St. Helena to the Caribbean - Day 12
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 24 Jan 2013 12:34
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00:24.867N 31:52.821W
January 24, 2013
They are not playing well together.
Nope, the northern and southern hemisphere weather systems do
not enjoy each other's company. Too bad, because it puts us right in the
middle of a giant rain storm. There is no thunder and lightning, and the
wind has only gone up briefly as high as 30 knots, so it's not really
a storm per se, but the giant blob of rain on the radar says we'll be in this
for a while. Don is excited though because the rain brought the
northeast wind with it. We'll see if it sticks around longer than the east
wind that came with yesterday's rain...
Just as the blog went out yesterday, the wind turned
east, and spiked up to 25 knots bringing lots of rain. We
thought, 'Aha! This is it! The east wind we've been waiting
for.' So we went through the pain and suffering of dismantling the
downwind rig in the pouring rain. It took about an hour, and would
have gone perfectly except that the rain (and bit of wind) made
it difficult to get the big blue ballooner sail down. The process
we've found works best is to collapse the ballooner onto the genoa by turning
the boat to starboard and into the wind until the ballooner is backwinded,
then loosening the sheet until the ballooner lays flat against the
genoa. This way when we release the top of the ballooner, the
sail should slide down the face of the genoa, and fall neatly onto the deck
(as opposed to in the water, which has happened before, and is
never pretty). All good in theory, but the rain and wind acted like
glue, keeping the ballooner up and pinned to the genoa no matter
how hard we tugged at it to get it to slide down the foil. By
the time the rain had soaked through our clothes and into our underwear, the
ballooner decided it was ready to come down. With a few mighty tugs from
Don, the soaking sail came down and was unceremoniously shoved into its
deck locker. There was no time to reminisce about how well our lovely
blue sail served us over the past eleven days, paired so perfectly with the
genoa, and allowing us to glide more than sail in front of the
southeast wind so nicely. No, there was no time for sentimentality, but I
do wonder if all the water running down Don's face as we
manhandled the sail onto the deck and into the locker was rain?
Of course, as soon as the sail was down, poles brought in and
downwind rigging stowed, the rain stopped and the wind shifted back to the
southeast.
Doesn't it figure? But that's always the way around the
equator where north meets south and the two do battle for dominance.
Anyway, at that point there was no way we were going to put the downwind rig
back up, so we broke down once again, and fired up the engine. After
motorsailing in light southeast wind through most of the night, the
northeast wind finally showed up in a blast of 30 knots at ten this
morning. We've been sailing ever since in a more moderate 15-20 knot
breeze from the northeast, with the rain at first pounding, then tapering off to
a steady drizzle (as it continues to do now). We are hoping this batch of
northeast wind hangs around, especially now that we are in the northern
hemisphere. Yup, that's right, we had an uneventful fourth equator
crossing last night just before midnight. I was on watch at the time, and
didn't even bother to look for the dotted blue line since we've decided it
doesn't really exist. We do have a few sacrifices we plan to toss to the
sea gods, but we're waiting for the weather to clear up a bit. Hopefully
they won't mind our tardiness.
And that's not all - later today, about seven hours from now,
we'll finally reach the half-way mark. Twelve days in and we're only
half-way! Holy moly.
Oh, and we gave up on the freezer. It's been cleared out
and is now resting peacefully. We'll be eating lots of meatloaf over the
next several days.
Half a passage nearly down, half a passage to go (1,875
miles).
Anne
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