11.56S 137.23W 9th August 2011
Mojo 2
Andrew Partington
Wed 10 Aug 2011 01:11
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Very close now. We are starting to celebrate
every small milestone as we close on the Tuamotus. Things like entering French
Territorial waters yesterday, realising that we could now motor to several
destinations if the need arose, and seeing the chartplotter click over another
50 miles, 100 miles... closer to our destination.
The long nights have been pretty tough but each day
the sun comes up and leaves us one less we have to do. Tonight we will pass the
halfway point to Tahiti from when our autopilot had a "hissy fit".
We now have a pretty good handle on keeping the
boat on track and are not wasting precious time and energy at the helm
station.
Rotten night last night and I think the worst
overnight sail since I left France [the Bay of Biscay would be a close second,
oh!! and the last night before Aruba wasn't all that special either]. Things
were great until around 8pm. We were still sailing with the genneker when Jane
noticed some darkness on the horizon to the south-east. We swapped to the genoa
and waited for the squall to pass over us. It lacked any real punch but in its
wake was a beautiful southerly wind blowing at 16 knots. We coasted along for
another half hour before noticing the whole southern sky was now dark and it was
creaping our way. We reduced sail futher and waited. The winds hit an early peak
of 24 knots and the backed away but we were delivered sleeting rain for some
time. Eventually the whole sky was dark as the rain continued. I stayed at or
around the helm station just keeping the boat sailing [curse you autopiolot] and
as a result became completely soaked, even through my wet weather
jacket. To add to insult to injury it was a cold southerly wind, with
just a hint of "penguin poop" in the air. I had the losing trifecta...cold,
wet AND miserable. To add to my woes I kept thinking that if I was back in
Albany I would have the doona up to my eyeballs as the rain pounded on the
roof. Still...thinking "glass half full" we did put some water in our
tank!!
After being in this system for a couple of hours
the wind suddenly died to dead calm. With misty rain still in the air it
felt like Jack Sparrow and the "Black Pearl" were going to appear out of the
darkness at any time. With no motors and no wind it was eerily quiet...so we
started the motors to get the hell out of whatever we were in!! Being a
bit dramatic??, sorry must be the tiredness catching
up!!
All of this started at midnight and was still going
when I had to give it away at 3am Jane continued under motor and sail for
another 3 hours when the daylight started to appear through the gloom. In total
this thing had us for about 6 hours and we wondered if we were going to be
doomed to sail about in it forever. Sorry... there I go again!!
I the cold light of day and well clear of this
system we could see it was basically a massive rain system that absorbed all of
the eastern sky behind us.
I'm feeling calm now.
In 24 hours we sailed a pathetic 120NM and are just
526NM from the Tuamotus.
Things looking a little better today for tomorrows
tally.
Andrew Partington.
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