In the mid Sea settling down and making good progress
Sowell Family's Travels on Gijima
Skipper: Tim Sowell Admiral Tracy Crew Sean & Alex
Mon 15 Feb 2010 22:48
about mid channel/sea. It's mid afternoon and family is asleep down stairs,
after a morning of games, and movies, they did well considering the
uncomfortable seas. In the last 20 miles the chop/ swell has increased in
period and the seas have mellowed out some what, we still get the odd hind
end swing, but with the mellow out has been the softening in wind we down to
less that 10 knots at 120 degrees off the starboard side, eg diagonal from
back to front. At least it is pushing us and we have all sails up, but the
motor is getting a good work out as well, we maintaining 7 to 7.5 knots and
that puts us 17 hours out from port. So it will be a mid morning arrival to
midday depending what happens this evening, but I suspect things will just
soften further.
At about 10 am this morning we spotted a small 32 (Omnar) foot sail boat off
the port horizon, we radioed them they are heading the same direction they
left La Paz mid afternoon, we caught them fairly quickly and then past them,
they were doing 4 knots to our 8.5 knots at that time, they have easily
another 2 days togo at that pace. Tracy was pleased to be on Gijima, and
wants to keep pedal to the floor.
The day has been nice sun out , odd cloud in the distance building to what
could be mountains but soon just turn into fluffy islands of white. As we
are going with the wind the temperature is in the 80s, and I have the
fishing lines out, now that sea is more manageable. We have been able to rig
the main with a preventer to stop sudden movements on the way down some
waves, reducing pressure on the "goose neck" (where the boom meets the
mast), initially I had the genoa out to 40% and it balanced us well, but as
the wind has dropped I have it out at a full 135%, but we loose wind on some
of waves as we surf them.
As I circle my head to scan the sea checking for ships and objects, it is
always a strange calming feeling when you see nothing except just sea. Yes
we are now well out of land range, and in many ways it is our sea as far as
we can see it, certainly I have seen the odd spout of mist, indicating a
whale, and we get the odd bird and odd seal sun baking on their backs. It is
funny how small we are and even with all the cruising boats about and I am
sure there are more than just 2 of us crossing today (as this is the first
weather window in a week) yet we are alone at peace. Gijima (the boat) is
riding well as usual, and my changes to auto pilot flux compass location (I
experimented on the run down to Los Muetros, and I made it a bit more
permenant and we have got through it driving well the first 70 miles, in
some difficult hind following seas and it stayed in control. This is a big
relief (I am not saying it is solved but it is looking promising) as really
Auto is the third man on this boat really doing a lot of the work, and we
need that confidence in him, and the last couple weeks that confidence has
seen some cracks, but this passage will help rebuild.
Stay tuned for the next update on night shift.