DAY #18 Tuesday May 19, 2015
LTY Stats update:
LTY (local) time: 17:05 Tuesday May 19th, 2015th (LTY time = UTC +12)
LOCATION: About 50nm north of the pass into Fiji above Bligh Waters
POSITION: 15 39.106 S 178 00.277 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)
SOG: 6.1kts (SOG = Speed over Ground)
COG: 85 degrees (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)
WIND: 15-18 kts ESE
SEAS/Swell: 2m @6 seconds out of SE
WEATHER: Perfect all day!! Sunny, blue sky, clouds on horizon and best of all wind down below 20 and more to the east.
SAILS: Sailed through the night and all day, now able to sail a course direct to Bligh Water pass as wind moved more east
AIR TEMP: 77.4F 25.2C
SEA TEMP: 86F 30.0C
HUMIDITY 51%
BAROMETER: 1009
DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 134nm
TOTAL DISTANCE TO GO: (to Fiji): about 550 nm to the pass through the northern reef and then about 80nm through the Bligh Waters and around the SW end of Vanua Levu over to Savu Savu where we will check into Fiji.
Day #18 BOW RIDING MY WAY to FIJI
Realizing that I’ve been disappointing many of you with rather boring posts the past few days and that you’re waiting for more “Adventures with Wayne” I got up early this morning and had an adventure just for you! Here’s the story……
After sending off last night’s post and enjoying yet another fabulous dinner from Chef Christine, we tacked and started heading south. The winds stayed up in the high 20’s and into the 30’s so tucked two reefs in both the main and the genoa and LTY was like a horse with a bit in her mouth and was galloping south in the high 6’s to low 7 knots. The winds also stayed SE so we couldn’t quite hold the bearing or COG of about 197 degrees that was what we need for a straight shot at the pass in to Fiji but we held about 220 which wasn’t bad and kept hoping that the Grib file predictions for lower winds that were going to shift to be more out of the east were up ahead.
The higher winds held all through the night and into the early dawn hours when I got up from my bunk time to join Christine in the cockpit. It was one of those stunningly beautiful sunny early dawn mornings with the wind honking in the mid to high 20’s and I sleepily took the pups out on the aft deck for all three of us to pee. This is always a bit challenging in these conditions with the boat still tuned in to this heavy rock and roll channel and gyrating through all six degrees of motion but and we were REALLY heeled over! Rubbing some of the sleepies from my eyes I was surprised to see that Christine had unfurled the big 125% genoa all the way in these high winds and hence our heeling 30 degrees or so and when I mentioned it to Christine she was surprised too and said that she had assumed I had unfurled it before she came on watch at 2am. Nope, but no problem we’ll just furl it in now.
We have what is called a roller furler on the head sail which is a very simple arrangement where there is a large drum at the bottom of the forestay (thick SS wire that goes from the bow to the top of the mast) and has a hollow aluminum extrusion attached to it that fits around the forestay with a slot in it that the luff (leading edge of a sail) slides into and attaches the sail to the forestay. Then there is a line (rope) that is wrapped around this drum and leads back into our cockpit where you wrap it around a winch. When the sail is all the way furled up (wrapped around the furler) and not in use, just a few wraps or the furler line are around the drum so it is mostly empty and then when you let the sail out by pulling on the sheets (lines attached to the Clew ring at the bottom aft end of the triangular sail) and the sail unfurls (unwraps) itself from the furler, the turning drum winds all the furler line onto it. This enables you to furl the sail in, either partially or all the way, by wrapping that furler line around a winch and cranking away to wind the sail around the furler. A nice simple arrangement and it works very well and is found on pretty much all sailboats these days.
After enjoying the early morning sun a bit more I figured I better furl in a bunch of that genoa as the winds didn’t seem to show any signs of letting up and so I grabbed the furler line on the aft deck, wrapped it around the winch and started cranking…….. and cranking……… and cranking……… Hmmmm, seems awfully easy? Usually cranking in the head sail is one of our better upper body workouts aboard and takes all you’ve got to furl it all the way in. I reach down and try pulling the line by hand and it all pulls in! Not good! Sure enough, looking forward shows that the line has broken off and there is just a bit hanging out of the furler drum up on the bow.
This should be interesting I’m thinking as I grab my safety harness and start buckling it up and heading up to the bow and figure out exactly what has happened. As I’m carefully working my way to the bow aboard this bucking bronco of a boat I’m thinking up ways to be able to furl in the genoa which is now flapping wildly and loudly in the winds which of course have picked up a bit and are up to 30kts. If my explanation of how these roller furlers work made sense, you too can see the challenge here. You can imagine the forces being exerted on this large sail in these high winds so bringing it in takes even more force. Dropping the sail onto the deck really isn’t an option other than in a real emergency situation because in these winds it would be extremely difficult to keep it from blowing overboard and trying to take you with it. Wrapping or furling it up around the forestay really is the way BUT unless the furling line is still all wrapped around that drum and I can lead it back to a winch somehow, there is no way to turn that furler with enough force to pull in the sail by wrapping it around the furler.
Once up at the bow, I pause briefly to admire what a truly beautiful morning this is and also how warm the ocean water still is as these very high seas and Mother Nature figure that they might was well give me an early morning shower while I’m at it. As you can picture I’m sure, the bow is very “active” in these conditions and in addition to the “Rock & Roll” motion there is LOTS of vertical travel as the bow dips into the troughs, rises up to the peaks and back down again. Turning my attention back to the furling line I quickly see that it has chafed through somewhere aft of the drum after all the many hours we’ve spent with this sail partially furled and where it is only this furling line that holds the sail in position. So as I kick my bare little butt for not getting out to check this line last night before sun down, I am at least pleased to see that about ¾ of the furling line is still wrapped around the drum so I have something to work with and now I just need to figure out how to attach a line to the broken end and run it back to a winch somewhere to start furling in the sail.
Normally this furler line leads back from the furling drum at the bow to the stern by being lead through some “fair leads” mounted on the stanchions (poles that hold up our life lines running down each side) but now that I will have a knot in the furler line I can’t use those. After some head scratching I figure out that I can run the line straight out of the furler down the centerline of the boat to a winch that is on the mast and furl in the sail this way. Christine is doing a great job the whole time of managing the boat in these seas, trying to keep as much wind off the flapping genoa as possible and keeping the bow action a bit less than “heavy metal rock”. I grab a length of line out of the cockpit and head back up to finish my morning shower on the bow and as I’m doing so I think through the process and realize that I will only be able to furl in part of the sail before the knot with the new line gets to the winch and can’t go through. That’s a problem because if I were to let go of this line the whole sail would quickly unfurl because the only thing keeping it from doing so is that line pulling on the drum. Hmmmmmm.
Adding more line to the drum so I can get all the sail wrapped around the furler seems like the thing to do and so I spend what feels like quite a long time trying to carefully wrap the new line about 15 turns around the drum and then somehow attach it to the broken end of the original line. Sounds simple and would be except that the drum is all enclosed in a metal housing with just a small rectangular opening where the line exits. There is barely enough room for my hand to fit in there, feed the line around the drum, reach around the other way and grab the end and pull it though. But I wrap myself around the pulpit at the bow which is the stainless steel tubing “fence” you see wrapped around the bow of most boats, grab the end of the new line and squeeze my hand inside the drum and try to pass each wrap around the drum. So I while away my shower time with my hands stuffed into the furling drum and eventually am able to get about 15 wraps of the new line around the drum. I have to start over several times to get the length of the line right so it ends with enough for me to tie the new line off to the old, but I persevere and get it all wrapped up and lead the new line back to the winch on the mast. Good, looks like this will work!
I signal to Christine that I’m ready to start furling in the sail and she starts to ease off the sheet to give the sail enough slack so that I can turn the winch and start reeling in the line and wrapping the sail onto the furler. It works very well and I manage to get the sail furled in with about five wraps when the line becomes increasingly hard to winch in. You learn the hard way what when things change like this that the answer is NOT to apply more force and so I carefully work my way back up to the bow to see what the problem is and quickly see that the line inside the drum has doubled up on itself in some places and made quite a tangled mess that the force of the sail tugging on it has turned into a rock solid bundle. Hmmmmmm…..
I’ll cut a longer story shorter and just say that after many more trips up to the bow, very sharp knives clenched in my teeth pirate style, I manage to get my hands back into the drum and judiciously cut just the right lines to be able to unsnarl the mess and start over. I get the line reattached and onto the mast winch and start furling in the sail again and get about half way when the line and winch again goes tight and won’t turn any more. It takes me a while to figure this one out as the line in the drum is all fine and I can’t see what’s keeping the drum and sail from turning but finally I look way up at the very top of the mast and see the problem. One of the spinnaker halyards which is a large line (rope) that turns around a block up at the very top of the mast and we use to hoist the big spinnaker sail up and down has somehow managed to get wrapped around the genoa up at the very top as I have been turning it. Grrrrrrrrrr Looks like I need to go appreciate this stunning morning from a new vantage point; the top of the mast!
I really don’t mind doing so and as some of you will remember from past stories here I’ve been up there quite a few times while out in some much worse sea conditions. However I spend a bit of time pulling out this spinnaker halyard to see just how it is wrapped around the furling sail up at the top and see that I might be able to take this halyard up to the bow, unwrap it around the flailing sail and be able to pull on it hard enough to get it to come free from the sail that has wrapped and trapped the line. No easy task in these conditions but I’m nothing if I’m not persistent and eventually I am able to pull it free from on the deck. Drat! No flailing mast riding this morning so I’ll just have to be content with appreciating this fabulous sunny morning from deck level.
Eventually, with Christine managing the boat and the lines in the cockpit and me back and forth from the bow to the mast many times, we are able to get the genoa all furled up and safe. Whew! Fortunately I had a new furling line onboard (surprise!) and spent the next hour or so installing it on the drum, running through all the fair leads down the side of the boat and back to the aft winch. We then unfurled the genoa, the new line wrapped itself fully onto the drum and then we winched it right back in to try it all out. Worked better than new and so we unfurled the sail and got back to sailing and to finally having some breakfast. Fresh pancakes today!
The rest of the day has been a bit less eventful but no less beautiful and best of all Mother Nature gave us the gift of lower winds and a shift over to the east just as the Gribs had promised. With the lower winds, now just under 20, the seas soon flattened out more, now running a bit less than 2 meters and we were able to enjoy a smooth ride right on our heading direct to the pass!
Now I know some of you might be thinking this was a rough day but it really wasn’t. A bit exciting at times up at that bow to be sure, but we got the job done and have LTY sailing better than ever. Plus, I needed a shower anyway and the sea water was warmer than our fresh onboard and the sun was glorious so what’s not to like? The real point though, and something I also know all of you can understand and have your own versions of, is that if it were not for challenges like these our enjoyment and appreciation of all those times at anchor in perfect little bays where we are the only people there, just would NOT be as sweet.
Seriously, think about it for a moment, everything really is relative and as I often say the only difference between adversity and adventure is attitude, and attitude is a CHOICE! So I choose positive and happy. The ONLY way we can appreciate the highs in life is to the degree we have also experienced the lows. In fact my “theory” on this is that the “scale” on the positive side of life can never be much greater than the scale on the negative side. If life were “perfect” all the time it would be the most bland, boring, existence I could imagine. We wouldn’t know what happiness is.
At least that’s the way I’ve always looked at it and let me assure you I am a VERY VERY happy guy!!
Wayne, Christine, Barnacle Barney and Ruby the WonderDog
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