Summary Report 5/4/2011

First off, sorry for not sending regular progress reports to this blog. The first week out was a tough one, which I'll describe below. But first here is a sampling of our position reports:

Date Time Latitude Longitude
4/26 0700 32° 41.5' N 117° 09.7' W
4/27 0700 30° 32.8' N 118° 33.3' W
4/28 1222 29° 16.1' N 119° 06.2' W
4/30 0415 26° 13.3' N 119° 34.9' W
5/1 1715 23° 33.0' N 120° 34.1' W
5/2 0814 22° 23.4' N 120° 33.3' W
5/3 0826 20° 21.7' N 120° 25.5' W
5/4 1800 18° 40.6' N 120° 30.8' W

The last entry is where we are as of this posting. In plain English, we are ~875 nautical miles southwest of San Diego and about 1100 nm from the equator. After crossing the equator we will have another 850 miles or so to get to Hiva Oa, our first landfall. We expect it to take 11 days to get to the equator, then another week to Hiva Oa.

Summary of our sailing thus far:
We left San Diego Tuesday, April 27 under a small craft advisory for the inner waters, and a gale warning for the outer waters (30 - 60 mi). We did not encounter any gale force winds, but the seas were very lumpy. All hands onboard suffered from mal de mer (seasickness) for about two days. Nemo didn't eat for at least that long, poor guy. This was followed by a couple days of beam seas and wind that, while allowing us to sail pretty fast, were not very comfortable. Next followed several days of 6' - 12' seas that allowed us to practice our surfing. Winds were generally 15-25 knots. Then all of a sudden we sailed into relative calm, 10 knots or less. The pace slowed way down, allowing us to catch up on some things, including this blog. Right now it is beautiful, sunny, and warm with low swell.

Mechanical issues:
We have suffered from several problems that caused a lot of scrambling to address. First off, we had a halyard tangle up on the main mast that I had to go up and clear. The mast was rolling like a metronome, and I was quite happy to get my feet back on the deck. Next the radar failed. This unit is brand new, installed just two weeks prior to departure. I mentally composed several versions of a nasty email to Raymarine, the manufacturer. I was unhappy that we would have to sail all this way without what I consider an important safety device for avoiding ship traffic. Turns out that my installation was faulty. After adding a ground wire to one circuit it has worked flawlessly ever since.

As a side note, we have found AIS to be more useful for ship avoidance than radar. AIS is a system that is required on all commercial ships, whereby the ship's position, speed,and a bunch of other data is transmitted regularly by the ship itself. With this system you know exactly where the ship is, what direction it is going in, and its speed. Our onboard electronics pick this up and, knowing precisely where we are, computes how close we will get to the ship and when we will cross paths. Happily, we again have both AIS and radar.
We also have ongoing issues with the windvane (a mechanical self-steering device). After several days of intense work on it we have it mostly fixed. We need to talk with the manufacturer later to really dial it in for this boat. We also had the electric freshwater pump fail. We have spares, so all is well. Most recently we had a bout of water in the diesel fuel that we had to deal with. On the plus side, thus far the new watermaker has worked flawlessly.

Life onboard:
Overall, quality of life onboard has been good, with the exception of nearly exhausting ourselves addressing the various mechanical issues and a big lack of sleep. Last night after sailing all day in very light wind and Columbine rolling incessantly, we decided to motor through the night. We struck the sails and fired up the motor. I did a fuel tank check prior to motoring ahead and found the tank had leaked in a lot of water. Water in the fuel is the death of a diesel engine, so we immediately shut it off and went to work cleaning up the fuel system. By 2am this morning we had the engine running again, but neither of us was fit to drive. Since there wasn't another boat within 200 miles of us, we left the motor running to charge the batteries and both of us went to sleep while Columbine just drifted. Today we played with a new sail combination and it turned out to be perfect for these light conditions: cruising spinnaker up front, mizzen stays'l aft. No more rolling, easy to steer, and easy to strike if necessary.
We are finally in tropical waters, so we now live in shorts and tee shirts rather than the heavy foul weather gear we had been using up till now.

I will try to be more regular in updates now that things have settled into a better routine.

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