May 9, 2009

Easy Riders
Things change. About half the time, that's a good thing. Such was the case this morning.
Yesterday was a bit of a trial. With not a breath of breeze, we had to decide how long we were willing to burn our limited fuel supply to go in search of wind. We could make a bit of progress each time a rain squall brought some air with the water, but it was sketchy, and annoying. As each squall dissipated, it left behind a mile or two of choppy, disturbed water. The boat would pitch and roll on this uneven surface, and with little or no breeze to hold shape in the sails, the slatting of dacron against stays, the rattle of slides and hanks, the creaking of fittings and lines would make us crazy. This is partly because I can almost see things chafe and deteriorate as they snatch and rub and strain. We have a long way to go yet, and the gear is hard to repair or replace out here. We spent a lot of time running at idle, moving slowly, but getting the most distance possible from each liter of fuel. The Suzuki is a good motor, with a much easier-to-live-with sound than the old 2 strokes produced, but compared to the swish and hiss of sailing, it's still intrusive.
After hours of puttering along, I shut the motor down to check things over and refuel the tank. A visual check of the tank showed me 50 cc of water rolling around in the bottom. If that made it to the pickup tube, it was at best going to foul the filters. I started transferring fuel to a shallow pan, sucking the settled water out with a syringe, then returning clear fuel to the tank. Then I checked the two small storage cans of gas. Between them, they had almost a liter of water. We spent an hour cleaning up fuel, and about 6 PM, confident that we wouldn't end up with a carburetor full of water, we fired up and headed south again. I slept until 10:30, then got up and sent Karen to bed. At 11:30 I started feeling little whisps of breeze. At midnight I set the jib. By 1:00 AM I shut off the motor, and we were sailing at 3 knots, with staysl and jib winged out, the wind directly behind us. The moon was full, the sky clear. There was so much light, I was tempted to put up the spinnaker, but that wouldn't have been prudent. So I got out the sheets and blocks for it, set things up, and let it go until morning. Karen took over at 4:00, but got me up at 6:00 so we could get that big, light nylon sail in the air. With a few adjustments through the day, we've held over 3 knots since then, with little attention to the motive power. What a nice respite from yesterday, and good to be moving toward the (usually) more reliable winds south of 10 degrees latitude. Present position (at 6:00 PM Saturday, local time) 3 deg 45 min S, 172 deg 13 min E. We'll probably leave the spinnaker up into the evening, with the weather this stable. Ted