06:11:41S 122:51:80W
The Adventures of Sunboy the Sailboat
Al Sparkes and Deb Swain
Thu 3 Jun 2010 17:20
Distance at end of day 11: 191 miles, 1040 to go to Nuka Hiva
Conditions: Wind has eased a tad, now blowing 15-18 knots constant from the ESE
Seas are still pretty sloppy and occasional hooley dooley swells
Mainly clear skies and warm, warm, warm.
Crew fit and well.
Well happy to report after our first 24 hours of not being push button sailers all is well on board Sunboy. The watch system suggested by Nikki is working very well with the only modification is that instead of doing 1.5 hours on the helm, we have reduced it to 1 hour at a time which seems to go past very quickly. I think the reality of having to hand steet now, the passage seems to be actually going much quicker over all. No sooner have you finished your shared 6 hour watch, had some sleep and then you are back into it again.
I am so proud of the rest of the crew, I thought when arthur the auto pilot decided to die that there could have been a few problems to deal with but their positive attitude has been incredible and now that the first 24 hours as passed I think everyone realises that if we can maintain these conditions, it really wont be that mucn of an inconvience. I know a lot of boats have had auto pilot problems and a lot of boats are only two up to share the whole passage and that would be very, very hard going. We are very lucky that we have 4 people who can helm in these sorts of conditions so that shares the load a whole long way.
We get our weather forecasts from a software program called UGRIB. We can go to any part of the world that we want, select an area and get forecasts for wind strength, rain and pressure gradients for periods of 1 day, 3 days, 5 days and 7 days. We then use our sat phone to connect this program to the internet and then download the file. We then open the file using the same program and we can then scroll through in 3 hour increments to see what the weather will be doing ahead of us. We tend to use 3 day periods as that tends to be pretty accurate and what we have been seeing suits us really well, just hope that continues. It is a free program to download off the net and one I recommend you get and have a bit of a play with.
I was really happy with the fact that we covered 191 miles for the 24 hour period to 8.00am (local time) this morning especially considering we reduced sail a bit to allow people to get used to being on the helm for extended periods and also the wind was reasonably strong. We completely furled the headsail for Debs and Luke on the midnight to dawn watch as that is the one where concentration can really be tested but they did a great job, logging over 40 miles for the 6 hour period. This morning we have gone back to a full headsail and are hoping to keep the miles flowing by and all being well, we should crack the 1000 miles to go mark by Deb and Lukes afternoon watch.
Just makes you realise how isolated you are out here when something goes wrong. Of course the natural reaction is to get on the phone when you have an electrical problem and call Blackie and good old Blackie is generally there that same morning solving all your problems for us. Unfortunately, our nearest good old blackie is probably in Tahiti, about 2000 miles away. I did a copy cat of the work the technician who fixed the auto pilot in Panama did but all to no avail so we hope there will be a Simrad Tech in Tahiti to help us out.
So apart from that guys, not much new news to tell this morning, still no other boats have been sighted visually or on radar, been fantastic to get emails from you and hear how you are, we love getting any news at all so if you can spare a moment, drop us a line. We did send an email to Karen and Brian Knight but I obviously had their address wrong so if you would be kind enough to speak to them and let them know the blog address, we would really appreciate that. It is just a bugger that I dont have my normal contact list set up on this email account so my ability to send emails to anyone is very limited. Will try and fix that when we get into some more normal internet range.
Love to all, till next we blog......................