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American Spirit II - Day 269; Big Morning Squall & We Almost Get 'Treed'; October 1, 2014



Relieved Jeremy at 6:00 AM. Got a decent night's sleep. I slept 4 1/2 hours continuously, from 12:30 AM to 5:00 AM. About best I can do under sail in a rocking and rolling and warm boat. Rain squalls all around the boat, with a 'bad one' to starboard that I'm sure we'll have to deal with eventually. Wind 15/18, 5.5 knots thru the water and 6.6 over the land. Total could cover. Not a pretty day. Sunrise? Forget it.

Put the canvas insert between the dodger and bimini at 7:00 AM as we're going to need it to help fend off the coming rain. As I've said before, a dangerous task when done alone. Easy to fall overboard when standing up outstretched.

At 7:40 AM I reefed the main and jib. The squall wind is starting to be felt. I had to turn the boat 40 degrees left to stay with the wind and not jibing. Heading 196 degrees instead of 255 or so. Antarctica here we come!

I woke Joel at 8:10 AM. Rolled up the jib; reefed the mainsail some more and jibed the mainsail 5 minutes before the squall line with it low racing clouds hit us. Good timing! 25-30 knots of wind. Had to close the 2 hatch cover doors as the rain was flying down below horizontally. By 8:45 AM the stronger winds had passed and I took 2 reefs out of the mainsail. Wind 15 and our speed 4.8 knots. The cell that brought the squall is dissipating. The wind is now from the ENE or NE. I'm glad the squall finally hit us, as I'd been staring at its low level and ominous clouds coming at us for 2 1/4 hours. I was getting anxious. (There's your emotion, Chuck!). Inside joke. The squall wasn't really that bad. Thirty minutes of 25-30 knots and blinding rain, then 12/15 knots of wind...for now. More to come, for sure.

At 9:00 AM the wind is 19/22 and our speed 6.1 knots. We took the whisker pole down and put 70% of the jib back out. The reason for having a jib out in higher winds is that the mainsail will try to push the boat into the wind, to round the boat up. The headsail keeps the head down and stops the round up. Go figure. Another squall hits us at 9:35 AM. I put a reef in the main. One 45 degree roll. Whip pee! Big rolls are bad.

Our noon position is 13 degrees, 54 minutes South; 92 degrees, 53 minutes East; and we're 2,052 nautical miles from Mauritius.

At 12:30 PM during my nap as Joel and Jeremy are in the cockpit, Jeremy spots a whitish tree trunk float by the starboard side 20 years away. About 10 feet long and 3 feet in diameter. We almost got treed! Of all the things I ever expected to hit and sink our boat, a floating tree trunk is not one of them. (Though Janet, Joel and I did hit an underwater, floating tree in the Rio Dulce River in Guatemala in 2010}. You'd expect that in a river, not in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Later in the afternoon I spot a small, harmless tree branch float by; then a 5 foot section of hemp about 1 to 2 inches in diameter. How does that float?

I nap from 12:15 PM to 1:20 PM; and then type a log from 1:25 PM to 1:47 PM.

Joel took his nap starting at 2:30 PM.

At 4:50 PM we see some blue sky; a small patch to leeward to the north. We saw a hazy sun for a couple of minutes, also.

Dinner at 5:35 PM is freeze dried Sweet & Sour Port, a boat and covered dish favorite; a peas and corn mixture for our vegetable; and chilled pineapple pieces.

At 5:55 PM its clearing to the Northeast; and by 6:16 PM its clearing all around us. With the rain stopping it feels 10 degrees warmer. That's one way to tell if the rain has stopped for the day or night. It gets warmer.

We jibe the mainsail at 6:40 PM, boom to starboard. The wind is 12 knots.

Laurie from Nexus hosts the 7:00 PM net. After the net, Charlie from Celebrate reads a story using all the fleet's boat names; from Merlyn of Poole. Jonathan and Jenny submitted. Good job guys! I hear during the net that some boats ahead of us are motoring. Looks like the wind might be lightening. Not good as we don't want to use fuel with 2 weeks of sailing left to our destination. After the net Jon on Polaris and I continue playing 'Battleship.' I didn't get any hits; but he got two hits on us.

I send a log and emails on the SSB radio from 7:32 PM to 7:47 PM; to Brunei in the Philippines 1,740 miles away at a heading of 51 degrees true. The 'send' is fast: 1,400/200/600 bytes per minute. The 'receive' is slow: 200 bytes per minute. Maybe because we have the generator on and the radiation or noise it causes disrupts the incoming transmission.

We turn the generator off at 9:00 PM; then turn the engine on at 9:07 PM due to lightening winds from dead astern. The wind drops to 5/6 knots. We're motoring at 6.2 knots at 1,600 RPM's. I roll the mainsail up because its popping a lot. Noisy and its bad for the sail.

At 10:45 PM stars fill 1/2 of the night sky; and there's a 2/3 rd moon out. Pretty. Its also warm. I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt and shorts. No foul weather gear. Yeah! Except for motoring, a very nice night.

At 11:39 PM the wind is 12 knots, our speed thru the water is 5.3 knots and over the land is 6.6 knots; a helping current of 1.3 knots.

Joel relieves me at midnight. I shower and am in bed by 12:25 AM. Joel and I discuss the day's sailing and decide that we should have been more aggressive. We'll sail harder and faster tomorrow. Live and learn. We don't like sailing dead down wind. Broad reaching with a low side pole is much better for us and the boat likes that angle of sail.

Brian Fox



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