Pacific Crossing Day 12

Sail changes. It's what we do. We also read, sleep, try to sleep, and eat relatively small portions of food on occasion. On watch, I lay in the cockpit staring up into the night sky watching the windex on the top of the mast. It points left a little. It points right a little and occasionally pauses for a second to point straight backwards, east. The boat is rolling side to side. Down below Connie's foot is rolling side to side with the roll as she sleeps with pillows on either side or her. On the settee, Scott Tobiason gently snores on. He's wedged in also.

Sail changes. Yesterday we went to hoist the geniker.(sp?) It's kinda like a spinnaker sail but has a tack fitting at the bow of the boat and only one active sheet. When we deployed it the sock rose about 1/3 of the way then stuck. After three quarters of an hour of futzing about we gave up and stowed the big old sausage below in the cabin. Then we dropped down the spinnaker pole and pulled it out to its extreme length. We clipped the starboard side genoa sheet on the end, rigged its topping lift and preventer then slowly rolled out the enormous genoa. Once we had her polled out to the side, the rocking of the boat filled then failed, over and over, the sail coming to with a big slap.

Wing on Wing

Next we pulled up the main, double reefed, got her sheeted in properly with preventer also, the whole shebang out to the port side. Now we're talking.. a proper wing-on-wing. With a sail out on either side the violent roll was dampened. As it rolled to the starboard the main would dampen it. Roll to the port and the genoa did the dampening. All this worked great until night came upon us and with it a lessening of wind force and increasing of sea height.

Come midnight the boat was creaking and jumping and complaining. Nobody could sleep for all the noise.

So we (all hands on deck) took apart this wing-on-wing contraption with all its preventers and lines and halyards and sailcloth. That took us almost an hour to get everything stowed. We left up a scrap of main, sheeted and prevented out to one side. Engine on, we motored the rest of the night and all the next morning. The two Scotts spent hours in the cabin pulling the geniker out of the sock and re-running the control lines inside the sock. Then we hauled it on deck, carefully laying it out. Re-lead a line or two, take a twist out, shorten a painter, then hoist it we did. Suddenly a dull grey day was brightened by the loud yellow and green nylon monstrosity, blossoming out in front of the boat.. Connie killed the engine. "Thank you, Beta. Job well done."

And so our night time speed of 5.1 is balanced by our day time speed of 3.2, giving us what we need for miles run in one day: 111 nautical miles. It's slow, no doubt, but the upside is that it's more comfortable.

Later, at nightfall, we'll snuff the geniker and pole out the jib again. Even though it won't give us the same performance in light airs, we'd rather have it to bring in later than the finicky geniker.

Look out! Connie's getting out the accordion. Now that will put some air into the sails.

Scott, Connie, and Scott

at 21 degrees 20 minutes North, 137 degrees 18 minutes West

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