Day 6
8pm 02:00UTC
Pos: 8deg06S 98deg16W
heading around 240deg
2383 miles to Fatu Hiva, 16 days to go at current speed.
The sea is ROUGH, really crap conditions. The wind veers from SE to E to ENE as we sail from squall to squall, the wind strength varies from zero to 10 to 15knots. Its been drizzling and raining the whole day, cant see sky just solid overcast with squally dark areas, MIFF sailing weather, often not enough wind to keep the sails properly full and the sheets tight, so there is lots of sheets going slack and then suddenly loading up again. Shimmi's rocking and rolling is throwing the main sail and boom around, i actually reefed the main to lessen the shockloads as the mainsail jerks around. No fun at all. The cockpit is wet so we are all cooped up inside the saloon. This is our third day of rough seas, probably the worst 3 day spell that we have had on shimmi in terms of sheer discomfort to crew and difficulty in sailing. We have gybed twice, trimmed the sails 100's of times, changed our course at least every 20 minutes as the wind swings around on our tail. Big ocean swell and chops lift shimmi high up into the sky and then drops us down again, causing the boom to crash wildly against the blocks. The biggest of the waves slams into shimmi's bridge deck (underside), thankfully not very often (about once every 5 minutes). Andy is still man down, he has been up for a few meals and is still able to do his 12-4am watch. I threw the watermelons overboard, they are vrot. Chonny and I made a tasty nasi goreng this evening. The kids have been fine, Josh is still raging on his new toys, he is finally allowing Indie to play with some of them (but not Zurg) so Indie is stoked too.
The good news is that despite all of the above, we are still averaging 6-7 knots of boat speed, we are been helped along by a 1-2 knot current in our favour. We only ran the engines for about 2 hrs today during a no wind spell we still have plenty of engine hours available (88hrs). We have to run the gennie for a total of about 5 hrs (=1.1gallon in consumption) per day to keep the batteries charged for the auto pilot. No sun means no solar power. I rigged two flying fish ballyhoo style (hook sticking out the belly with wire trace through the head) but the rough seas and chops soon ripped them to pieces. When we surf down a wave the whole lure get ripped out the water.
Otherwise that's it from us on shimmi. Lets hope these crap conditions will come to an end. Trade wind sailing so far is no fun at all. I wanna sue someone.
