Day two has broken bright and sunny, but even more significantly, with wind! In the first two days,we covered only what we would have normally sailed in a day - about 170 miles. It was pretty slow going last night, drifting along at nothing to 2 knots. For a whine, we drifted along on the other tack with the light air coming from the south - right on our nose, but around 5 am, a breeze out of the east at about 10 knots that now has us sailing along at about 6 knots on a beam reach. Nice.
Last night I managed to raise the Pacific Sea Farer's Net on the ham radio and give them our position. Our Position should be showing on their website, Yoreps. Nice to know that we still show up somewhere in the world out there!
We are settling into our world now. The crew is learning how to sail the boat, especially to get her to self steer with the wind vane steering system. Yesterday I tried to repair the mechanical self steering only to cook the control system when I hooked up the wiring incorrectly! What a dumb thing to do. Then a few hours later, the boys were attempting to wire up our music with a new amplifier, and for the second time that day I smelled the the sour smell of smoking baklite as yet another electronic
instrument left this world for electronic heaven. Oh well, guess we'll just sing shanties all the way to Fiji. At least the windvane steering is working.
We have a watch system of 3 hours on, 9 hours off, which is pretty relaxed. This is possible because we are doing one man watches that call me frequently on deck to assist in any sail changes or other tasks. I don't stand a watch. This leaves me free to do important things like burn up electronics. So far it is working just great!
Hopefully tomorrow you will hear from us 200 miles further down the line.
TTFN
No comments:
Post a Comment