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Firefly - Halfway to Suwarrow



At around noon on Thursday 15th May we passed the halfway point and have 345 nautical miles until we arrive at the unihabited coral atoll called Suwarrow. We are expecting landfall on Saturday and will only enter the atoll during daylight - if the wind holds our timing will be fine. Our second day at sea saw similar conditions to the first with a healthy trade wind blowing at around 20 knots from dead astern.

Despite sailing goose winged (jib and mainsail on opposite sides or wing on wing as its sometimes called) we can't actually sail on a dead run - if we do the rolling and yawing of the boat in the waves means that in every cycle there is a point where the boat is running by the lee and the mainsail effectively covers the jib and will take its wind, leading to a flap or slam. Therefore we actually sail at about 160 degrees to the wind, enabling us to keep the wind powered up all the time on the jib and that is the main reason that if you look at our track on yellow brick you will see its not straight.

Since we left Bora Bora we have gybed 3 times, picking the best time as the wind gradually goes from South East to East in line with the forecast. Knowing this was expected, we allowed ourselves to get pushed South of the rhumb line. With preventors on both the main and jib, gybing is a 10 minute manouver. Due to the rolling and yawing mentioned above - to keep the sails out and avoid them moving in as the boat rolls we have special lines called preventors which work the opposite way around to sheets - sheets pull sails in while preventors are ropes which keep sails out. It takes a long while to gybe as the preventors have to be taken off and then put back on when on the other tack.

Finally to round off the sailing lesson and to get even more technical - Firefly's jib boom is used to pole out the jib - it works exceptionally well, the preventor in this case being the tack line for the asymetric which runs to the end of the bowsprit and is led back to the cockpit for adjustment.

We changed our watch system on our second night so that Susie and I manned our watches or slept on a more 'needs' basis. Roughly sleeping for about 3 and 1/2 to 4 hours each time and changing over when it felt right to do so. We feel a lot better today than when we used the fixed time system the night before. In fact the conditions are really good and we are really enjoying the passage. Alternating on watch means that sharing Tom Neale's book, An Island to Oneself, is also working out without any disputes! We have both read it before and loved it - so are reading it again before arriving at Tom's desert island. Here is a synopsis...

New Zealander, Tom Neale became obsessed with Suwarrow when he got to know Robert Dean Frisbie, an American author who had also lived on Suwarrow with his children at the same time as the 'coast watchers' (military personal posted to watch for enemy ships or aircraft during WW11) - Frisbie was there during 1942. Getting to the island took Tom 3 years of planning and waiting for a ship that could drop him off there. He eventually arrived on October 7th 1952 and stayed with just his 2 cats for 3 years before being taken off sick, with a bad back by a steamer - the alarm was raised by the yacht Mandalay that had stopped by chance at the island - the crew finding Tom completely immobile. Tom did go back for another 3 year stint but the book focuses more on his initial stay and goes into fascinating detail about his self sufficiency and survival.

Paul and Susie



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