll up the jib, no sense having it flap about. Hmmm what to do with the main sail, it’s already double reefed, it’s. It flapping too much.

See a darker gray on the moonlight night, a head of us. Check the radar, it’s still 12 miles away… on what the heck, store the main sail too. Turn on engines and top up the batteries..

Enjoy the mysteriously calm sea state and watch the batteries charge, no rain, not much breeze..

Check radar, ahh there it is 5 miles out, the radar shows a long blob, and it’s thick too, like 6 miles to go through. Too long to go around, guess we we will have to just get it over and go through.

Yes, the radar alarms were screaming on this one

Hmmm not much more than a sprinkle in the depths of the radar blob. But coming out the other side was a different story.

No wind, jumped to 40 knots, sea went from placid to “where did that come from”. I had lowered the cockpit rain shades, cause no reason to get wet in the placid drizzle, but now a torrential down pour and honking winds, making the shades shudder. Spent the next 20 minutes keeping the new rain shades from beating them selves to bits in the winds.

Eventually the other side cleared and unfurled the jib and sailed with just the head sail till day break. Not nearly the 200 miles day of the previous, but a respectable 170 miles, and no issues to report

The rest of the day was nice sailing, started out double reefs main and eventually shook it out to only 1 reef when the gusts to 25 subsided. Still a big swell was with us all day, it’s sort of going our direction, which helps with the motion.

We should really reach 1/2 by day break tomorrow, 530 miles left to go. All good on board, getting rest and nice hot bowl of gumbo for dinner.

Full day down

What a morning sunrise. Not for the view, but for the squalls, lots of em. Driving rain, woke up (rather rudely I might add), to ease the sails and get drenched with cold water as the squall snuck up on us.

The radar was on, was supposed to warn of impending troubles,but I had noticed in the night when a cargo ship crossed our guard zones that no alarm went off. Figured I’d investigate in the day light. Well here we are, barely daylight and I should have investigated. So the fresh shower was my procrastination reward.

The radar has so many settings, over the years I probably have tweaked them all, either to show more I show less. I figured it was time to return to factory settings. Voila, all better was showing the tops of every wave in the ocean (not helpful), so a few tweaks for offshore sailing and we are back in business.

After a few hours of “dodge-squall” the skies cleared up and a nice day of sailing was in store. At our nightly SSB radio check in we were happy to report we knocked off 200 miles toward our destination since the last check-in. Yahooo, rocking along.

One bit of breakage, our jib/genoa car said he was tired of holding the sail and let go. The sound is like a guitar string, boing. This is happened on our first trip down to NZ, and once long ago. With some creative macrame(lots of rope and knots), a temporary fix was in place just waiting for a break in the 25knot winds. Added a new bolt, added lock-tite, but it doesn’t seem to be holding. I painted the top with some of Christine’s electric blue toe polish and can see the nut slowly backing off.

Fix part two, is a back up block ready to handle the job if Mr Lazy jib car gives up again.

I think the painters tape will hold, Right?

More weather, wind and waves scheduled for the night watch. Should be fun. Go sailing, it’s all cocktails and sandy beaches…😀

All good, running along, knocking out the miles. 775 left till Point Resolution Vanuatu.