Wey Hey, Half Way! 1st of May
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Mon 1 May 2017 20:09
Only 1400 miles to go now. It is remarkable how the time passes with our relatively limited daily routine. There are moments when the journey seems a bit interminable but for the most part we zoom along and there is a palpable sense of progress.
There are several boats doing this seasonal crossing. Four are ahead and a couple have just left the Galapagos. We keep in touch by email with a daily position update and report. The family on the Catamaran Jadean reported hanging on like lobsters in some particularly uncomfortable sea conditions and so we mark their daily position with a lobster symbol. Nautilus is a submarine of course. One guy on a yacht up ahead went swimming with dolphins yesterday while another has lost all its electronics in an electrical storm - fortunately much closer to the Marquesas and his sat phone is still working.
On 28th and 29th the wind dropped and we made much slower progress - 98 and 96 miles respectively. Although we prefer less hurly burly, drifting along at 2.5 knots is not quite what we have in mind. Paul Hiney in his blog noted that he sustains more wear and tear in light airs than in heavy weather. I was reminded of this the other night when the sails were flogging to and fro with every passing wave. Fortunately the wind has picked up again and we are now getting up to 20kts and our boatspeed is up to seven knots. We are sailing with reefed main and genoa in the easterly wind. Unfortunately due east is also the course we would like to steer as we are now at the level of the Marquesas. Our options for doing this are to pole out the genoa on the port side with the mainsail on starboard, drop the mainsail and run under just the genoa, or put up the cruising chute. We have discovered that if you keep the luff of the chute taut the sail will remain stable even on a run. The trouble is it a big sail and quite a handful for us to raise and lower and we certainly would not want to be doing this in 20kts wind - particularly as to go downwind it sets much better without the mainsail to disrupt the wind. This means no mainsail to shelter the chute behind when lowering it. The easiest option would be to lower the main and run under just the genoa but with the loss of a knot or so of speed.
On previous legs we have run nicely downwind under poled out genoa and reefed mainsail. Once set up it is quite stable and you can still furl the genoa if the wind really gets up. However, the easiest sailplan to manage is a single headsail and again we miss our old, larger genoa for all this downwind sailing. You can get asymmetric sails (i.e. cruising chute) that have their own roller furling arrangement and I am tempted to look at this option but it would have to be cheaper than the Parasail alternative. Of course in days gone by you would have had a selection of different sized spinnakers but most cruisers now would not want the complexity of this pole and sail combination. The more you can do from the cockpit the better!
And finally some brilliant news! Yesterday we stripped down the watermaker and replaced two valves, either of which could have been the problem. At the same time we discovered that the nut holding the piston on the piston rod was completely loose. So, having tightened the nut we put the whole thing back together again and behold, not only are we producing water again but the loud mechanical knock we used to get with every cycle of the piston has gone; we just have the reassuring whir of the motor and the gentle trickle of fresh water into the collection bottle. I must prime the boats ahead that the smell of almond oil they are about to receive on the breeze is not the scented spices of the Marquesas but perfumed shower gel from Vega!
