Day 12
9pm, 03:00 UTC
pos 09deg27S, 114deg38W
Distance to go 1412
Course over ground is approx 265deg
No tuna bodysurfing behind shimmi this morning.
Days are very slowly melting into one another, the seas are various degrees of roughness, the wind is a constant South East to East, varying from 12-20 knots. Skies are clear, then cloud up within hours. Rain squalls form and then dissipate, often we are surrounded by dark squalls, we can see the rain falling under the black clouds, but its been a week since we've had real rain on shimmi. We run the watermaker whenever we run the gennie which adds up to 5-6hrs per day. The water tank is still on just under half, maintaining. Last night the gennie started acting up, revving down then up again, sometimes cutting out. Not good as we are very dependent on it at the moment to keep the batteries charged which in turns keeps the auto pilot working. When a diesel engine hunts like that its usually a problem on the fuel supply side and after a short trouble shooting mission i found that the mouth of the fuel tank breather hose had shifted up against the tank (caused by a few wild rolls of shimmi)... i hope thats all it was (vacuum in the fuel tank)... Either way I gave the gennie a full service (oil change, filters etc after only 80 hrs) so that's one less thing to worry about. Hold thumbs that the gennie is fine. The last thing i want to do is run one of the main engines just to charge batteries...
I sleep with Josh in his cabin when i come off watch at 1am and last night he was farting so powerfully that i had to keep checking wether he hadn't actually pooped in the bed. His farts were hanging in the musty cabin like a brown haze. I had to go find somewhere else to sleep.
Its the end of day 12 can you believe it! We are still running under only the spinnaker which is set to starboard, we sail at about 160-170 degrees to the wind. The spinnaker hardly cracks, it just stays full all the time, so far its done a great job, pulling shimmi along at a 6.5 knot average. We have given up hope of having a smooth ocean, i can not see the sea improving with a 15-20 wind constantly blowing over it. We are sailing due west, so the big southerly swells hit us on our side, causing shimmi's port side to lift up high as it rolls through, sometimes it thumps the bridge deck for good measure. These are not the gentle long period swell that we were expecting. If we had known how tough this trip would be we would probably have stayed at home. And that's the long and the short of it.
We now fully understand how the old square riggers used to cross these massive oceans on the trade winds with their square sails. They flew a lot of relatively small sails like spinnakers and kept their bums to the following sea. Simple. I can imagine them doing about the same speed as us.
Andy cooked up a great green thai chicken curry with rice and potatoes, it was the best meal ever. Andy had a good day today, shimmi rolls a bit less now that we are sailing more down wind. But its been a long haul ladies and gentlemen. The key word here is ENDURANCE. At current speed we have 8.5 days to go.
It looks like we might actually make it out the other side, i have made peace with the fact that the spinnaker will probably blow out at some stage as we are now flying it 24/7. Wooooohoooo....
Faaaaark!!! As i wrote that sentence shimmi was hit by a gust of 25 knots and a big swell causing us to surf wildly into our first proper broach. I fought to gain control of the rudders, the spinnaker flogging madly, then CRACK it filled again, then we were almost broaching to the other side again its pitch dark and i am steering on the wind instrument, now we are back under control again. Spinnaker survived... WHAT .... WAS .... THAT? There are no squalls around....
I better go focus on what's going on outside. Wish me luck.
Bonjour
