LTY UPDATE for passage from west side of Fiji up to Majuro Marshall Islands via Rotuma
Day #20
Friday, January 17th, 2014
(Remember we are on the other side of the International dateline than most of you)
LTY time: 21:20 Fri Jan 17th (LTY time = UTC +12 with NO DST here in Majuro now)
Location: on our mooring ball, east end of Majuro atoll
Position: 07 6.513 N, 171 22.064 E (you can cut & past this into Google Earth to see on map)
SOG: ZERO! We’re stopped! hove to (SOG = Speed over Ground)
COG: Zero (COG = Course over Ground, my GPS based compass heading)
Wind: 5-15 kts ENE Apparent Marshall Islands trade winds
Seas/Swell: NONE! Inside the sanctuary of Majuro atoll
Weather: VERY stormy morning that turned into equally as calm afternoon for our trip through the pass
Air temp: 84.2F 29C
Sea temp: 85.6 F 29.8 C
Barometer: 1015
Total Distance travelled: 1803nm
WE MADE IT!
20 days and 1803 nautical miles after leaving Fiji, we tied up to our mooring ball here in the Majuro RMI (Republic of Marshall Islands) at just before 6pm tonight. As you’d know from reading our daily blog postings, it was an incredible adventure and Christine and I can’t stop smiling since we tied onto the mooring ball and this adventure ended and the next one begins.
It was yet another spectacular day for us, another day packed with a density of experiences that is hard to describe. As per this morning’s update we had spent the night “hove to” (sailor speak for stopping the boat in the middle of the ocean such that you only drift very slowly) off the SW corner of Majuro and got a good night’s rest before our last day of rounding the west end of Majuro atoll and making our way through the pass to the inside. So after a good night’s sleep we were up before first light to start the last leg of this passage around the west end of Majuro atoll and through the pass into the calm safety of the protected lagoon within Marrero atoll. We enjoyed our breakfast being rolled from side to side in the high seas and wind that is typical of this time of year up here and then hoisted the jib and were soon off and sailing NW at a very good clip. In short order though this turned into a full on storm and we found ourselves in winds up to 50+ kts and wind waves standing up straight and tall up to 3 meters. Learnativity handles all this with ease but with no rudder the best we could do was to set the sales to balance out the forces and this meant we were now headed NW away from Majuro. We let this continue till we were far enough north of the NW corner of the atoll to be able to tack over and start sailing back to make up the 15nm we had been pushed west. Of course just as we did so the storm winds and rain intensified even more and shifted so we were now headed straight south! There wasn’t much else we could do so we rode out the intensity of the storm and then were finally able to start sailing more of a SE angle back towards Majuro and make back some of our lost nautical miles. The wind dropped off a bit but continued to change direction as the storm swirled through us and so we finally furled up the jib and fired up the motor and started to figure out how to steer LTY with the MacGyver setup of ropes we’d set up on aft end of the broken rudder.
After some experimentation we were able to come up with a system that worked amazingly well. I had lashed the ends of the lines I’d wrapped around the top and bottom of the rudder such that the ends came off the very aft edge of the rudder and then we led them up the side of the hull and tied them off on the aft corner of the deck with the top set tied to the radar/wind generator poles and the other bottom set of lines secured to the aft most set of deck cleats. I was able to pull these up tight such that the rudder was centered and there was just a little bit of play in the lines going down to the rudder that would let the rudder move about 1” or less from side to side. From up on deck we could pull on these lines and just a very small amount of movement of one line, only about 1cm, would have a significant effect on the direction of the boat as the rudder moved.
We spent an hour or so experimenting with pulling on these lines until we found the position where the boat sailed straight and then lashed them off. Now what we were able to do is station one of us sitting on the very aft corner deck where we had these lines tied off to and we could grab one of the loops of line and pull with all our might to get it to come in about 1cm or less and this would move the rudder just enough to cause the boat to turn in that direction. Then we’d release that line and the boat would stop turning and settle back into going straight on that point of sail. Perfect! And so that’s how we sailed for rest of the day with one of us at the helm and the other sitting on the aft corner pulling whichever line we were told to “pull starboard on”, “OK, release starboard” and we were off at a good pace of up to 7 knots at times and most importantly on a direct course to the waypoint we had set just outside the entrance to the pass into Majuro. We made up the 15nm we had “lost” to the storm by being pushed west, in record time as the weather improved dramatically with each passing mile.
We arrived at the waypoint outside the pass into Majuro about 3:30 this afternoon where we were supposed to meet Cary in his power boat “Wasabi” to help tow/steer us through the pass into the atoll. We beat him there and the seas were eerily calm and oil smooth, the skies were turning blue and the wind had dropped off to next to nothing. So we decided to go for it as our steering teamwork setup was working so well and weather conditions were just right. It all worked like a charm with Christine expertly in command at the helm and me pulling on the lines on whichever side she asked for;
“I need some Port”…….
“ready” ……………
“Pull” ………………..
“Pulling now” …………………………
“Release” …………………
“Released”
and LTY would move over to port and then settle back into going straight ahead on this new course. Sheesh! Who needs a rudder???
We made it through the smooth wide pass with no problem, turned left once inside and then continued to pull the rudder lines as needed to maintain the almost straight line course east down the middle of the atoll towards the RRE mooring ball field where our mooring ball was waiting. We met our friend Cary on Wasabi about halfway inside the atoll and he needed to head off to a Skipper’s meeting for the weekend race but said that someone would meet us near the mooring field. So we had this mesmerizing ride on oil smooth waters all the way down the 10nm run to the far east end. We had prepped the dinghy to launch it just before we got to the mooring field but as we slowed to do so two other cruisers, Larry and Joel came out to meet us in their dinghy’s and they grabbed our bow lines as we glided to a stop right at the mooring ball. They threaded our lines through the loop of line attached to the mooring ball and we were now firmly attached and stopped. Our floating home was stopped and home her in Majuro for the next few months!
We enjoyed a few moments of the great satisfaction that comes from the shared experience of overcoming adversity and turning it all into a grand adventure and then had some much needed showers on the aft deck of an oddly still and flat Learnativity. All cleaned up and with some fresh clothes on we splashed our dinghy and headed ashore for a Friday night out for dinner at the “Tide Table” restaurant which is right beside the dinghy dock.
And so here we sit, after a delicious dinner, sitting side by side with our laptops connected for the first time in three weeks and continuing to enjoy the glow that comes from such a shared experience. Christine has been truly awemazing in her abilities with every task there is onboard during a passage, her calm purposeful demeanor and always positive attitude and killer smile. Somehow with almost no prior discussion we both fell into our roles as if we had been a team all our lives, we dissected problems as they came up, agreed on the best solution and executed on them with no fuss and no stress. It was a thing of beauty for both of us to behold.
In few minutes we will finish up our downloads of almost a month of unanswered Emails and head back to our dinghy to make the short ride back out to Learnativity and a waiting Ruby and then we will enjoy a VERY peaceful sleep on a very calm and quiet Learnativity.
We will post a few updates as the next days and weeks go by and we settle into the next adventure of exploring Majuro and getting to our various jobs boat and otherwise. We both want to thank you for following along and joining us vicariously on this latest adventure. Hope you enjoyed it almost as much as we did and we’ll see you again on our next grand adventure in living, loving and learning on the good ship Learnativity.
Christine, Wayne & Ruby
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