DAY #16 Sunday May 17, 2015
LTY Stats update:
LTY (local) time: 17:15 Sunday May 17th, 2015th (LTY time = UTC +12)
LOCATION: Heading east about 200 nm north of Fiji’s north barrier reef where we hope to enter
POSITION: 13 29.343 S 178 32.603 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)
SOG: 5.5 kts (SOG = Speed over Ground)
COG: 60 (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)
WIND: 22-24 kts SE
SEAS/Swell: 2m @4 seconds out of SE
WEATHER: Beautifully boisterous!
SAILS: 2 reefs in both Main & Genoa
AIR TEMP: 80.1F 26.7C
SEA TEMP: 86.9F 30.5C
HUMIDITY 64%
BAROMETER: 1007
DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 136nm
TOTAL DISTANCE TO GO: (to Fiji): about 200 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 #16 JAZZERCISING OUR WAY TO FIJI
Not too much news to report today as we have another “birds in a nest” day with blue skies rimmed by white clouds all around. However there would likely have been some “broken eggs” in making that dish today so they would like have been well scrambled, though still a very tasty dish!
As you may recall in last night’s post we had tacked and were sailing pretty much due east in building winds out of the SE in order to jog our way further east so that we could then tack back today and be on a heading as southerly as possible to head us towards the northern pass we are hoping to go through into Fiji. The winds continued to build all night helping us put much more easting “in the bank” for us and then in the wee hours this morning I tacked us back to be heading slightly west of south. The winds have continued to build slowly ever since and have been in the 20’s since last night and up around 25 now. Wind wise this is fine but it starts pushing up the wave heights to where they are now over 2 meters and much closer together which makes for that “boisterous” ride and scrambled eggs.
As you might imagine it also makes life onboard more challenging for all four of us. It’s not so much the heel from the higher winds as we can furl in the sails to let LTY straighten up a bit, but we can’t do anything about those wave heights or direction and therefore as LTY rides up and over each wave that is coming at us at about a 40 degree angle, she rolls first one way and then the other as each wave passes under. In addition she slides sideways a bit, the “yaw” motion in “pitch, roll and yaw” which is like a sideways “wiggle” as she rotates first one direction and then back the other with each wave. The combined effect is pleasant enough if you’re well braced and sitting down, which is what we do most of the time but moving around the boat, showering, sleeping and cooking becomes much more challenging. The biggest challenge with all these various motions is that they are very unpredictable. It is similar to how someone once told me you could tell when you were listening to jazz music compared to all others; it’s the music you can’t clap your hands to! Largely quite true with the typically unusual timing and beat structure in most jazz, which is perhaps why it is also my overall favorite kind of music? Similar to those hard to clap to jazz rhythms, the motion in these winds and seas is completely random so you can’t tell in advance which way it is going to go and there usually isn’t “a way” it is every way! However as per my previous comments this does make for some great “jazzercise” and we sure will be very fit when we get to Fiji in a few days!!
The down side is that these conditions is that they do take a toll on you in the form of fatigue and difficulty sleeping. To make matters worse Christine had a nasty stitch in her side all day yesterday and wasn’t able to sleep very well on her off watch times the past two nights so she was particularly tired last night. One of the great things about our relationship though is that having both been single handers for so many years, both sailing and otherwise, we are both able to and accustomed to looking after everything ourselves and can quickly fill in when the other needs it. So last night when she awoke from her boisterous sleep to take her watch at 2am I promptly sent her back to bed. As single handers we are both very accustomed to having to do all the watches and so doubling up isn’t anything new for either of us. Fortunately she found that when she went back down to bed the fatigue kicked in and she was asleep before her head hit the pillow and didn’t awake till first light.
** BTW, you can read Christine’s own and much better description of her day and night in her post over on www.sailingwriter.com
The only other change to note is that we are both definitely feeling the effects of heading deeper and deeper into the winter of the southern hemisphere. If you have been watching the air and water temps in the stats section of each of these daily posts, you will have noticed that both have been dropping every day since we approached the equator. Now that we are down to thirteen and a half degrees south in May, and that we are both so accustomed to the much warmer water and air temperatures in summertime Majuro up north, we are finding our showers on the aft deck much more “brisk” even though they are in the full sunlight and that we even need to hide our “Captain Underwear” attire with more clothing on night watch. Yes, yes, we are warm weather wimps to be complaining that the air is so freezing cold as it drops down into the low 80’sF / mid 20’s C and the water has dropped below 90F and 32C! But life is all relative isn’t it and for us these are brrrrrrrrrrrrrr temperatures!
OK, time for us to tack just before it gets dark and make another jog over to the east and set us up for a better angle of attack to the wind as we are now within 200 nautical miles of the pass into Fiji we hope to take by Bligh Waters. Night from all of us frigid but well exercised sailors on the good ship Learnativity and see you again tomorrow.
Wayne, Christine, Barnacle Barney and Ruby the WonderDog
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