NZ to TONGA: Day 10 - Rollicking downwind

Hello!

It has been a vigourous day of sailing. The sky is covered in a dark grey blanket of clouds (related to the trough(s) passing over us) and blue sky and sunshine or twinkling stars seem like distant memories. The wind is blowing in the high teens, and we are making efficient progress towards our destination.

I am learning that there are many variations of sailing downwind! On a broad reach, the motion of the boat is reasonably steady, depending on the wind and the swell. Today, we are deeper on the wind than that (true wind angle is set at 150 degrees) and our main and genoa are out on opposite sides (wing on wing). It is hard to describe the motion of the boat, but it seems necessary to try. We have most of the swell behind us, which is good, so there is a constant and steady back and forth motion as the crests and troughs pass beneath us, then every so often, we either get a bigger set of waves or the wind shifts to put the swells onto the quarter (corner) of the boat and we find ourselves rolling from +20 to -20 degrees of heel and back again several times in a row. The good thing is that anything that was going to fall to the floor probably did so earlier this morning, and the forces on the rig are much less than they would be if we were sailing upwind in these conditions (as we were when sailing from New Caledonia to NZ last year); the boat is making a lot fewer scary noises (banging, slamming, creaking, groaning) today than on that passage. On the other hand, it is distracting to have to hang on for dear life every couple of minutes so as not to be tossed off the benches! I just keep reminding myself that, all things considered, things could be worse :)

Victoria and I were on the lower end of the wind scale early this morning; in fact, the wind dropped to the point that starting the engine might have been in order (about 7 kts). The sails were trying to stay filled, but the boat speed was down to about 3 kts, and with each roll, the sails were rippling loudly from side to side because there wasn't enough pressure to keep them steady. I decided to try putting both sails on the same side so I could come a little harder on the wind. Since Max was off-watch, I chose to gybe the main, as I figured that Victoria and I could do this with only two of us. The thing I forgot was the alarm-clock effect of winching in the main and unfastening the preventer - Max was upstairs as the third person before we were even finished the gybe! As it turned out, his presence seemed to magically bring the wind back, and the next thing I knew we were back up to 12+ kts of wind, so we gybed the main back where it had been originally, and started galloping down our rhumb line. We haven't seen anything resembling the calms of this morning all day. While I was off-watch the wind built into the mid-teens/20s and I came back up to a boat speed higher than our windspeed had been in the morning. So it goes.

Now that I have described the motion of the boat, you will imagine the fun I had preparing dinner. With two fresh fish in the fridge, the first task was to move some of our catch to the freezer. I pressed the ziplock bags into a big bowl of water in the sink to evacuate the air (I consider this the at-sea-manual-vacuum sealer), and then put four of the six bags of fish into the freezer. That put peas on the menu for dinner, as they no longer deserved the freezer space they were taking up (although I didn't apply the same logic to the coconut rum that I left on the top rack for safekeeping; I didn't think putting it on the menu would do much for our at-sea judgement!) I took a vote in the cockpit, and the selection was a starter of sashimi (raw sliced tuna) followed by pan-seared tuna with rice and peas. With those choices out of the way, all I had to do was trim the fish and cook it. Did I mention that the galley was swaying from side to side on a constant basis, with wild rolls every couple of minutes? I put rubber mats under anything that could potentially slide off the counter, lashed the pots on the stove, and got to work. I have to admit that I didn't have much appetite by the time dinner was ready, but everyone else seemed to enjoy the offering of fish, rice, peas, and fish, topped with a mix of soya sauce, sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar; in fact, Benjamin even had seconds :) (For the record, I wasn't ill, I just wasn't hungry ...)

One of the most interesting things to write about today actually happened yesterday. We saw a boat! This is the first vessel we have seen since we were a couple of days out of NZ (other than a handful of cruisers at Minerva Reef). The surprising thing about this boat was that we (Max) spotted it with our Mark 1 eyeballs, but did not see it on AIS, even though it was a large commercial fishing vessel. This was a good reminder that there are still vessels working the South Pacific which either don't have AIS or don't choose to transmit (we have been told that they don't want to share their position). Victoria looked at it on the radar for us, and we were about 2.2 miles away at our closest point. I could see the coloured markings on the vessel with the binoculars, but I couldn't see a name or a flag. Needless to say, we were glad we have a habit of scanning the horizon every 15 minutes while we are on watch!

That's about all the news of the day. I'm about to wake Max for our first sail change since this morning: time to harden up a little, gybe the genoa over to join the main on the port side, and broad/beam reach our way to Tongatapu.

Love to all,
Elizabeth
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At 2018-06-23 8:48 AM (utc) SV Fluenta's position was 21°07.68'S 175°09.65'W
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At 2018-06-23 8:48 AM (utc) SV Fluenta's position was 21°07.68'S 175°09.65'W

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