Thursday, March 27, 2008

Not just the leisure cruise

Tues 3.25 1200 hrs (noon)
Position 13 34.92N - 90 47.40W
Cse 97 - Spd 7.1 - Wnd 10.8 ESE - Sailing -
sea temp 81.2
340 miles to go

Tuesday night was a gorgeous night watch with a warm breeze and moonlight to keep from tripping over the lines on deck, but very busy. I spent most of it sitting on top of the pilot house with binoculars. We were running about 8 miles off the coast of Guatemala and there were little fishing pongas everywhere. There would be pockets of 5 or 6 showing up on screen but only 3 would have lights. I didn't have too much elbow room and had to pass a dark one by only a half mile. When I got close, he finally switched on a very dim light and a little strobe. He looked like he had a low battery. I blinked my LED light at him a couple of times to let him know I saw him. When I would clear a bunch of them, 3 more would show up in my path. They didn't move all that fast so they were no problem to avoid. What made it complicated were the tankers that would choose to join our little meetings and trounce right through. Those guys MOVE!

This morning we found some wind. The bad part is that it is on the nose. We'll take anything to shut off the iron wind we have been running almost non stop since we left. The boat is heeled over pretty far hard to weather, and our course is looking pretty wacky right now, but after a few tacks we are making headway. (I took a pic to be inserted later)

All day sailing was nice, but it turned around near the end of my watch (3pm) when I broke the wind pretty bad. I handed off to Richard. For a while there the wind just stopped. The seas were going strangely choppy but coming from several directions. We were about 21 miles off the coast with all sails up. The barometer fell another point (that makes 4 since 10am). We were all below in the salon when the boat just leaned over pretty bad. Drawers were sliding open, stuff was falling out of cabinets. I was right near the main companionway and poked out to see what was happening and saw Richard coming out from the pilot house who then called for all hands on deck. We needed to pull some sails down pretty fast. We got the weather fish down with only a little drama and Paula and I were sitting down on deck, backs against the lifelines clawing at the flapping sail and trying to tie it up to the dinghy rack. We got a couple of good waves over the bow, and they came right down our side. We were waist deep in blue water. Once strapped a quick turn downwind really helped to roll up the jib. A reef got put in the main and we took off on a course to tuck us into the coast a bit more. We got within 2 miles and the waves were much better, but it was still blowing like snot. We took down the main staysail, and we were still doing over 7 knots. This lasted pretty much till 10pm and it finally let up and we relaxed. Richard said the winds never went UNDER 34kts. Looking back at the charts we figure we got into another one of those troughs between the mountains. This was what the locals call a Papagayos and really watch out for.

Shaken and stirred, brimmed in salt.
B&P

1 comment:

Tina said...

*Whew!* Okay - I would have been freaking out. Sounds like you guys just enjoy the challenge - wow!