April 2014 - Galapagos to Marquesas - Page 2

8 April 2014   Galapagos to Marquesas (Day 13)
After breakfast, we moved the spinnaker pole from starboard to port.  It's a bit of a mission having to sort out the up-haul, the down-hauls, the sheets and swing the 15 foot pole over to port, while hanging on for grim death on the bucking, rolling foredeck.   It took us half an hour to do it and get a semblance of order again.

We set up a heavily reefed main to starboard and the genoa poled out to port.  The wind was coming from 30 degrees off our aft port quarter, so the genoa was poled out on the windward side of the boat.  Normally there would be a high risk of the genoa backing, but I positioned the spinnaker pole angled forwards to put the wind square onto the sail.  This setup works great provided the wind is from dead behind or up to 45 degrees on the port side.

After a few hours, the wind picked up and veered another 10 degrees, forcing us further north than we would like and making me wish that we'd kept on a broad reach.  Then, just before lunch, we had a huge roll, the genoa backed and we rounded up into wind, so I had jump up and start the engine to steer us back on course.  By this time, the wind was 25 knots gusting 30, so we rolled away the main completely, gybed the genoa to the starboard side and ran downwind with just the genoa.

The afternoon was a bit more stable with the wind reducing to 20 knots and backing 10 degrees, so we gybed the genoa back to starboard on the pole and set the staysail up to starboard to run wing-on-wing – it’s hard work this sailing malarkey.

While I had my afternoon nap, Glenys had a cooking session and baked some Pan de Yuca & blueberry muffins.  For dinner, she made Encebollada, which is a delicious Ecuadorian fish soup – it should contain Tuna, but she made do with Dorado.

The skies looked grey and menacing as darkness fell.  Halfway through my 7-10 watch, the wind dropped to 10 knots and backed 30 degrees as we entered a shower system.  I turned 20 degrees to port initially and then rolled away the stay sail, before turning back on course.  The rain hit us five minutes later, followed shortly by the wind increasing to 15-20 knots.  Then over the next fifteen minutes, the wind backed to its original direction, so I unfurled the stay sail again and off we went.  We've had to do more sail changes today than we've done over the previous 12 days.

The rest of the night went without incident, but we're being forced to sail 10 degrees further north than our ideal course of 265 degrees because with the wind at 45 degrees behind us we're very close to backing the genoa.  I'm finding it frustrating that I can't quite get the sail plan right - if we raise the main and go onto a broad reach again will the genoa be crashing and banging in the lee of the main? 

We’ve been living on Alba for exactly three years today, so I worked out a few statistics.  In the past twelve months, we’ve sailed 5,005 miles bringing our total to 14,457 miles since we moved aboard, but we’re still only 3,120 miles to the west of Grenada, meaning that we’ve only done 15% of our around the world voyage.  

9 April 2014   Galapagos to Marquesas (Day 14)
We had a lovely day with bright sunshine.   Our course should have been 266 degrees, but with our twin headsail setup, we could only just manage to sail on a heading of 272 degrees.  We decided that was close enough - mostly because we couldn't be bothered to adjust the sails. The motion of the boat was pleasant and soporific, so we had some good naps.

At ten o'clock, I tuned into our small SSB net and chatted to some of the other boats, making a note of their positions.  I've continued to plot everyone's position every day and we've all settled down following the rhumb line  - our tracks look like a set of meteorites streaking across the ocean.

My latest little project is to read up on cruising the east coast of Australia.  A few months ago, we decided that we'd not bother going to Australia mostly because it's expensive and neither of us had a burning desire to go there.  Our plan was to sail from New Zealand to Fiji next May and then sail past northern Australia to Indonesia in July.  However, if we went to Australia for the cyclone season, then we'd be able to spend 6 months in the area around Fiji instead of just 2 months, so it sounds sensible.

Sailing up the east coast from Brisbane inside the Great Barrier Reef sounds like a nice cruise with a variety of mainland anchorages and off-shore coral atolls.  I think that a good plan would be to sail from New Caledonia to Brisbane in November 2015, then spend the four month long cyclone season around Brisbane, before starting to cruise north in April, aiming to arrive in Darwin in July.  From Darwin, we could join the Sail Indonesia rally and head up towards Singapore.

The only real downside to this plan is having to spend four months in Brisbane in their hot, humid summer.  However, we'd probably go back to the UK for a month; go on a road trip for a month and haul out, so I don't think that we'd be hanging around too long.  I'll do some more investigation, but it looks like a good option to me – if we do it, our next four years would look something like:

The night wasn't as pleasant as the day.  Clouds built up during the afternoon and the seas became more confused.  The good news was that the wind backed a little allowing us to sail on the correct course to the Marquesas.  

On my 1-4 watch, the wind dropped to 15 knots and then started to gust up to 25 knots as we passed between two dark banks of clouds, so I rolled away the genoa and ran with just the stay sail.  Ten minutes later, the wind settled down, so I unrolled the genoa again.  It's a right faff to keep reefing like that, especially when nothing happens, but I can almost guarantee that the first time that I don't reef early, we'll be clobbered by 30 knot winds...

10 April 2014   Galapagos to Marquesas (Day 15)
Dawn brought us grey overcast skies and a couple of rain showers, but it soon brightened up and, by midmorning, we were rolling along at 6.5 knots enjoying the sunshine.

We've been at sea for two weeks now and I'm surprised that Glenys hasn't killed me yet, despite not having anyone else to talk to.  We've just passed 120 degrees west and have entered another time zone, so we put the clocks back again - meaning that I had to wait an extra hour for lunch.

The last of the Dorado has been used up, but we didn't put the fishing line out because both of us are getting a little bit weary of fish for every meal.  Glenys made pizza out of some Arabic flat bread that she bought in Santa Cruz - she's calling it Passage Pizza because it was so easy to make.  For dinner, we had the old Central American staple of pork with rice and beans.

The afternoon was just another day at sea - I had a nap and Glenys pottered about, glancing up at the wind direction every so often.  The clouds built up during the afternoon again and we had a couple of showers, but it was dry as the sun set.

Overnight, the seas were big and chaotic, with 20 knot winds, but at least we were going along nicely at 6-7 knots.  While sitting in the cockpit on watch, it seemed quite tranquil (apart from the incessant rolling), but down in the back cabin the roar of the waves catching us up and the occasional surfing was loud.  Glenys was quite concerned when she came into the cockpit for her 1-4 watch, thinking that we were running ahead of strong winds, but I was just sat there calmly gazing out at the stars.

11 April 2014   Galapagos to Marquesas (Day 16)
The weather is very consistent at the moment and we've both fallen into fixed routines, so the following is a typical day in the life of Glenys:

It's 4 am and Neville has just woken me to do my 2nd watch of the night.  It's hard to get myself out of bed, as I was deep asleep after a restless time the previous off-watch.  Going up into the cockpit, it's a lovely night, the stars are out and the wind is steady at 15 knots. It's gradually been calming down after a week of constant 20-25 knots from ESE, and the sea swell is less, although we continue to roll.  We still have both headsails out, wing on wing, giving us a fairly comfortable ride.

I've been using an app on the i-Pad to recognise some of the stars and constellations - I'm pretty good at knowing where Vega is now, as well as Alpha Centauri and Sirius.

We turned the clocks back one hour yesterday, so I only have to wait an hour before the sky begins to lighten.  I've been trying to capture a perfect sunrise on camera - today I go to the back of the boat to take some shots, rather than just leaning out of the cockpit. Hopefully, one of them will pass Neville's quality control.

At 6 am, I write our position in the log and put the kettle on for a cup of tea. I'm a bit random as to when I write an entry, but at least we'll have a last known position if the 3 different GPS devices on-board all decide to fail.

Just after 7am, Neville pops his head up the companionway and catches me doing some sit-ups.  I've started doing exercises on the night shifts to help keep my body from atrophying and also to help keep me awake.  I've found a great position for sit-ups, sitting sideways on the cockpit coaming next to the genoa winch, and leaning back as far as I can go.  For each roll of the boat, I pull myself back up - the deeper the roll, the harder my stomach muscles have to work.

I make breakfast - orange juice & cereal, and then get out the ingredients for making bread.  1/2 hour later, the dough has been kneaded and divided into 2 loaf tins, ready for proving.  I place each tin inside a black plastic bag, put them in a sheltered spot in the cockpit, and retire to bed for a couple of hours. When I get up, the bread hasn't risen as much as I would like, but I put the oven on anyway, and bake the bread. By 12.30, I've made some tasty open-topped sandwiches for lunch - it must be alright because Neville asked for more.

I wash up straight after lunch. There's no hot water, so I have to boil a kettle before I can begin.  Because we're rolling so much, I have to wash up in one sink, and put the dishes to drain in the other.  If I put them on the work surface, everything would end up on the floor.  After drying and storing everything away, my galley is now clear and ready for the evening meal's preparation.  There hasn't been any hint of a bite from fish on the lines yet, so I've taken some chicken out of the freezer just in case. 

I check on my remaining fresh fruit and vegetables to make sure none have gone bad.  Half a cucumber needs throwing overboard, and a couple of limes are nearly past their sell by date, but otherwise they all look OK. 

Around 1.30 pm Neville goes for his afternoon nap, leaving me to sit quietly in the cockpit, reading a book, making a mental note of little jobs that need doing, catching up on my overall tan.  I like this part of the day.

3pm - the fishing line on the rod whizzes out, and out, and out. This must be a big one! Neville hears it in the back cabin and rushes upstairs pulling on clothing as he comes.  He spends the next 1/2 hour reeling the fish in - is it a wahoo?  No, it's a 5 foot Shortbill Spearfish, and we definitely do not want it on-board.   So after playing it for a while, with me taking as many photos as possible of the beautiful fish, Nev gets ready to cut the line. The Spearfish saves him the effort by jumping off the hook in a successful bid for freedom. What a buzz!

Having had no luck with fishing today, (and to be honest, I don't really mind), I start preparing a chicken pasta dish ready for us to eat at 6pm, just as the sun is setting. Again, I wash up straight after dinner, otherwise the clanking of dishes in the sink all night would drive us mad. 

I then have a quick, refreshing shower - plenty of hot water now, having run the water-maker for an hour earlier on - say goodnight to Nev and into bed by 7pm. 

At 10pm, I'm woken again for the 1st of my night watches. We're rolling a fair bit, so I guess the wind must have died down some more.  I jam myself into a secure position to put my contact lenses in.  When I go up into the cockpit, it's another lovely night, the stars are out, and the wind is steady.  

I read a book, make the odd minor course correction to cater for wind shifts as cloud systems go by, make a jam butty then do some sit-ups to counteract the effect of said butty.   When Neville comes up at 1am to take over, I am more than ready to go to bed and get my 3 hours sleep before the start of another day.

12 April 2014   Galapagos to Marquesas (Day 17)
It was a really lovely day; the wind dropped to 15 knots and backed 10 degrees, so that we were going more downwind.  The lower wind had made the seas calmer and we rolled less.  The GRIB files that I downloaded this morning indicate that these conditions should continue for the next week, with the wind possibly dropping a little bit further.

At midday, we'd done 2,280 miles with 760 miles to go, so if we keep up this rate, we'll be arriving on Thursday, 17th - only 5 sleeps to go.  

I'm not 100% certain, but I think that the 18th is Good Friday followed by Easter weekend.  If that's the case, we'll probably not be able to clear in at Atuona on Hiva Oa until Tuesday, 22nd April, which would be at least five days of hanging around in an anchorage renowned for being very rolly and crowded - we were only planning on staying there a couple of nights.

So Glenys and I have come up with three options (in order of preference)

1.Call in at The Bay of Virgins on Fatu Hiva - which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful anchorages in the world. However, we risk getting kicked out or even fined $200.  (We could try arguing that there's no point in going to Hiva Oa because we can't clear in.)

2.Go to Hanamoenoa on the small island of Tahuata, which is an isolated anchorage about 10 miles past Atuona and is reported to be lovely and calm.  We'd then have to come 10 miles back up-wind to clear in at Atuona.

3.Go to Atuona on Hiva Oa and probably be forced to wait five days in a rolly anchorage to clear in.

We obviously need to confirm that next weekend is Easter, so I sent our son Craig an email asking him.  I also raised the issue on the SSB net this morning and Dave on "Baraka" is going to email his clearance agent in Hiva Oa to ask if the authorities will be closed for a long weekend.  We've got a couple of days to make our minds up where to make our landfall - even in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, we have to worry about bureaucracy.

The afternoon was a chilled out affair, I had a couple of hours kip as usual and then sat at the chart table, editing photographs and creating the pages for our web site, so that I can easily publish them the next time that we have an internet connection.  

We had a huge moon for most of the night and the skies were clear, so it was beautiful sliding along at 5 knots in the six foot seas, with the bright moonlight glinting on the waves.  The boat was still rolling every five seconds, but there weren't so many rogue waves, so to us it seemed relatively calm.

13 April 2014   Galapagos to Marquesas (Day 18)
I seem to have a very busy routine in the mornings.  I was up just after seven o'clock to find that our boat speed was well below five knots, so the first job was to roll away the stay sail and pull out the main.  Glenys served up breakfast, then I went down to my laptop on the chart table, finished off yesterday's blog and sent an email to post it to our Passage Blog.  I also sent an email to Karsten, our weather router, and a request for a GRIB file. 

After waiting for a couple of minutes, I reconnected to the email server and downloaded the GRIB file.  The weather looks to be consistent for the next 5 days, with winds from the ESE at 10-15 knots.  

I went for a stroll around the deck, checking for any signs of chafe or damage.  Today was good - all I had to do was to tighten the ropes lashing the dinghy onto the foredeck because it's deflated a little.  On the way around the deck, I threw six Flying Fish over board.

At ten o'clock, I tuned into our small SSB net and chatted to some of the other boats, then plotting their positions. 

Having done all of my chores, I spent the rest of the morning at the chart table, continuing to work on photographs and web pages.  Occasionally, I climbed into the cockpit to have a quick look around, checked the wind direction, checked our course over the ground and went back down below.  Thank God for autopilots.

I received some more information about the Easter weekend and Fatu Hiva.  Dave from "Baraka" received a reply from his agent in Hiva Oa, who says that the gendarmerie is open on Friday, Saturday and Monday over the Easter weekend, so we should be able to clear in there, but I don't believe it.   I also received an email from our friends on "Vanupied", who have just visited Fatu Hiva and had no problems.  So, we've decided to make our landfall at Fatu Hiva, stay for 3 or 4 days and then go to Hiva Oa to clear in.

The afternoon was very peaceful, sailing at 5-6 knots in relatively calm seas.  Glenys even felt motivated enough to get the sewing machine out and made a Marquesan courtesy flag.

The weather has been very consistent today, so we didn't bother to reef for the night, but carried on with the full main and genoa goose-winged out.  Once again we had a full moon, which makes the night watches so much more pleasant.  It was another lovely night - long may they continue.

14 April 2014   Galapagos to Marquesas (Day 19)
Last night, I noticed that our batteries were getting low on charge, so I turned off the beer fridge and my laptop (which has been permanently running for 18 days).  We're obviously using more power than we're generating at the moment, mostly because the wind has dropped off and we're not getting a lot of charge from the wind generator.

So, to give the batteries a boost, I ran the engine for an hour this morning - it hasn't been run for two weeks, so it was good to run it.   Later on in the afternoon, we also ran the generator for an hour and made some water, so hopefully, we've put enough back in the batteries for the solar panels to keep them topped up.

Since I caught the Shortbill Spearfish a few days ago, we've not had much luck with fishing, so I made some new lures from different coloured rubber squid.  I've been using red/white and green/yellow for the past couple of days with not a single bite, so I swapped to dark blue and fluorescent green this morning.  Just after lunch,  got a strike on the blue lure on my rod, the line screamed out, but in my panic, I put too much drag on too quickly and lost the fish - what ever it was, it felt bigger than the Spearfish.  

Then, while I was having my afternoon nap, Glenys heard the rattle of the hand line, but before she could get up to look, the fish snapped the 3 mm nylon braided cord!  The line parted at a knot that I'd put in the line (knots reduce the strength of rope), but even so, it took a lot of force to break it.  Goodness knows what it was, but it was very big.  The worst thing about the line snapping was that, as well as losing a lure, some behemoth of the deep is now dragging around my beloved Birds.

There's something weird happening to our autopilot. Over the past week, it has suddenly changed course three times causing sails to back.  It happened again this afternoon, so I switched the autopilot off and then back on to reset everything.  I then noticed that the giro compass reading was 20-30 degrees different to the magnetic compass.  

A couple of hours later, the autopilot decided to turn 20 degrees to starboard and we found that the giro has corrected itself.  I guess that it needs to be recalibrated, but we'll need to do that in calmer water because we need to motor round in large slow 360 degree circles.

It was a lovely night, sailing smoothly along at 5-6 knots in calm seas with a huge bright moon.  To make things even better, we were privileged to witness a full eclipse of the moon.  The shadow of the earth started to nibble away the bottom edge of the moon at around ten o'clock.  A couple of hours later, the moon was totally eclipsed and had turned a spooky red - I believe that they call this a blood moon.  The moon then slowly emerged from the earth's shadow and the rest of the night was brightly lit by the full moon once again.  Amazing.

The weather has been so good for the last few days that I've spent my night watches jammed into a corner of the cockpit working on another little project, which is learning how to hack into a wireless network.  I've set up a kind of test lab with two laptops connected to our wireless router.  With this setup, I'm able to recreate the various security protocols that are set up on wireless routers and I'm trying to learn how to break their security.

Sounds like a weird thing to be doing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but hopefully, it will enable me to "borrow" a little internet time on wireless routers that I find in the anchorages ahead.  I don't think that there are many Pay-As-You-Go internet hotspots in the South Pacific Islands.

I'm finding it fascinating, but for some reason Glenys' eyes glaze over when I start enthusing about the differences in the encryption algorithms between WEP and WPA.  

As dawn approached, the wind veered 10-15 degrees, so I had to do a bit of work and gybe the genoa to the starboard side - we're now on a pleasant broad reach.