26/02/2022
Blog Day 5
Latitude 43 20.39S
Longitude 115 10.42E
Time 1847 Perth time
Baro 1020mb
It’s like a rinse cycle in a washing machine at the moment. Last night was yet another night of low speed with the winds playing funny buggers and not doing as they are told. By midnight the winds had dropped off again and I was once again rolling around in the 3-meter swell with less than 2 knots of wind to steer by. Again, it triggered all my alarms and it seemed that every time I shut my eyes the alarms would blast scaring me awake.
The Light airs were one thing but by 4 am I had sailed into an area of squalls but as it was dark outside, I didn't know it until poor Climate Action Now suddenly went from 4 knots of wind to 22 knots of wind. It pinned us over on our side making my efforts to get out of my bunk difficult and if there were any witnesses, I properly looked a little like an octopus floundering. Finally free of my constraints I was on deck in a jiffy and in the dark, I could see the darker clouds around me as a light rain pelted my face. Burr it was nippy.
I had Climate Action Now rigged for light airs so this strong 20 knots was liable to break something, so it was a bit of a rush to shorten sails. MY J1 was flying, and this is rated to 15 knots and is the larger of the two headsails, I can carry it carefully in 16 or 17 knots but anything above 20 knots is a hard no from me. So right away I jumped on the furling line - this line runs to a drum in the Profurl Furler that was supplied by Wichard , and by easing the jib sheets (control lines) and pulling in on the furling line I can wrap up the whole sail. It does take time and it is also important in those conditions not to let the sail flap. One flap can sometimes break a sail depending on the construction and materials. My sails were all made with Dimension Polyant Dacron and were heavily reinforced by Smith Sails to take the extra pounding.
So the result was that at 4 am I changed to the smaller jib the J2 and rode out this squall. Squalls are like little baby storms or Low-pressure systems and tend to have quite a punch on arrival with the winds before dumping rain and on the back end of the storm, almost no winds and usually only last 30 minutes or so. This squall waiting until I had just climbed back into bed after sitting on deck for 45 minutes waiting for it to pass and finally thinking that it must be the new winds arriving with a bang, to finally depart and leave us wallowing in the swell again.
The rest of the day was a mixture of light winds and alarms blaring and some slightly less light winds at 6 knots that was just enough to move by. I utilised the light weather to do the rounds, and tick of a few more general jobs around the boat like tidying up and stowing the ropes from the clutches and finally adding the correct labels to them (sorry Trevor) and by 2 pm the fresh Westerly winds arrived at 10-12 knots. Over the course of me typing this blog they have built to 15 knots so it’s time for another sail change.
Aside from all from the time on deck and general lack of sleep I am excited to be finally crossing over on to the race track below 45 South tomorrow and actually be able to start sailing east and chase down Fedor..
Finally thank you today to the amazing d'Albora Marinas Victoria Harbour, Docklands for your sponsorship of degree 115E
