DAY #15 Friday May 15, 2015
LTY Stats update:
LTY (local) time: 16:35 Friday May 15th, 2015th (LTY time = UTC +12)
LOCATION: About 300nm north of pass through northern barrier reef into Fiji
POSITION: 10 57.39 S 178 01.045 E (can cut & paste into Google Earth)
SOG: 5.8 kts (SOG = Speed over Ground)
COG: 75 (COG = Course over Ground, our GPS based compass heading)
WIND: 15-18 kts SE
SEAS/Swell: 2m @5-6 seconds out of ESE BUT no wind waves today
WEATHER: More perfect sailing weather; sunny, blue skies and LOTS of wind
SAILS: 2 reefs in main, Genoa out full
AIR TEMP: 81.7F 27.6C
SEA TEMP: 87.6F 30.9C
HUMIDITY 55%
BAROMETER: 1005
DISTANCE TRAVELED last 24 hrs: 137nm
TOTAL DISTANCE TO GO: (to Fiji): about 450nm all together to Savu Savu where we think we will go to check in. All depending on weather, wind and whim as usual
LUCKY Day #14 TACKING OUR WAY to FIJI
Oh what a difference 5 knots of wind makes! Just as Christine has been telling me the Grib weather forecast turned out to be right and the 25 knot winds we’ve been having since leaving Funafuti yesterday morning backed off about 5 knots to be around 17 about an hour ago. The wind itself was fine but these higher winds also mean higher wind waves which are shorter frequency waves that build up on top of the swell. So rather than have that nice gentle ride we had riding over those long flat gentle hills of blue on our way down to Funafuti, these choppy wind waves and our higher boat speed made for quite an “active” ride. With the wind now down a bit those wind waves are almost gone and our ride is now much smoother.
We actually started to notice the change in the seas earlier this morning because the sea conditions are mostly caused by whatever is happening hundreds of miles away, in our case off to the east somewhere. It is a bit like how the light we see from those billions of stars is light which actually left those stars millions to billions of years ago. Similarly then, the sea conditions we see are those created by storms, or lack thereof, many days ago off to the east. So this morning we noticed that the seas were flattening out a bit as was our ride. Now that added to the lessened winds has added together with the sunny blue sky day we have again today to make ideal conditions.
Of course we sailors are never satisfied and what’s keeping this from being ideal sailing is that the wind direction continues to be coming out of the SE which is of course right where we want to go. And so we are as per the title of today’s post “tacking” our way down to Fiji and just carried out our first tack which is where we turn the boat through the wind coming over the bow to have the wind coming over the opposite side, now starboard/right and need to move “tack” our headsail and main over to the other side to match.
If this all sounds strange and confusing is it’s not. Trust me if I can figure this out YOU certainly can!! It simply means that we can’t go in a straight line to where we want to be because the wind is coming out of that same spot and so we zig zag our way back and forth along that line. Or you could imagine this on a chess or checker board where let’s say the goal is to move your “sailboat” from the upper left corner to the bottom right corner. Simple enough except one of the rules is that you are not allowed to move diagonally. So you would move your little “sailboat” a square or two down, then a square or two across and keep repeating this zig zag pattern till you reach the bottom right corner. Simple right? We want to go SE but that’s where the wind is coming from so we have been going south for the past day and now we have tacked and are heading east, then we’ll tack back south and so on. Or, maybe we’ll get lucky and Mother Nature will decide to shift the winds up to be more out of the east or north east and then we can just sail straight to Fiji. Quite frankly with these conditions we don’t care and now that we are settling back into the groove of the passage we are in no desire to have this end anytime soon.
I think I’m going to leave it at that short (for me) and strictly sailing update for today. I have a backlog of Emails from many of you to attend to and another great looking sunset coming up in an hour or so. Thanks to all of you who have sent along Emails to either Christine’s learnativityGO@myiridium.net address or my Learnativity@satphone.me and PLEASE do keep them coming. Short or long is fine, all we ask is that you keep them to text only no pictures or attachments please till we get back to strong internet connections in Fiji. Oh, and if you’d like to try out “texting” with us for short notes just go to the www.iridium.com web page and go to the “send a message” page, type your message in the box and send it to our sat phone # which is +881651486713
OK, I’m off to enjoy another sunset which today is behind us as we sail east into the night.
Wayne, Christine, Barnacle Barney and Ruby the WonderDog
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