LTY UPDATE for passage from west side of Fiji up to Majuro Marshall Islands via Rotuma
Day #19
Thursday, January 16th, 2014
(Remember we are on the other side of the International dateline than most of you)
LTY time: 15:20 Thurs Jan 16th (LTY time = UTC +12)
Location: about 25nm S of WEST end of Majuro
Position: 06 43.708 N, 171 08.171 E (you can cut & past this into Google Earth to see on map)
SOG: 4.5-5.5kts (SOG = Speed over Ground)
COG: 340 (COG = Course over Ground, my GPS based compass heading)
Wind: 18-35 kts ENE Apparent
Seas/Swell: 2.0m @ 6 sec out of E
Weather: Lots of storms today with gusting winds up to 40 kts out of ENE as they pass over with lots of rain.
Air temp: 89.6F 32C
Sea temp: 85.6 F 29.8 C
Barometer: 1014
Distance travelled: 1389nm
Distance to Majuro anchorage: 61nm
NEW SAIL & NEW RUDDER SETUP and MAJURO HERE WE COME!
And so the adventure continues! When we left you in the wee hours this morning a big storm had jumped on us with winds of 50+ kts as it passed over with torrential rain. Not usually a problem but this time it was enough to get at the tiny spot on the seam above the clew (aft bottom sail corner) and rip it all the way across the bottom third of the sail. It sounded much worse than it really was and we soon had the tattered and torn headsail all safely furled up on the front forestay. With no head sail to balance out our sail/rudder combination and with the much reduced sail area we were down to about 1 knot of speed and heading pretty much due west.
This gave us the opportunity to try out motoring so I changed the position of the rudder a bit by letting out the port side lines leading down to the aft end of the rudder and pulled in the ones on the starboard side to get the rudder lined up on center and then fired up the motor and put it in gear. It didn’t work out too well because we still had the main sail up with two reefs in it and didn’t want to take it down in these high winds and so it was very difficult to steer as we needed to go too close to the wind’s direction and so the main would back and throw us off course.
The solution in part was to take down the torn 125% genoa headsail and put up the heavy duty 98% jib but it was already 3am so we decided to wait till morning with hopefully calmer conditions and daylight and use this time to both get some sleep. Unfortunately my playing with the rudder had moved it somehow so it was now banging very hard down below with each roll LTY would take in the large roller waves coming through us and was making a heck of a racket with this nasty metal on metal pounding. So we decided to sleep up in the salon where we were far enough away from the aft rudder and the noise and vibration was a bit less and we both got in a few hours of sleep.
At dawn we were up and anxious to figure out what was going on with the rudder and change the head sails out. Sea conditions were pretty nasty with these big rollers so there was a lot of height differential at the stern where I needed to go in with my snorkel and mask and dive down below to the rudder to check things out. But not much choice and the water is so pleasantly warm and such a beautiful shade of Indigo blue it wasn’t too bad and so I donned my mask and snorkel again, put down the swim ladder and jumped in for my morning swim. Turned out that my playing with the lines had allowed the rudder to move hard over to starboard and the noise was from the broken stub of the rudder post that sticks out of the top of the rudder, pulling out from the flange that used to be welded to it. The lines I had wrapped around the rudder top and bottom and had coming off the aft edge were also sliding around the sides a bit as the lashing I’d tied on had worked lose so I had Christine cut me some new line and I dove down to tighten up the lines and lash each pair to each other at the aft end to make sure that is where the lines were pulling against when we were adjusting them from up above for our make shift steering control. It was pretty boisterous down there with all those big waves, some perhaps kicked up from Cyclone Ian down in Tonga last week and the rising and falling hull of Learnativity but I was able to get the lines tightened up again and lashed together again and all was well with this MacGyver steering solution. Next we adjusted the four lines up above again to get the rudder back on center and realign the felt pen marks on the lines so we know where center is and we were ready to test them out again once we had replaced the head sail. Best of all, once we got the rudder back on center, the banging stopped and it was much more pleasant aboard for all 3 of us so we took the time to have breakfast.
Next up was taking down the torn genoa and putting up the jib. Taking the genoa down turned into quite the challenge as the winds were still up over 25 knots and the sail was essentially in two pieces which had furled up different amounts of turns on the furler when we brought it all in quickly last night. So I went up to the bow and spent an hour or so unfurling the drum by hand to let out the top sail section while simultaneously unwrapping the bottom section so they would be back in synch with their attachment to the furling extrusion and we could pull it down. Of course a new storm came through as we were in the midst of doing so and I got a very thorough pressure washing in the process. Once I had both sections of the sail wrapped up evenly on the furler with about half their width out flying loose in the high winds, I managed to wrestle the bottom section with the big clew ring on it back on board and Christine was now standing up in the forward cabin with her head through the big hatch and I was able to pass her the clew and she could start pulling the tattered sail into the cabin. At one point I looked back from my precarious stance up at the rock and rolling bow to see that the high winds were about to rip Christine out of the cabin like one of those medieval rock throwing sling shot machines as she hung on to the clew end of the sail and launch her into outer space. But she was her usual awemazing self and hung on to it with her considerable strength and there was no way some torn sail and big winds were going to beat her! And so we prevailed and managed to bring the rest of the sail into the foreword cabin with me turning the furling drum by hand to finish unfurling the sail cloth and then carefully letting out the halyard to lower the sail and Christine pulled the wet tangled mess of Dacron down the hatch. Whew! First part done.
I went and dug out the 98% jib from its safe spot in the bathtub storage area I’d built in Fiji and we dragged it up to the foreword cabin and I went up on deck to pull while Christine pushed from below and we got the big heavy duty jib up on deck. Our timing worked out well as the winds died down to 15 or so for the next 10 minutes or so and we were able to unroll the big heavy jib on deck, fasten it to the furler shackles top and bottom and while Christine fed the bolt rope front edge into the groove in the aluminum furler extrusion, I went back to the mast and pulled in the halyard by hand as far as possible and then the rest with the winch on the mast. We had to leave the sail completely free and out to the considerable wind to raise it so it was a bit noisy and rough on the boat for a bit but as I finished locking down the shackle pins with zip ties and tightened up the halyard to tension the foreword luff edge of the sail, Christine went back to the aft deck and started winching in the port sheet to pull in the sail and get it under control. The boat and sail quieted right down with this and we were soon standing in the protection of the cockpit, dripping wet and grinning like Cheshire cats as we watched that new jib cup itself around the winds and we felt the comforting tug of LTY picking up speed. Within minutes we were up to over 5.5 knots and heading in almost the perfect course for the west end of Majuro so it was very satisfying indeed and we just sat and enjoyed the protection of the cockpit to keep us out of the raging winds, seas and rain outside and watch as LTY ploughed right through it all at great speed and we were back on course heading for Majuro.
It is now a few hours later, 4pm here for us, and we are settled back into good sailing and right on course for our waypoint on the West side of Majuro which now lies about 22nm NNW of our current position. We’ve changed from going around the East end of Majuro to the west end as it will be easier to lay that heading and not require us to tack to get there. We’ll see what time we get up there and right now that looks to be midnight or so and then we’ll tack left to head east well up to the north of Majuro and make our way over to the pass and wait for daylight to turn south and make our way through the pass and into the safe inner section of Majuro atoll.
Still too many variables with weather, sails and rudder to know just when we’ll go through the pass but looks like we’ll be able to do so tomorrow which is Friday for us and we’ll decide if we can steer our own way through of if we’ll ask Cary to come out and meet us in Wasabi and help tow/steer us in. Meanwhile Christine is taking a VERY hard earned nap as I get this all typed up and sent off to you and so I’ll leave off for now and be back with more updates, ideally from the mooring ball inside Majuro atoll!
Thanks for joining us on this latest fun adventure of ours.
Christine, Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog
Comments