As the sun went down last night so did the wind but it was pretty sailing under the moonlight and stars with good visuals on the commercial traffic nearby. It felt strange to be on night watch again, scanning the horizon for lights and ufo's ( unidentified floating objects ).I resisted the urge to call Chris to verify my "read" on a couple of large ships passing a mile or two off Ladybug. As they passed safely to north and south I put away my binoculars and smoothed out the worry lines.
This morning was quite placid and we burnt some diesel for six hours. We know that there will be a low following us in a few days and want to get as far away from NZ as possible. Other boats checking into the Drifters Net this morning also reported motoring in light winds. Only the guys nearing Fiji are getting the 30 Knot winds and 6 metre seas. One of the boats had two knock-downs two days ago during the worst of the high winds, which we sat out in the river at Whangarei.
This afternoon the roller furler jammed, so we were glad we had calm conditions to fix the problem. The worm set screws in the drum had backed out, causing the foil to ride up and we could not furl/unfurl after a few turns. Chris manually unrolled the jib around the forestay to take it down. We found some chafe at the top of the jib halyard, so while Chris reset the screws, I cut off the chafed area and re-seized it. It was good to feel useful. Just as we raised the jib, the wind came up, so we are now sailing again in 4-5 Knots from the SW.
There is a lot of low cumulus cloud cover over us but the pressure is quite high at 1032. It feels like an oppressive sort of day. My solution was to cook a hearty lentil and vegetable soup, with beetroot, carrots, tomato, onion and potato. We also enjoyed a crunchy salad with fresh greens from Jo's garden and some delicious local feta cheese.
Our progress during the last 24 hours from 3pm to 3pm was 104nm, 96nm made good. Our position is 34 21S 174 49E. Please join us in our prayers for a wee bit more wind this evening.
2 comments:
Bon voyage ! I am endeavouring to keep up with your new posts, and simultaneously catch up on the old ones (I'm at Christmas 2008) - it's like reading a book from both ends, a book that keeps growing. It's nice to have some time to do this, and to do the things I'm too busy to do when working (like trimming my toe-nails - why do they get such low priority? Maybe because they're so far from my head - the big head, not the little one; they're quite close to the little head (though they'd be closer if I was Jamaican) ).
OK I've said too much. Keep on posting!
Alan
Great to read you are out on the open waters once again.
I went back and read your first posts from 2008... you have both come along way baby :).
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