Monday 4:15pm Have to repeat it - SUCCESS!!! The genoa sheets were undone and organised - important to have them ready, to restrain the sail in case the wind got up. Lashings holding genoa down onto the deck were removed - not as difficult as I'd feared, but took a time. What then took a long time, but was vital to get right, was following both the foot and the luff of the sail and making sure they were straightened out, being very twisted. The sail having been doubled and then doubled again, head to foot, in order for it to fit on deck when lashed down, didn't make it easy, nor the fact that it's a big, heavy sail to move about. The foot of the sail was then moved to the port (leeward) side deck, as far as possible - the sail being on the windward deck, just to make things awkward ...!
Next job was to insert the luff bolt-rope at the head of the sail into the foil on the forestay and raise the sail by its halyard, using a mast winch. A pre-feeder was really useful in keeping the loose sail close to the foil as it fed into its groove. Hoisting it took a long time and involved lots of trips between sail and mast, to make sure the sail was free to hoist but also make sure it didn't catch in the wind which had got up more by then. I had to lash it down temporarily a couple of times - no way was I going to let it get anywhere near the water or blow in the wind, out of control! Finlly, once hoisted, it was furled up - without ending back in the sea and with plenty of turns still on the drum! Winching it up got really difficult - the halyard was very tight on the winch but, even so, it didn't seem quite tensioned enough, looking at the sail - I'll check it next time it's unfurled. Took nearly five hours in total with the wind slowly increasing from 10kt to 14kt - just to help things along (!)... I was more than ready for a nap but that had to wait a bit...!
Great to have the sail in place again and available for use!! Dealing with it made good use of the time while hove to today, going nowhere - well, actually having gone backwards and then in a circle.... There's one very 'happy bunny' on board Nereida just now!
6:20pm Tidied up on deck just as light rain started under a very grey sky. The wind is now 20kt from E so the nearby Low must be due N of us as it heads SE. Hopefully, we're far away enough from its centre not to see its very strong winds.
The bad news is that the next Low is only two days later - and is beginning to look too threatening to ignore. I thought I'd be able to head N as the present Low passes on and get far enough away not to be affected by the next Low but there are light winds in between the two systems so not enough wind to help us to escape N.
11pm Raining gently ... and the swell has become a lot more noticeable - we're rocking from side to side all the time and occasionally a wave breaks onto us - not so very big, but noisy! Wind is 22kt from just S of E so Low is just E of directly N of us.
Had an excellent 3-hour sleep so feeling very refreshed. About to have a CupaSoup and then some of my curry before start of Pacific Seafarers Net at 0310Z (= ten minutes after midnight LT !).
Tuesday 5:30am Up to send position/weather report and check on wind - SE 20kt - not too bad...
9:30am Sun is shining, wind is 21kt from SSW - the Low has passed over - time to shake out third reef and get sailing. The next Low is no longer looking threatening - so we can head NE without worry.
11:30am We were underway by 10:20am, running downwind. It took a short time to decide to shake out the 2nd reef also but that might have been premature since the wind from SSW has gone from 17kt to 20-22kt - hopefully, that's a gust and not a sign the wind is inceasing - it's supposed to be getting less...
It did! Flying the genoa was great and definitely helped our speed, especially when the wind died later.
Lovely sunshine and a clear blue sky - pressure's up - probably meaning wind will stay down for a bit.
1900GMT (=1600LT) - end of Day 97. Drifting, hove-to again for quite a lot of the time... We made just 33 n.ml. DMG over the 24 hr period, measured in a straight line between the two 1900 GMT positions.
Total distance covered from Victoria, B.C., to end of Day 97 (by daily DMGs): 9,306 n.ml.
Distances (at 1900Z): Cape Horn LH: 1125 n.ml. to SW; Falklands: 695 n.ml. to SW; Montevideo: 660 n.ml to NW; Buenos Aires: 745 n.ml to NW Cape Agulhas (SA): 3060 n.ml. to NE
Position & weather report for 1900 GMT posted to Winlink.org and Shiptrak.org (using my US callsign KC2IOV):
TIME: 2019/01/08 19:00GMT LATITUDE: 42-51.54S LONGITUDE: 046-29.14W COURSE: 082T SPEED: 4.5kt
WIND_SPEED: 9kt WIND_DIR: WSW SWELL_DIR: SW SWELL_HT: 2.5m CLOUDS: 75%
BARO: 1004.8hPa TREND: 4 AIR_TEMP: 19.0C SEA_TEMP: 17.0C
COMMENT: Underway. Sunny in between clouds
