Transpac Blog II-20: Moment in the sun.

5:30 PM, 16 July, 2007

Well the very good news is that we moved into 1st place in our class this morning.

The bad news is we only made 169 miles to Farfar's 181. This clearly supports the idea that she has more wind, 50 miles to the south. The weather charts support that idea.

And they are to our left, of course. You can't pass on the right on this course, remember? Well, maybe you can, but not until the very end at the offramp. We have now jibed over to port jibe. Don't tell anyone, but we are heading for a rendezvous with Farfar tonight (or maybe tomorrow. or the next day; we don't know cause we can't predict their behavior)! Keep yer powder dry, me mateys.

Last night we sailed our asses off. It was PITCH dark (thick overcast from the depression?). We were sailing as DEEP as we could on starboard tack, trying to make distance to the south without jibing over to port and going too far out of our way. There is a significant short swell out here from just about every conceivable direction. This swell throws poor Psyche into the most erratic motions you can possibly imagine. No horizon, no stars, just a bunch of digital readouts, and the mechanical compass. Jimmy and I were on the first watch in the dark last night. Jimmy steered first, and we were constantly collapsing the spinnaker. Jim was completely perplexed. I asked him how he was maintaining his course. He said by the digital compass. I suggested he try the mechanical one, and the frequency of collapses went way down. The digital compass has an inbuilt delay, that is normally perfectly ok. But because our 40 degree lurches were so fast, the digital compass couldn't keep up, and could only report to you AFTER your boat had lurched one way or another and collapsed the spinnaker.

But even the old-school mechanical compass is a difficult fix. You have to STARE at it as if you had never sailed a compass course in your life. The reason for this was that if you looked up, at some other instrument, or whatever, the boat was liable to lurch a full 30 degrees. What I realized is that the compass has 30 degree intervals between labels, and if the boat lurches around 30 degrees, when you look down you think nothing has happened. You neglect to notice that the writing is 210, not 240, and you go by the lee, and the spinnaker collapses and you just swear, "What the hell?"

Jimmy and I decided that some sea witch was just having her way with Psyche, AND us, last night. It was kind of like being in a haunted house. You know, they let you walk in total silence down a dark corridor, and then you walk some more, and the suspense builds,and then, BOOM someone scares you half to death. Same thing here. Sailing along with just 12-15 knots of wind, as smooth as silk, then BOOM, a series of waves hits you broadside, and all hell breaks loose.

But we kept it together enough to pass the boats to our right, and not quite let Farfar pass us on our left.

So now we are sailing south. It is sunny, and warm. The sea is warmer. The petrels are flying. The debris (not from us) is in the water (sorry, I just had to throw that in, cause there is significant amounts of debris in this water that was so pristine just 20 years ago).

We are having fun. Our spinnaker changes have gone smoothly, as have the jibes (knock on wood). We are DIGGING your emails, so please feel free to send more. No more mangling stories, Gloria, I promise (don't read the earlier blogs, cause there is some scary stuff in there, too).