September 4, 2008

Anchor down in Ailuk
Almost exactly 49 hours after we dropped the mooring lines in Majuro, we set the anchor in Ailuk. We intentionally held the speed down for the whole trip, in order to have daylight every time we had to pass close to an atoll. We saw Aur, Maloelap and Wotje as we skirted them. A side advantage was that at 5 knots the boat didn't throw a lot of water around, and we stayed dry in the cockpit. It made the sailing work pretty light, too, since we never raised the mainsail until we were approaching the reef pass here. The staysail and half furled jib were the drive almost the whole way. I guess we burned about a half a liter of fuel motoring through the pass here, as it's dead to windward, and pretty narrow. The water seems to be extraordinarily rough for the wind speed along the whole Marshalls chain, and we had the experience last night of passing over a seamount that got our attention. I woke up from my off watch hearing the hiss and gurgle of the boat surfing and sliding on big, steep waves, and Karen was at the nav station looking at the chart. She'd noticed it suddenly got a lot rougher, with no increase in wind, so came in for a look. The sea floor there rises from 4400 meters to 2400, and deflects a deep current up to the surface. In less than an hour we sailed off the rise area, and it settled back down to a more "normal" lurching and crashing.
It took a couple of approaches to find the pass, which reminded me of how hard it must have been to find the way in before people had good charts and electronics. Sailing down the lagoon required some care as there are a few "bommies" that rise precipitously from the floor depth of 140 feet to just below the surface. We missed them all, and then had the pleasure of using for the first time the windlass for the anchor chain. I bought the windlass in Fiji, but it arrived too late for installation before we left for Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Majuro. In Majuro, I haven't desperately needed it, and have spent days considering the best way to mount it. The boat is not well suited to a standard installation, and I bought this particular type of windlass hoping it would fit where Tim and I had mounted the electric anchor winch during the big push to leave NZ. After considering 3 other options, I reverted to that original plan, unbolted the winch, and found that with a 10 minute modification and addition of a deflector roller, it went right in. Of course, the test comes when we pick the anchor back up, but it sure looks good so far.
I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, so the bed calls. Tomorrow we'll go exploring, and will write more soon. Ted