Marshalls to Alaska Day 22 - Hard work

On passage I normally sleep in the saloon so I am close to the cockpit if required.  Here I am sleeping dreaming of kiteboarding ...

Greetings,

Day 22 was hard work.

I woke to the sound of the genoa being reefed, then reefed, then reefed again. The winds which had been extraordinarily steady all night were building towards the end of Max's watch, right on schedule.

Sometimes the simplest thing to do at a watch handover in building winds is to change sails, so we decided to hoist the staysail rather than to continue reefing the genoa. Max, Victoria, and I have this down to a pretty slick process now: we turn deep downwind to minimize the waves sluicing over the foredeck, Max goes forward to secure the halyard to the sail and remove the sail ties, Victoria takes up slack on the halyard while Max hoists it at the mast, and I control the sheet tension. Once Max has the sail pretty much at the top, Victoria puts more wraps on the winch in the cockpit and grinds it up the rest of the way. Before you know it, we are turning back on our course and the waves are coming over the bow again.

The seas had been quite benign, but they built through the morning; conditions were such that I felt more comfortable being in the cockpit rather than the galley, so I suggested that Victoria (the usual morning watch stander) play with Benjamin, although truth be told, she probably would have been fine :)

And the quilt keeps growing

By late morning, we were doing 8.2 kts through the water! This is fast, especially with the wind forward of the beam. I made so much noise with the sheets and traveller trying to spill some of the wind that Max came up from his bunk and we reefed the main instead; this proved to be the opportune moment for a watch change, and I headed to the galley to see what was for lunch (leftover meat pies and instant ramen noodle bowls - I stocked up on these before the passage, but we hadn't needed to break into the stash until now). As we plowed through the waves, we commented once again on how glad we were that we went to the effort to move our anchor down below to the V-Berth floor: it would be acting as a scoop each time the bow dipped below the surface.

We had a half-dozen large potatoes in our hammock that I had anticipated baking to warm cold hands at this stage in the passage, but they had so shrivelled in the two months since I provisioned, that I decided to make them into a stew instead. Knowing that I wouldn't feel much like peeling and chopping potatoes with the 'what's for dinner' question hanging over my head later in the afternoon, I braced myself against the kitchen counter and prepared them before I went off-watch. I felt quite proud of my (somewhat rare) forward planning! Dinner was then an easy question of cooking the potatoes and onions in their soaking water for a few minutes in the pressure cooker, releasing the pressure and dumping in two jars of the beef I canned (time to be generous with the meat because we are getting to the end of the trip, and I don't want to have more meat than days left), a can of corn and a can of kidney beans (the only things resembling vegetables in the can cupboard), and then floating some dumplings on top while the whole thing simmered for 20 min.

It is just as well I prepared the dinner at lunch time, because even though the wind clocked around behind us as it was predicted to do during the afternoon, it built to a much stronger force than had been forecast. We think that we were closer to the low that was moving (at 30 kts) NE. What started as close reaching turned to beam reaching, and then when the seas built, Max bore off for both comfort and safety, and we were broad reaching to running. The forecast winds were 20-22 and he had up to 28 kts.

The 2m waves were steep, and we were taking them on the quarter, which means that the stern was being picked up and turned sideways with each wave. Just before I went off-watch after lunch, I spent some time watching our inclinometer (usually I don't think to do this except in the dark at night, and it is the one instrument that is neither back lit nor glow in the dark). We were rolling to 20 deg every few seconds, and then lurching to 35 deg every minute or so. Conditions were such that I thought the best place for the three kids to lay low on the aft bunk, and I elected to sleep on the starboard bench. What I didn't consider when I suggested this was the worry factor of trying to sleep below a cupboard full of heavy gear: the starboard bench was on the high side, and each time we rolled, the only thing keeping our sailing supplies off of me was the (perfectly adequate, but you never know) latch and the screws holding the door to the frame. The fact that Max has slept there most nights without incident was not sufficiently comforting! Eventually, after Max bore off, I did sleep for a short while.

We watched the barometer all afternoon in the hopes of seeing the pressure bottom out and begin to rise again. Eventually, we realized that the low was taking a slightly different path than had been predicted, and the pressure would likely keep falling well into the evening. After years in the tropics where the pressure varies diurnally but not really with the weather, it was fun to get the kids involved in watching it change.

Everyone was happy with the hot stew for supper, especially Max who had been in the chilly cockpit for much of the time since before lunch! Thankfully, he had seen the worst of the winds, and they moderated and veered throughout my watch to the point that we shook out a reef in the main around 2am. Soon I was reaching in only 13-14 kts, and I actually pulled out some genoa in addition to the staysail to boost our speed.

You may have noticed that sail changes are actually few and far between, which means that my night watch is often just that, a 'watch'. Thanks to Max's research and engineering (and no lack of blood, sweat, and tears), our cockpit is well-equipped for data, and I spend most of my time sitting in one place and watching displays that show wind speed, wind direction, wind angle, boat speed, course over ground, speed over ground, etc, etc, and try to tell myself that 11 deg is not actually that cold. I turned to the old-fashioned solution last night: I filled a hot water bottle and sat with that in my lap for the second half of my watch :) I was much warmer after we had shaken the reef out of the main, and I realized how much comfort depends on conditions: on a watch with lots of sail changes and reefing, I don't have the chance to get cold! [As for the hot water bottles, we ordered them as a group on-line, and they each arrived individually at Majuro, so we spent a lot of time tracking packages. It is nice to put them to use!]

All of these conditions are pretty much to be expected in this segment of the passage. We have escaped the worst of the weather brought on by the lows with our jog to the east last weekend. Everyone is in surprisingly good spirits, and we are glad that we are generally pointing in the direction of Dutch Harbor.

Love to all,
Elizabeth
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At 2019-07-01 6:18 AM (utc) SV Fluenta's position was 49°44.83'N 170°12.10'W

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