Bound for the Cook Islands

Nakesa
Wed 19 Sep 2012 19:40
18 17S 157 29W
 
Bound for the Cook Islands....

at last sun...and the sea is reducing, we only have 20 knots of wind now and we are making between 8 and 10 knots towards Aitutaki Atoll in the Cook Islands with 136 miles to go..

 

I have just spent a pleasant half an hour in the cockpit and I thought that I would share a little about life at sea aboard 'Nakesa', with any of you interested. I promise to get back to the narrative of what happened after  Tahiti soon, but from the sat phone I cannot post pictures and so that may have to wait a few days!!!

Firstly you wouldnt believe the difference between 20 knots (F5) of wnd and 30 knots (F7), okay obviously stronger, but that 10 knot difference turns a pleasant calm fast sail into a screaming ordeal..outside at least. Every jolt and the strain on everything feels 10 times greater.

For our first 24 hours of this trip we had 30 to 35 knots consistently from our quarter. This is very fast but uncomfortable, 'Nakesa' will be doing a consistent 9 .5 knots but will be subject to big seas. Every hour or so she will fall off one of the waves which were about 5m on the first night.This can often be at great speed (20.5 knots max last night) and whilst the boat can easily take the loads, the equipment cannot. We have lost lifebouys, EPIRBS, a canoe and almost everything else at this speed over the past three years, even stainless steel brackets just bend under the load. The rails are loooking pretty clear now and you can understand why you often see performance boats with safety equipment mounted on the inside of the rail and pushpit. This is a far cry from some cruising boats that accumulate 'spares', fuel cans, and an assortment of other jumble around their rails..and end up looking like a floating DIY shop....at our speeds these just would not survive and would certainly rip off the stanchions etc.

When there is a partial knockdown the force of the water creates high pressure spurts around the hatches which can seriously inconvenience life below and even getting into your  port and stilton..(red wine and camambert at present)!

The other lesson I had to learn as a skipper coming from 30-40ft cruising boats to a 60ft Swan was the management of power. 'Nakesa' is so well designed she can reach maximum hull speed in almost any wind. With full sail in a flat sea with 10 knots of true wind on a beam reach she would be sailing  9.5knots, her maximum hull speed. The oscillations in speed really only comes from the sea state and so sail only needs to be kept on to power through the waves...however 'Nakesa' is well ballasted and so she can also carry full sail in 30 knots and to someone new to her she will not feel overpowered. After 3 years I now can feel the telltale signs of the over powering, just a second more to re right after a slight heel or the perceived strain on the autopilot to re correct a corkscrew. Smaller lighter boats would be laid flat  

I have found therefor that I can reef very early and so for example last night we were making the same speed with approx 40% of sail area,. The motion is greatly eased, as is my anxiety about breaking something. We are also lucky that reefing is so easy. The in mast furling with a fully battened main has been fantastic, especially for me who manages the sailing of the boat single handed....I would now recommend them to anyone for any boat.

The interesting thing is that the catamaran owners are much more worried generallly about weather and particularly wave height and frequency. eiThe cabin beng higher and more aware of weather plus the motion and noise of a catamaran in bigger seas tend to make these passages more difficult and uncomfortable for them. They make up for it though when sitting around the huge cockpit with cocktails when they get in!

On an old fashioned racing boat like ours, the cabin is very deep and so whilst we sacrifice the panoramic views others have in the harbour (if they were to take their sunscreens off) we benefit greatly when at sea as closing the hatch and descending into the cabin one enterts a different world. On our boat there is almost total silence down below under way (I have one creak from a rubbing door) and very little sense of motion save for a jolt every haplf hour or so in very rough weather. This means the family can exist quite normally, watching movies, eating dinner etc

 

We keep watches by checkig out side every 15 minutes but otherwise mostly stay below at night or if it is rough. WE also keep a radar watch which is great for ships, although wave clutter makes close contacts hard to identify however offshore one would get warning of their proximity before this as we generally keep the range on 12 miles. Our next piece of equipment will be an AIS to identify ships from their transponder, this is the only piece of equipment I regret not having, but generally we have found most boats have too much electronic equipment adding too much complication and power consumption. The watches are generally arranged at night to be 3 hours, with Phaedra taking one and we are now introducing the children taking one together on their own.

On a long passage the first day is often the hardest..our crew, the family all get very sick and spend the first 24 hours in bed making it tiring for me, however the second day is always much better with Aston almost losing all sickness, Atlanta is rarely sick but poor Phaedra suffers for the whole time keeping it at bay with drugs. It is tough to see evrybody so ill and I feel very guilty for putting them in the situation. I pay my penance in watches, sick bowl cleaning and cooking though!!!

Weather is another big consideration. We are having an interesting situation at present where the sea is 0.5 degree C warmer than normal, so possible a El Nino year causing abnormal weather patterns. For us this is meaning that the convergence zone (where SE winds from the southern latitudes meet NE winds from the Equator) is volatile. This is causing fronts and systems giving us currently squalls rain and patches of strong wind and calm. A lot of people are calling these depressions, as we are experiencing the top of winds rotating antclockwise around a system to the south of us but as we are in the southrn hemisphere these are mostly areas of high pressure. There are however some big lows around New Zealand creating chaos which has a knock on effect.

On passage we get our weather dauily vias grib files through the sat phone so I can make course decisions on this. Much better than seafarers in the past who had no information once they set off. We have also hnoticed a rather amusing difference between sailors from say UK, Scandinavia, Canada etc who are used to rougher, perhaps more unpredictable weather, who tend to be more instinctive about the weather for leaving than some other  Nationalities who tend to attenmpt to get very scientific about it (and then get suprised).

Catamarn owners also tend to be far more cautious about leaving quite understandably from a comfort if not a safety level.

Lastly one personal thing for us is that we have given up sailing downwind anymore. This is mostly for comfort and ease but also after a short trigonometry lesson with Atklanta where we calculated that for our boat it is almost always quicker to sail at 140 degrees off and to jibe. the motion is also much better and you dont need to worry aboiut poles or spinnakers (which is good as we dont have either at the moment!!). This has been a revalation and i would urge anyone too try this..I never even have to trim anymore I just set up and adjust course!!! Possibly not the way to win races but cruising I believe it is the answer!

Okay this sounds a bit boring , sorrty but it is the stuff I would be interested in if I had not done this so may interest one or two of you!!

Right, I'm off, I need to set a 'preventer' on boom now as wind is dropping and it tends to slam, stream a fishing line, make coffee and settle down to more episodes of Fawlty Towers (which are oddly comforting  and familiar at sea)..best wishes to you all!

 

Cheers

 

Graham,

aboard Nakesa, Cook Islands, South Pacific