10.16S 130.58W 6th August 2011 Day 18 Pacific Crossing
Mojo 2
Andrew Partington
Sun 7 Aug 2011 01:02
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Still pretty hard going out here and not helped by
the weather which has been making our life a little harder without an
autopilot.
Overnight we had a tough sail in strong 23-24 knot
winds, with gusts up to 27 knots. Once again the wind and seas were following so
it made things far more tolerable.
Jane had her first taste of a storm squall last
night. It came over us at about 1.00am when she was on watch. She did not see it
coming from behind us until we were hit with 30 knot winds and rain. Thankfully
it did not last too long but following it were a procession of these nasty
little systems that kept us on our toes all night and well into the morning. It
did not help that it was pitch black last night after we lost the use of the
moon at around 11.00pm.
The seas were okay overnight but by morning we were
seeing a very large swell coming through. All night we used only the reefed down
genoa so our lack of boat speed prevented us from surfing down these swells.
The storm systems persisted until around 10.00am
and then the clouds cleared and we were left with clear skies for most of the
day.
It is close to 5.00pm now and the wind still has a
fair amount of east in it and is still blowing at 18 knots, as it has been for
hours now. We are back to the full genoa but have resisted using the mainsail
given our average 6 knots boat speed today and the still heavy
swell.
Over 24 hours we have sailed another 129NM and are
919NM from our waypoint and sighting land again!
We are both still doing fine but our days are now
totally dedicated to making sure we are prepared physically for each overnight
sail. Our routine has become very much more sleep, eat, watch and now steer as
well.
We looking forward to a cold beer at a quiet bar in
Papeete in a little over a week.
Andrew Partington.
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