It’s amazing how quickly things change. We’ve got 23 knots of apparent wind coming in at 60 degrees, large-ish seas, two reefs in the main, full jib, and we’re doing 9 – 10 knots. As a comparison point, the giant cargo tankers that have been continually passing us are doing 12 – 13 knots. So, we’re doing OK. I’m OK with the wind speed – it’s just the angle is a bit inconvenient.
Picture the open sea, with waves moving along in more or less even rows. We’re working our way almost parallel to these waves so for a while we move nicely up one side and down the other as they come diagonally towards us. For a few minutes, we coast along nice and easy, moving within the waves. Then, along comes a big one and we wham right into it, sending up spray and jolting everything on board. We’ve had to shut all the ports and hatches, even the ones we normally can keep open in rougher weather. We had one bigg-ish wave on each side dump about a bucket’s worth of water through each head hatch so I made the difficult decision to close the hatches and sacrifice air flow for the privilege of not cleaning up salt water every hour.
In other news, we crossed the equator! Almost this same time last year, we crossed the equator going south to the Galapagos. Sunil, Swagata and Ruth were on board and we had a special visit from King Neptune who helped those of us on board that were pollywogs (people that haven’t crossed the equator by sea) turn into shell backs. Since we’re all shellbacks now, we didn’t have any kind of special ceremony but we did mark the occasion by cutting out a bunch of zeros and trying to find ways to display them. Thanks to Aunt Rita’s suggestion last time when we crossed the prime meridian, I remembered to take a photo with my camera that has GPS so I should have a photo indicating a location close to 00 degrees, 00 minutes. The girls recorded the ticking over of our south to north crossing on cameras as well.
Joe was having a decent nap this afternoon and I was making lunch and keeping watch when I heard a loud bang. It was clearly a breaking sound so I didn’t hesitate to knock on the ceiling of our room to wake Joe. As he came out, I saw that it was one of the blocks (or pulleys) holding the boom to the traveler. There are three blocks on the traveler (basically a strip of metal that lets the blocks slide back and forth, allowing us to move the boom around) and a line passes back and forth through them and the two blocks on the boom. This line is the main sheet that is essentially the way we control the mainsail. Losing a single block wasn’t devastating, in that there were two others, but it did seem critical that we replace it because the main takes a lot of pressure, especially as we are going upwind. I envisioned a complicated repair job - dropping the main, somehow securing the boom, taking things off the traveler track, etc.
It’s a good thing I’m not in charge of repairs. Joe removed the broken block and replaced it with a similar one that we use for the spinnaker sheet. Then he had me ease the mainsheet which he held while I gathered the slack and passed it through the snap shackle of the new block. I ground the main back in and it was done.
We used the broken block in an impromptu art class – I decided the block would add an interesting shape for a still life, together with two empty bottles and two bright green Lego popsicles. Tully refused to draw anything but the popsicles so my artistic vision was wasted on her but Marin cooperated.
Marin chose to balk at physics class instead because she wanted to do chemistry. I pointed out that we were not having the best weather for chemistry (I envisioned beakers and chemicals flying around the boat) and she reluctantly agreed to learn about simple machines. Although Cobin had already learned what we were covering, he got excited about demonstrating levers to the girls and even found an app about simple machines that I had put on their Ipads ages ago and forgotten about. Marin and Tully liked rearranging the fulcrum and lever and even drew diagrams in their notebooks without too much fussing. TOPS Science lesson plans come through again – everyone learned something and it was short and easy.
We’re slowly reeling in EQ2 – they showed up on our AIS about an hour ago and I called them on the VHF and chatted with Todd who shares my 9 pm to 12 am watch. They also have a double-reefed main but have also reefed their jib to make their ride more comfortable. Unlike Charm, which has a high bridge deck to allow big waves to pass under, EQ2 and other “comfortable” catamarans of a similar style have low bridge decks which give more clearance in the salon but don’t allow waves to pass under, creating an unpleasant, constant banging on the floor of the salon in conditions like these. Like most things in life, there are also tradeoffs on boats. We sacrifice salon headroom and space to get a more comfortable ride at sea. EQ2 ranks high on the comfort scale at the dock (they even have air conditioning!) but I’m guessing Charm is more pleasant at sea. At least that’s what I tell myself on the hot sticky nights at the dock when I hear their generator (a heavy item used to power their air conditioning) humming along.
As I discussed previously, the big comfortable catamarans don’t move as well as we do so they often use their engines until there’s enough wind to move them. Because they’re big and heavy, they require more wind than we do as well as more powerful engines. Yet another disadvantage we face in the World ARC “race”. While the penalties for motoring are evenly applied, there is no distinction for boats that have different engine capabilities. When winds are light and everyone is motoring, we are motoring at very different speeds. Some boats turn on both huge engines and go full throttle to make up time and others, like us, who can’t carry as much fuel (there’s a theme here – we go faster because we’re lighter), only turn on one engine that isn’t as powerful because it doesn’t have to be (again, we’re lighter so we don’t require as much engine power). This difference in speed based on the engines is not factored in – all engine hours are treated equally. I’m still just whining because we like to race but it’s not as much fun when there are so many variables that don’t make sense or work directly to our disadvantage.
I have a few more days at sea to work on letting it go. It’s not like this is a new development – the rules have been the same for the whole rally. But it’s the last leg so we’re dwelling on it. In the meantime, we are finally making good time and have to decide if we will stop at Devil’s Island. It will probably be a 150-mile detour and could send us even more upwind so we will continue to monitor the weather.
For those of you that are interested, we have two fuel tanks that hold 150 liters each and we carry three 20-liter jerry cans as well, giving us a total of 360 liters of diesel. This allows us to motor at 6 knots for about 900 miles. Some boats carry enough diesel to motor the entire way but that’s not anything we’ve ever done, mainly because Charm can almost always sail, even if it isn’t as fast as we would like if the winds are light.
One more good thing about today – not only do we have wind which helps cool things off, but we also had overcast skies. This meant rain off and on but it also kept things cool all day. For some reason, the girls continue to enjoy wiping down the cockpit every time it rains and I am not discouraging this habit.
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