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American Spirit II - Day 73; Fixed Head, Spinnaker Sailing & Dog Star; Monday, March 17, 2014



Happy St. Patrick's Day. Today starts the beginning of the last week on this leg. We hope to be in Hiva Hoa by this Saturday or Sunday, day 20 or 21.

I can't remember if I put the 'Dog Star' in a previous log or not a couple days or so ago, so here goes (again?). At 12:30 AM Joel pointed this star our to me. It actually twinkles green and red; is large; and is next to Orion. (No, we weren't tasting any wine when we looked at this star!). This star is part of the constellation Canine, or something like that. Whatever the 'dog' constellation is. If I had internet I'd Google it and would be sure. No internet out here.

At 7:00 AM our speed through the water was between 4.5 and 5.5 knots. The wind was 11 knots from the east. Lot of rocking motion on the boat. We had a jib out with a pole. That's sail combination seems to rock the boat more than any other. No main sail until we get the part we need in French Polynesia.


The 9:00 AM net was followed by breakfast. In making breakfast as I 'broke' the 6th egg into the stirring dish, I noticed right away that it was bad. Unfortunately, since I'd already broken it into the other 5 good eggs, I had to throw away the whole batch and start over. Henceforth, I'll break each egg in a separate mixing dish before mixing with the others. That way, a bad egg will only cost the loss of one egg and not all the others in the mixing dish with it. So,I had to lift up the bilge boards again and retrieve 6 more eggs. With the eggs I microwaved the last of our hot dogs. How do you know an egg is bad? Smell. Pretty obvious. A bad egg doesn't smell good.

After breakfast we put a new chip in our chart plotter, the one for the South Pacific. I have 6 chips to cover all the areas we're sailing in around the world.

The next job of the day was to transfer some more diesel to the main tank from the jerry cans we keep on deck. Put in 9 gallons. With 70 gallons, 55 in the tank and 15 in cans, we can motor 700 miles.

Noon position 9 degrees, 28 minutes South; 127 degrees, 29 minutes West. Hiva Hoa is 678 miles away; we've gone 2,202 so far.

At 1:00 PM we rolled up the jib and put the spinnaker up. Our speed increased from 3.8 to 5.5 knots immediately. The wind was 11/12 knots. Very light. No rain. A beautiful day. Best day in a week. No large waves, no high winds, no rain. Beautiful. And because we're able to use the spinnaker, we're back in the race, even without our main sail. With most of the boats either not having a spinnaker or not using one, we hope to pick up some distance on the fleet today and will try to run with the spinnaker tonight, all night. First time we'll try that. Again, any boats in the rally running a spinnaker today will probably drop it tonight.

Another task today was fixing the head. The overboard discharge line was clogged with a build up of uric acid (urine). We took off the 5 foot, 1 1/2 inch discharge hose, ran a 'snake' thought it, beat it on the back of the boat, stuck it in the water to flush it, and finally got it cleared. Joel used a set of latex medical gloves in doing this. The on board holding tank was never clogged, so we had use of the head while this clog existed. We just emptied the holding tank once a day. Now we don't have to. Straight overboard. Yea!


Dinner at 5:30 PM consisted of blackened and BBQ chicken wings and legs on our transom mounted propane grill. With the chicken we had creamed corn and mixed,chilled fruit.

The net communication with other boats was held at 6:00 PM.

The sunset was nice tonight. Not a green flash night because, you guessed it, there were clouds on the horizon. Joel, however, says he saw a 'green sheen' around the sun before it set. Good eyes Joel.

After sunset is when I send and receive emails on the SSB radio. I wait for sunset because our sending ability is good then. With the boat not rocking a lot tonight, our antennae should be able to send and receive along more of a straight line than the night before, where the rocking of the boat made it difficult to send and receive messages quickly.

One of the emails I received from one of my most frequent e mailers, brother Andrew Fox, was a quote from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which I'll share with you. "Water, water, everywhere, and all the boats did shrink. Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink." Thanks Andy!

I received an email today from our agent in French Polynesia. That was important because he will be helping me get the part we need to fix our main sail thru customs and to the boat in the 'outer islands.'

We ran the generator from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM, charging batteries. With our speed under 6 1/2 knots, we don't have enough boat speed to charge the boat's batteries with our hydro generator and wind turbine.

The moon rose off our transom right out of the ocean and lit up the wake we're making thru the waves. Very pretty.

Tonight our speed increased with the spinnaker, averaging between 5.6 and 6.7 knots on my 8:00 PM to midnight watch. Whenever a cloud passes by, the wind picks up. At 14 knots our boat speed increased to 6.0 and 6.1 knots. At 15 knots wind speed the wind turbine starts making noise, the sound of the wake increases, the boat accelerates, and our speed increases to even more. Because we're running a spinnaker tonight, I'm sitting behind both helms so I can see all the wind instruments and 'hear' a wind shift alarm if we get one. Joel and I have a hard time hearing the soft wind shift alarm because, I guess, our hearing isn't what it used to be. I know Janet will agree with that statement 100%. What?

Brian Fox





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