Marquesas Passage Day 12

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run was 150 miles.
Lots of little items to fill today's blog. I woke up this morning to a lot sail flapping and banging. The winds pretty much died. There's a 3 foot E primary swell that now has an additional 1 ft NE swell on it. This makes for a lot of sail flapping back and forth when the winds are light. Not good for the sails or the crew. Not sure where our nice tradewinds went, but for now we are making about 2 to 4kts in whatever direction we can. We still have 825 miles to go, so I'm not inclined to motor --- yet. The GRIB predictions don't look good for the wind returning anytime soon, so we may be out here another 12 weeks or so. (Kidding.)
Every few days we run a floating line off the bow for 1/2 hour on each side. This is supposed to keep the fan worms (living in shells) from forming at the waterline. I took a look at the swimstep yesterday. The stern is just covered with 3/4 in - 1 in worms. Pretty ugly and not good for boat speed.

We've tried to hear the Pacific Puddle Jump SSB net in the evening, but there is just too much noise on 8,297MHz.

One of our running backs came loose yesterday. A pin came out near the deck end. It is now appropriately secured with a bungy cord.

Chris wants me to let you know the shower sump pump is not working... and she's not happy about it.

Yesterday morning we decided it was time to fly the spinnaker, as the winds were pretty light. I wasn't sure if the wind goddess was going to allow it, but we went ahead anyway. We don't fly the spinnaker much and it takes awhile to setup all the lines. We raised the sail, lifted the bag and started to sheet it in when the tack line at the deck shook loose. This sent a lot of red fabric flying off to leeward. In the process of getting the sail behind the main so it would be in the wind shadow and we could get it back on deck, we watched the tack line and its snap shackle shake undone at about 25 feet above the water and slowly sail to the surface and head for the 12,000 foot depths. This was connected with one of those large shackles that has a safety on it, so you have to slide it back before you can open it. Can't see how it came apart. The wind goddess then felt sorry for what she put us through and turned the wind back up to 18-20kts and we sailed on without the spinnaker.

Yesterday was another turn-the-clock-back day. Ships time is now on Pacific Standard Time. The Marquesas are on one of those weird half hour time zones. So we'll have 1-1/2hrs more to move the clock when we arrive.

Paul


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