May 7, 2009

Patience is a Virtue
A long time ago Fats Domino did a song called "Walkin' To New Orleans" It conveyed a feeling of resigned plodding, inescapably slow progress. That's running through my head now. For hour after hour, last night and today, we've maintained just enough speed to be able to steer. This is when we LOVE the autopilot. Half the time the wind is too light to make the windvane steer, and without the electronics, we'd either be hand steering for hours to make a couple of miles, or we'd just drop the sails and wait for better conditions. Moving, however slowly, is easier on the psyche. I did produce an anxious moment with the autopilot, though. It's dark gray, and gets so hot in the sun I know it can't be good. For years now I've clipped a white cloth over it to reflect the sun during the afternoons. This afternoon it started intermittently losing its way, and setting off the alarm. I was afraid it was failing, but once when it did that, I slid the cloth back, reset it, then slid the cloth over it again. When I moved the cloth, the alarm went off. Turns out the clothespin holding the cloth had a steel spring, and when I moved it close to the internal flux gate compass, it threw the steering sensor off. A new thing to watch for.
Looks as if tomorrow may be sail repair day. Since yesterday we've had two hanks come unlashed on the staysail luff, so I need to find some stickum that will secure the knots. That's the heavy air sail, and needs to be nearly indestructible. Then I noticed that another place on the sun cover for the jib is coming unstitched. A few parts of the sail were too heavily made to allow Karen to restitch them with her machine, so now I'll have to do them by hand. It's hard work, but we sure don't want failure in a big wind when we get to the hard part, south of Fiji. May as well work on it while there's no wind to speak of. And finally, I started to mentally rehearse setting up the storm jib, and can't recall exactly where turning blocks go, So, there's another project best done in a flat calm. When it's blowing 50, you only want to do things once. The forecast for these parts is for very light wind for at least 3 more days, and that matches what Imagica is finding, 150 miles ahead of us. We'll do chores and wait. Present location; 01 deg 45 min S, and 171 deg 47 min E, proceeding generally south at about 2 knots (50 miles a day!) Ted