November 8, 2007

Potholes in the Maritime Highway
Louise informs me that her search of Google St. for Tarawa resulted in the message that they had no driving route on record from Funafuti to Tarawa. I can see why. At 11:00 yesterday morning Karen woke me to say we'd soon need to reef the sails. We got right to it, but didn't get it done before the squall line she'd seen was on us. No sooner was the mainsail reefed than the wind struck with a vengeance, and we had to battle to furl part of the jib. That done (but with the port jib sheet tied in 8 overhand knots by the flogging) I crawled back to drop the main entirely as the wind topped 40 knots. Main down, I returned to finish furling up all the jib, as wind topped 50. We made a quick call to just raise the centerboard, tie off the tiller, and let her sit to the wind and drift. Lying ahull is safe and easy for a short duration blow like that, and we expected it to blow out in 30 minutes. 3 hours later, and 7 miles back from where we dropped sail, the wind came down to under 30 knots, and we put up a little sail to start moving the right way again. Sort of. The wind was directly on the nose, so we had to tack out to the east. The sea was now up to a confused 12 feet, and we kept falling in the holes, needing to have a fierce grip on something all the time to even sit in one spot. All day and into the night we tacked slowly upwind, in continuous rain. After nightfall it was as close to perfectly black as I've ever seen. The wind then took to rising and falling, up to near 30, down to maybe 10 knots. With 10 knots boat speed fell so that wave turbulence over the rudder was greater than the flow of motion, as our speed dropped to 1 knot. The autopilot couldn't maintain a course, and I feared to add more sail. So at 10:00 PM I started the motor and let it run at fast idle, pushing enough water past the rudder to let it steer in the lulls. That worked until 4:00 AM, when the breeze steadied at 25 knots and I could go back to pure sailing. An hour later the dawn gave me a little lift, and at 6:00 the wind backed to the east, so I could go back to only the staysail and hold the desired course at about 4 knots. And that's how it still is. I expected to be able to add some sail by 8:00 or so, but the sea remains a bit too horrible. We get the occasional wave crest in the cockpit, or on the cabin top, but at this speed it doesn't crash as if it will break the boat in half. So we battle on. The sky is mostly bright blue now, with big puffy clouds. Looks lovely, but the surface is so rough we just can't face going any faster. The forecast is for the wind to settle into the east at 15 knots, so the sea should smooth out eventually. We'll believe it when we see it. Time for me to relieve Karen in the cockpit/shower stall. We'll send more news from the paradise of the South Pacific later. Ted