09.43S 128.52W 5th August 2011
Mojo 2
Andrew Partington
Sat 6 Aug 2011 01:16
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Tonight we will close to within 1000NM to our
waypoint off Takaroa in the Tuamotu Archipeligo and given the tough past 24
hours we have had it will be most welcome.
Yesterday afternoon we lost our best freind and
autopilot Mr Furuno. This is the system that allows us to have a very normal
life during the crossing by steering the boat for us. We switched the system off
yesterday to hoist the mainsail and the autopilot failed to work afterwards. We
spent much of the time in the afternoon trying to remedy the situation but
despite advice from a Furuno technician we still could not get it to go. As a
result we are now steering the boat ourselves. You would think this is not so
big a deal but there are two of us on the boat having to share 12 hours each of
steering, night and day. I guess we should be grateful that it did not happen
1000 miles earlier and after all the boat does have a steering wheel!!
Nobody said crossing an ocean was an easy thing to do and it could always
have been worse.
We have covered another 134NM overnight and given
we were steering by hand it is probably not a bad effort.
Yesterday afternoon we tried to sail downwind with
the mainsail but with steering the boat in a large swell there is
always a very good chance that the mainsail will gybe. We pulled it down in
favour of just the genoa and life became easier immediately.
The conditions were not really assisting us with
overnight winds at 23 knots and gusting over 25. Once again we were thankful to
have the wind and swell at our backs.
Over the course of today things have moderated. We
did have 12 knots for a period of time and then we had a wind shift more to the
south and 16 knots for a few hours. We took our chance to build some boat speed
during this period but we are back to an easterly now at 16 knots and are
sailing downwind with just the mainsail. Towards dusk we will probably change
this for the genoa again to make life a bit easier overnight.
Despite being a bit tired we are still both in good
spirits but very much looking to knock over the last 1000NM [plus the 200NM to
Tahiti] as soon as we can. We have both slept today in preparation for the long
night ahead.
It is 5.00pm and we are 1047NM from the waypoint
and making 5-6 knots downwind.
Andrew Partington.
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