October 3, 2009

Sea Anchor Saga
About that sea anchor; I'd always doubted we'd get into NZ without catching a blow, but we got even more than I'd bargained for. The forecast when we left Noumea had us expecting a day of 25 to 30 knot tailwinds, That was too optimistic. When the wind exceeded forty knots, with gusts over 50, it became too exhausting and unsafe to continue sailing. We were glad I had the sea anchor rigged before we left our port of departure. As usual, it wasn't as ready as hoped; I had it rigged to deploy from port side, but fate put us on a stbd tack when we needed it, so I had to move it to the other side deck, around the headstay, before we launched it. My comment to Karen just before I dunked the chute was "it will be a miracle if this works right". But it did. Careful daisychaining and flaking of the shrouds, rode, bridle and tripline paid off. The rode ran out clean and chute took up with authority.
I did, however, have to repair both sides of the bridle during the next 40 hours. The port side of the bridle somehow managed to pop the snatch block open and jump out. It happened a couple hours after dark. I heard the bridle line snap against the hull, then heard the creak of the line dragging across the stem, so went to look. I decided it wouldn't last like that, so I devised a system to rig another snatch block to a long line, led back to a winch at the cockpit. I then clipped the sheave of the snatch block to the bridle line at the main bow. Next was a crawl out the port float to the tip, so I could feed the winch line through the original bridle snatch block. I got pretty wet, and evidently scared Karen. I'd waked her up to watch, because if I fell off the float, my harness would keep me with the boat, but I might need help to get back on board. No problem, though, and with all in place, we winched the replacement snatch block back out to the float tip. I decided not to trust the double blocked setup, though, so crawled back out to lash the working block to the bow.
The next morning I heard a loud bang, and took a look out the forward window to see the starboard bridle line now across the main stem, and its snatch block spinning around on it 3 meters forward of the boat. The block had worked OK, but the lashing for that side had broken. When I'd rigged it in Vanuatu, I'd used line that was old. Bad mistake. But, at least I knew a method that would work to repair it, and this time could do it in the daylight. I was getting a little low on snatch blocks, as I couldn't retrieve the one that had slid out the bridle line. We needed one to replace that one, and another for the winch line. I figured we wouldn't need the storm jib for a while, so pulled the pair from those sheets. I had to lash one to the stbd float tip, and rig the other to the bridle, then winch it out. All went OK, but maybe I was getting stupid with fatigue, as it took 3 tries to get the backup lashing for that side to hold. Still wasn't very pretty, but it held for the next 20 hours.
We were following the weather forecast by voice on the SSB radio by then, as well as via the onboard email, which was having reliability issues. It turns out that most of the Winlink system seems to have been shut down for a major upgrade, and an enormous eruption of sunspots was suppressing radio signals to the sailmail stations. Still, Dave from s/y Chameleon got word to us that the wind should reduce to 15 knots by the wee hours of Sunday morning, and we'd have about 24 to 30 hours before the next front arrived. That matched what George told us on the Seafarers Net. We got what rest we could, and I woke at 2:00 AM to find the wind well down and sea starting to moderate. There was a half moon, and I thought maybe we could get a jump on the weather window, so we started clearing the boat to get under way. We had reservations about recovering the sea anchor by moonlight, though, and weren't that upset when the moon set before we were ready.
We got another couple hours of sleep, now feeling more secure, and at dawn we proceeded to pick up the parachute. The wind was down enough to pose no problem at all, and the sea , though still running a 3 meter swell was smooth and regular. I started the motor, and had Karen take a compass heading toward the marker floats for the chute. We had set it with no additional line between the trip line and floats, so would have to be right next to the parachute before I could pick up the trip floats. As Karen very slowly motored up, I kept tension on the bridle, and then the main rode. Every time the boat slid into a wave trough, I could pick up a few meters of line, which I stuffed into a deck locker to assure that it wouldn't slip overboard and tangle in the propeller. When we were a couple of boat lengths from the floats, I stopped retrieving line, so the weight of the shroud swivel could drag the rope and unloaded parachute straight down, away from the prop. Picking up the trip floats was as easy as grabbing a mooring with the boathook, and as soon as I had the floats Karen took the motor out of gear. It took 30 seconds to haule the parachute out with the retrieving line, and bring the rest of the rode and shrouds up onto the forward net.
Karen proceeded to get us motoring in the right direction, and set the jib, while I rolled and repacked the parachute, and then spent a half hour daisychaining and re-flaking the rode and bridle. If the next front turned out to be the surprise this one had, we wanted to be ready. But we REALLY didn't want to put it out again. For half the day the wind remained too light to make much way without the motor, but by afternoon it had shifted to a broad reach, and increased to near 20 knots. We were sailing between 6 and 8 knots, with the sea only slowly building and quite smooth. It was a fast, easy, dry ride for a change. We cleared things up as best we could, to make boathandling easy, and had a couple of good meals through the afternoon and evening.
Morning brought the beginnings of the next front, with rain showers and higher gusts of wind. We started seeing the most prominent features of the coast of NZ as we approached the Bay of Islands, but would often lose sight of it entirely in rain squalls. As the wind built up parallel to the shoreline, the sea state deteriorated quickly, and once again the autopilot was working pretty hard. As we approached Ninepin Rock, at the mouth of the bay, Karen took over steering, and after a while I engaged the wind vane to give her some help as the stern slewed around on the wave faces. I made a VHF radio call to NZ Customs to notify of imminent arrival, and told them I'd not be able to answer radio calls until we arrived. We had our hands full, with navigation, visibility problems, and steering. Wind gusts were back up over 40 knots, and we had sail area down to a tiny scrap of jib rolled out, about half the size of the storm staysail. As rounded the entrance markers to the river mouth I started the motor and rolled up the last bit of sail. And then we moved in under the big hill ridge, and all the wind stopped. The water was flat, and we could easily see the mile down to the marina. Just like someone threw a switch, it was over. As we approached the quarantine dock, it started to rain again, a straight down soaking downpour. We were astonished to see our friends Von and Janet waving and yelling from the main pier. They'd been trying for days to coordinate to meet us when we arrived, but between weather and email problems none of us had much hope of that. Persistence and luck prevailed. They'd decided we'd be another day out, and were in the process of leaving when Jan saw Sequester motoring down the channel. We cleared in with the friendly, efficient NZ officials, Von and Jan gave us a hand tying Sequester into a berth, and we all went to the cafe. Ted