2007-06-16

A few days ago, as I was bailing out the float hull, it crossed my mind that
we could sell the spinnaker in Fiji and get something more useful. Light air
sails didn't seem relevant. We've made literally thousands of miles under
the big red and black nylon, but it IS work to set up and stow, and I
couldn't imagine doing more than the minimum to keep the boat going. We
were SO tired. By late this morning the nice breeze we'd had all night was
easing. Boat speed had slowly dropped to around 3 knots from the high of
over 8 last night. This could mean landfall Wednesday rather than Tuesday.
I'd slept well. The spinnaker seemed possible. It took about a half hour
of leisurely setup to fasten and reeve the four turning blocks, the guys,
the sheets, and the halyard, and clear the sock control line. It's been at
least 3 years since I did this, so I reviewed it all. Finally I had Karen
take over the cockpit and I hoisted and set the sail. It took another 10
minutes to remember how to read the shape and adjust it with the strings.
So now we're coasting along over a smooth 3 foot swell at about 6 knots.
Downwind in light air we have nothing that compares. Just like the trip
from the Galapagos to the Marquesas, except we won't be leaving the 'chute
up in the dark. It's tempting, but you can get in a lot of trouble with
that much cloth if a squall sneaks up unseen. So we'll take the extra 30
miles a day we can get while the sun's up. We're about 300 miles out of
SavuSavu now. If Neptune smiles we can do that in 2 days. Right now the
forecast looks good.
The contact with the Seafarers Net had a little excitement yesterday. I
was in the bunk, Karen was set to do the readout, and was listening to the
warmup. She heard a station trying to call in that was too light for the
net control to hear, so she did a relay of his call sign. Just as she
called it out to the control she realized it was K8DON, Don Lebo, from
Canton Ohio, who ran the Good Old Boys net and followed us all the way from
Florida to Opua in 2001. He talked to us every single day of that year long
trip with is big beam antenna, and provided us with a radio phone patch to
call home on Mother's Day from right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Don's a great friend, and even though radio conditions didn't allow for much
of a conversation yesterday, it was just fantastic to hear his voice.
I mentioned that one of the last purchases in Opua a couple weeks ago was
a little gasoline powered generator. Well, it's been worth far more than we
paid for it. Since we got into these downwind conditions there's not enough
wind speed over the deck to run the wind generator. And for half the day
the mainsail has been shading the solar panels. And for two days, cloud
cover has kept output to a minimum. Without the gen set, we'd have been out
of radio contact by now with low batteries. As it is, I tuck it in behind
the canoe on the side deck, string some wire down the hatch to the charger,
and fire it up. A liter of fuel provides a day's worth of electricity. The
Chinese figured out, unlike Briggs and Stratton, that people don't much like
noise. The little set is about half taken up by muffler, so it just makes a
mild buzz when it runs. Until I find a better way to back up the system,
I'll be taking good care of it. Things do look better today for charging.
Another plus of the spinnaker....we can drop the mainsail and have full sun
on the panels. 5 amps coming in....more than I've see from them since we
left these latitudes.
Time to wrap this up and see if the Firefly, Australia sailmail station
is awake. Position now is 22 deg 08 minutes S 178 deg 36 min E.
Greetings from the middle of nowhere. T&K
We got word that Roddy, A Salthouse boatbuilder for 30+ years, a good man
and a good friend, succumbed to cancer this week. Peace be with you Rod.
Our thoughts are with Viv.