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American Spirit II - Day 278; Crisis in the Indian Ocean - Day 6 of 11; Friday, October 10, 2014



Six days down with our mast still up but 5 more days to go until we get to Mauritius and safety.

From 2:50 AM to 6:00 AM did not sleep. Too much groaning noise from the auto pilot. My aft cabin is right next to the machinery and noise. I'm moving out to the main cabin tomorrow.

Once in the cockpit I shook out one reef in the mainsail (from 2 to 1). At 7:23 AM a great sunrise above the clouds. Like one of those biblical pictures with the rays emanating from the clouds and shining towards the earth.

Joel got up at 9:00 AM and Jeremy at 9:15 AM.

Tim from Ghost hosted the 10:00 AM net.

Breakfast at 10:40 AM was scrambled eggs; potato; cut pineapple pieces; and bread. After cooking the first batch of 6 eggs I decided that they didn't smell right so I threw them out and went to my emergency supply in the refrigerator (the thrown out eggs came from my bilge storage area). Better safe than sorry.

The wind is down, up, down, up and we put a reef in, take it out, put it in, take it out, etc. Get the picture? All day long.

Our noon position is 18 degrees, 27 minutes South; 72 degrees, 19 minutes East; and we're 837 nautical miles from Mauritius. We traveled 137 miles from our noon position yesterday, at an average speed of 5.7 knots.

Jeremy is reading books from one of my Kindle's on board. I have two Kindles because one is a back up in case my original gets wet and doesn't work anymore. At any rate, he is now reading 'Overboard,' a true sea tale written by Michael Tougias. About a sail boat that gets in a storm in the Gulf Stream. You can tell from the title that all is not well on this sail boat. If you haven't read it, buy it. Its a short read (200 pages?) and has a happy ending. Kind of. When I asked Jeremy what he thought of the book, his response was 'cheerful light reading.' Jeremy has a sense of humor. This book is anything but 'light reading,' especially when you're reading it in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

At 1:00 PM Joel went to the bow of the boat and changed the chafe points on the two spinnaker halyards holding up the mast. He goes to the bow and signals me to free one halyard at a time. I'm nervous when we do this. Obviously we try to do this as quickly as possible. Takes about 1 minute to do each halyard. A very long minute.

Merlyn is on the way to come alongside us for a photo shoot. Jonathan says on the VHF radio that I need good pictures of the rig for my Yachting Magazine article I'm going to write. Who knew that people in the UK had a sense of humor!? Monte Python still lives, I guess. At 1:50 PM Merlyn is close enough to take pictures. I take pictures of his boat as he's taking pictures of our boat. Half of the pictures have only the top half of his boat due to the waves going up and down. Big waves.

I nap from 2;17 PM to 3:30 PM and then Joel naps from 3:35 PM to 5:00 PM. The wind is 21 knots, and we're moving at 5.2 knots thru the water and 5.7 knots over the land.

Dinner at 5:30 PM is freeze dried Honey Soy Chicken; my Uncle Ben's fried rice; baked beans; and chilled pineapple pieces.

At 6:00 PM Jonathan from Merlyn on the VHF radio says that they're having 'seconds' during dinner. Jeremy turns to me and says, disrespectfully I might add, 'What are seconds?' As if we don't ever have 'seconds' on American Spirit II! Oops. We don'tu Our food is so good its always gone before we have an opportunity to say 'seconds anyone?'

From 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM I type a log and do emails; then nap from 7:30 PM to 8:50 PM.

When I relieve Joel at 9:00 PM he points out a flying fish that launched itself into the cockpit and almost made it down the stairs into the cabin. Its gigantic! About 8 inches long and the size of a really thick cucumber. Its actually big enough to mount on your wall. I throw it overboard, then am remorseful that I did so. I should have put it in a zip lock and stowed it in the refrigerator. I could have cooked it for dinner tomorrow night. With no moon early in the evening we expect to get more such visitors. Some boats have reported crew getting hit by flying fish; and one reported having a flying fish fly into an open port hole or hatch. That will wake you up in a hurry!

The almost full moon rises above the clouds directly astern the boat at 10:14 PM. It is a sight to behold!

At 10:30 PM the wind is 20/22 and we're making 5.0 knots thru the water and 6.2 knots over the land. There are a lot of stars out tonight. I'm tempted to remove the canvas insert between the dodger and bimini, but I know the weather in the Indian Ocean is lousy and I'm sure it will rain sometime tonight. Sitting in the back of the cockpit I see wave after wave rolling up behind us, even higher than my sitting position, then race by, catching the boat and taking us for a ride. A great night to be sailing; finally!

At 11:14 PM the wind is up a little to 22/24 knots. I put a second reef in the mainsail because a big black cloud is approaching and that usually means more wind. We're starting to get too far ahead of Merlyn, so putting another reef in with slow us down and get us closer together.

Joel relieves me at midnight. He's doing the 12:00 AM to 3:00 watch as he does every night.

By 12:12 AM I've got the SSB radio turned on and connected to Brunei, Philippines 2,920 nautical miles away at at bearing of 66 degrees. The send and receive are both fast at 1400 bytes per minute. By 12:20 AM I'm done.

I get a great email from Rally Control, which I've listed below:

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Hi Brian,

Thanks for the email. So far so good for the mast and hopefully you can fix that autopilot problem. If the groans are as a lack of fluid or air intake, we hope you manage to find the reasons and maybe where a leakage may be occurring.

The good news is the marina basin will be perfect for what you need to do. And if it wasn't, we would rebuild it! We'll get you directly alongside the wall to make things easier. It is a fixed dockwall and tidal, but these are not huge. There is a large, flat concrete/tarmac area next to the boat, where you'll be able to lay things down, alongside the boat etc. In the event you need a crane and don't want to move to the yard, we would have the space to get this to the basin too and we don't imagine the permission would be a problem either. So don't be concerned about any of that. We have seen you're way ahead on getting things ordered so once you touch land, everything will be well.

All the best, keep in touch, and let us know if there is anything on shore we can help with.

Paul & Joel

World ARC Rally Control
[email protected]

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You have to love the World Cruising Club. As I've said before, repeatedly, this is one of the reasons if you're thinking of sailing around the world, you need to join the World ARC.

Another email from Russ on Nexus is pretty funny, concerning the auto pilot problem:

Hi Brian,

That's the Crisis Detection Circuit (CDC) on the autopilot. It comes standard on all models and is a marvel of engineering elegance; it detects you have a crisis going on, it will develop an additional issue for you at the exact time of most impact. No extra charge. Seriously, you've got to be kidding....sorry guys.

..Russ

Joel wants me to get a GRIB weather file, so I send out a request and 15 or so minutes later turn on the SSB again and receive the GRIB file. The weather is depicts for where we're at is 20 knots of wind tomorrow from the east and southeast; then 15 knots for the following three days from the east. A good forecast except for the wind direction. We'd rather the wind be from the southeast.

I'm sleeping in the main cabin now, starboard side quarter berth.

During Joel's watch he gets winds up to 30 knots from a passing cloud. Those pesky Indian Ocean trade wind clouds!

At 3:03 AM, 3 minutes into Jeremy's 3:00 AM to 6:00 AM watch, he has the auto pilot go to standby again. Did the same thing last night.

Brian Fox

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