DAY #17 Monday May 18, 2015
LTY Stats update:
LTY (local) time: 16:15 Monday May 18th, 2015th (LTY time = UTC +12)
LOCATION: Motor sailing due east about 150 nm north of Fiji’s north barrier reef where we hope to enter
POSITION: 14 00.6813 S 178 57.846 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)
SOG: 4.3kts (SOG = Speed over Ground)
COG: 85 degrees (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)
WIND: 26-32 kts SE
SEAS/Swell: 3+m @4 seconds out of SE
WEATHER: Overcast and very windy all day, skies now starting to clear to east and south.
SAILS: Motor sailing with double reefed main to get good sea/boat angle and more easting
AIR TEMP: 78F 25.6C
SEA TEMP: 88.2F 31.2C
HUMIDITY 60%
BAROMETER: 1006
DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 118nm
TOTAL DISTANCE TO GO: (to Fiji): about 150 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 #17 CHANGING UP FROM JAZZ TO HEAVY ROCK & ROLL
I’m not sure you can clap your hands to it but we have definitely moved from smooth jazz to raucous rock and roll since yesterday’s post. Winds have continued to climb, climb, climb and we have been in the high 20’s and up to 35 all day. Still out of the SE but we’ve been able to swing over to head east again and are slowly but steadily gaining more easting and getting ourselves in a better position for the straight shot down to the pass where we’d like to head into Fiji.
It was a VERY busy night all last night for me at the helm with lots of little micro storms/squalls that were constantly swirling the wind around in all directions making it difficult to keep the sails filled on this close reach (staying as tight as possible to the wind) we are on. It is odd weather compared to the usually wet squally conditions on this passage as it is mostly all clear above with a dazzling display of Mother Nature’s impressive diamond collection all sparkling away in the inky black moonless sky as I look out and up. However when I look closely I can see little darker patches sprinkled around and best I can tell or guess these seem to be causing these shifting wind directions. However for the most part I was able to keep wind speed up quite high, often into the low 7’s which is very good for LTY and so we clocked some bouncy but good miles south all night. I turned the wheel over to Christine at 2am with these same conditions and headed down below to join the pups in our bouncing bed to get a few hours of welcomed sleep.
Worked well until about 6am when Christine woke me to say that one of the lines holding the dinghy had broken and that she was continuing to have to point further and further to the SW as she rode the edge of the line of sail we can hold Learnativity to which is about 50 degrees over the bow. So over the lifelines I went and got the dinghy all squared away and firmly lashed onto the davits and then we decided it was time to fire up the main engine, pull in the genoa and tack over to see what kind of heading to the east we could make. The wind was too much to the east to sail without us going NE and so we decided to set her up to motor sail due east to maximize the amount of easting we could pick up in these conditions and be in the best position for the run south to the pass and that’s been our status for the whole day so far.
With the building winds comes building seas and they are now running like large freight trains across the ocean out of the SE. So we’ve gone from those long oily smooth gentle rolling hills you’ll recall from the first week to these more mountainous conditions. Wave height is up and now over four meters at times and frequency is down to about 4 seconds apart meaning they are closer together. It is a bit hard to estimate these heights as we climb up and over each one but the bow deck of LTY is about 7 feet above the water and I’m about 6 feet tall and the wave tops are still a long ways over my head from there so you can do the math. It’s much more amazing than frightening to be in because you watch as the bow heads for this almost vertical wall of water that is way above you and you’d think that you’re going to hit it and plow right through. Instead the bow starts to rapidly lift up, the water disappears and all you can see is sky as you angle up, up, up and then just as quickly the bow tilts down as it hinges over the top of that wave and now all you can see is sea. Rinse (quite literally) and repeat! You soon learn that this is the pattern and that you are going to climb up and then rush down every one of those watery mountains and you can sit back and enjoy being awemazed yet again by the raw power and beauty of Mother Nature.
The key factor that determines our ride however is the angle at which our bow enters those watery mountains. If we point perpendicular and run directly into them things get very rough and very wet as LTY digs her “nose” into that watery trough on the way down and a big volume of that watery mountain now rushes down the deck and is deflected up and over the sloping salon windows, then the cockpit windows and comes crashing down on the aft deck. And yet we also don’t want to get closer to parallel to those waves either because then each one would impart their force on our side and roll us over from one side to the other as the wave slides past underneath us. So the trick is to find an entry angle to the water that allows us to sluff off those immense forces by sliding a bit sideways over each one. Of course we also have to find a compass angle that is taking us about where we want to go and ideally also an angle to the wind where our double reefed main sail will help to keep our speed up. As you might surmise by now that combination is often quite elusive! Thankfully though we have the option of motor sailing which gives us more control and options thanks to Mr. Cummins and our AutoProp to adjust our angle to be much closer to the wind and move a bit off perpendicular in search of that “Goldilocks” spot where we have the best ride and best bearing. So we used the autopilot which does all our steering and adjusted a few degrees at a time till we found the best ride and compass bearing possible and we’ve been having a surprisingly smooth and fast ride all day averaging almost 4 knots.
So it has been a surprisingly calm day aboard, though not one conducive to much more than braced seating activities or napping. Normally in these conditions we would be running into series of very wet squalls but we’ve not seen a drop of rain yet and so perhaps that is why Ma Nature has been supplying us with lots of sea water onboard to make up for this lake of fresh water? Looking ahead, both at the sky and the Grib files we’re hopeful that the winds are going to start dropping off by about midnight and the sun came shining through about an hour ago and we are seeing more and more blue skies ahead to the east and down south so that all bodes well. Our 30+ knot winds are double what the Grib forecasts called for but that’s not too uncommon a degree of “tolerance” in these predictions and they are much better at predicting overall patterns so we’re hoping that the pattern they show of lessening winds as we head south, holds true.
It’s getting near sundown here and we’ll tack back to head south before dark and try to find another good angle that will point us close to the pass we’re aiming for and hopefully with enough angle to the wind to sail rather than motor sail through the night. You’ll find out not long after we do with tomorrow’s update and in any case we’ll be a bunch closer to Fiji so it is all good.
Night for now.
Wayne, Christine, Barnacle Barney and Ruby the WonderDog
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