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Thursday 22nd. We’re sailing upwind NNW in 6-10 kts of wind. For most of the day three birds were journeying along Changabang. I realized later in the afternoon why. Sometimes we go through a school of flying fish, which scatter in flight, only to perish at the beaks of the flying trio. In between hunts, they challenge each other at landing atop CaB’s mast, with no success so far (see pictures). There’s room up there as we lost the Windex windvane a few days ago. I’ve decided against stopping in Hawaii. There’s a good window to sail home. And I’m not excited at manoeuvering in unknown waters, or dealing with administration. Plus, it’ll make it that much more of a shakedown cruise to carry on straight to San Francisco. I like it here, which makes it that harder to swallow the abandon pill. In other news I didn’t troubleshoot the autopilot, as I didn’t want to stop progress nor cook under the sun (excuses!). I’m going to have to find another marina when I make landfall as Pillar Point Harbor is full for crab season (I had cancelled my lease before leaving in the hope of saving some dough). It was a slow day aboard Changabang, as I tentatively set my eyes on a re-do. Of course we need to fix or replace the boom, replace lost sails, harden the primary autopilot, replace a good bunch of running rigging, pay the hefty WSSRC fees, and a bunch of small other jobs. If you’re still watching, and are anxious for a re-start, please consider refloating our “cruising kitty” by visiting gofundme.com/SF2SF. I know many of you were very generous, and I thank you very much. Every $ helps! $5 is a meal. $20 is the monthly bill for the tracker. $50 is a jerry can of diesel. $140 is the monthly bill for the satellite phone. $300 is the replacement parts for the autopilot. $600 is one spinnaker sock (need 3 of those). $1,500 is a spool of rope to replace worn out running rigging. $2,750 is a new spinnaker (need 3 of those). Anything helps! That’s all from this man. What will tomorrow bring? Fair winds and following seas?

A visitor

Last night, I was having a grand dream, something of a scale I’d never experienced before. I used to have dreams of spaceships and space exploration, and flying, which on their own were pretty good to wake up from. But last night’s dream felt like I was in a Marvel Comics movie. I just don’t have words for it, and I can’t really recall the play because of an uninvited guest who snapped me out of that crazy dream. A flying fish landed in the cabin and got stuck in a small nook, flapping like he was about to be done for. And he would have, except I don’t want to cook fish aboard. So the lucky dream squasher got picked up and thrown back in his element. Now if only Neptune could do the same and return me my sails!

Pasta day

Today was the first day I had a full breakfast, a full lunch, with desert, and a full dinner, each being made of two servings. Add a few snack bars too! So the man is eating. After banana/granola/milk, we had a three cheese Mac’n’cheese, chocolate cheesecake, and then pasta primavera. Loads of pasta, just as I like it. I remember somebody saying that a good meal to prepare in advance for a hard offshore sailing race, when you know everybody will be seasick, and none will want to cook, is a bunch of cold pizzas. I tried it but it didn’t work for me. I know what would work though: cold bolognese spaghetti, made with a homey sauce (not store bought)! That I can eat cold! I have splurged on many occasions! I love spaghetti! And lasagna too. Ok, mushroom risotto is up there too.

Autopilot

Man, that “primary” autopilot surely is leaving much to be desired. It stopped working again. I’m not sure yet what it is; I’ve received some information to run some troubleshooting (from Jerome of Sailutions, NKE guru, and Phil at PYI, Inc., who imports the Lecomble & Schmitt drives). I’m now running on the secondary AP. Note that I have spares, and a third fully functional autopilot. So we’re fine. But I do prefer to use apparent wind mode when we keep crossing lines of clouds with the wind shifting 10-20 degrees and bouncing up and down between 8 and 12 kts, and I’m trying sail upwind: I have a bruised boom to nurse until we make it home! We sailed under first reef all day and part of the night. On a side note I tried the gennaker today but we were to close winded for its useful range, I think. All day we’ve been sailing along Big Island’s big domes in light wind, making slow progress, trying to escape Hawaii’s grip. I’ll add a fee sunset pics. It’s night time now, I’ve cracked off the sheets as the wind veered a good 30 degrees, and down to second reef too.

2020

I think some of you may be disappointed at how things turned out. This was after all a welcome distraction from the current apocalyptic news barrage: KKK revival? Check. A teacher beheaded, in France? Check. I’ll stop here. My little adventure was (hey! is, please, I’m still sailing, mind you) a window in a world devoid of these troubles. Ah, but sailing the high seas is no walk in the park! It’s grand, it’s fulfilling, it’s hard, exerting all sort of pressure on the body and soul, not to mention the boat and all equipment. And as a result news from the sea are not always rosy. That is the rule of the game: a ship is basically falling apart as soon as it gets out of the “manufactory” and is put in the water. Salty water and wind have harsh teeth!! Anyways, the distraction is over. Almost, there’s still the trip to San Francisco. Put it on 2020, with all the rest. What did I say about hindsight yesterday? Same applies to 2020.

Out there

Out there, there was nothing around me for miles. At some point as I was sailing further away my VHF radio went silent. Even the USCG station of San Francisco, with their powerful antennas high up the hills, couldn’t reach us after a while. The AIS had stopped showing any boat after a week I think. I was “out there”. I was where I wanted to be. However my vision of the “out there” didn’t match with what I had envisioned: a fair breeze on gently rolling sea. What I found is a cauldron of water bashing around from seemingly all directions, with a few predominant swells. A real mess! If there had to be major repairs the plan was to wait for a quiet day, a gentle sea, and proceed. What I discovered is that those days are rare. Even if the breeze lightens up, the sea is the memory of everything that happened close by and far away, and it moves big time! I’m being told that this was the perfect year to go: everybody is stuck at home, businesses aren’t hiring much, and what I already said above. Sometimes perfect doesn’t work …

Hard to see it amongst the clouds?

I’m sending a bunch of pictures instead of a load of text. A sunset, a sailor, a funny logo, and what’s left of the small spinnaker. I guess in a way I’ve rehearsed the opening and closing chapter of the full course. Well, when we’ll have made it safely to San Francisco that is.

As you can tell I’m still processing my decision. It dawned on me today that this is the second best outcome possible for my (first?) attempt. Of course, the best was the obvious one: finish the course per the WSSRC rules. But coming all the way through the doldrums, and then suffering compromising issues close enough from home to repair, that a U-turn even makes sense. That’s really good too! It means an excellent shakedown cruise, and no repair/refit in difficult/expensive places. Of course, we’re not home yet. The stretch of water between Hawaii and San Francisco, with winter coming, can reserve some nasty surprises. So let’s not jinx it!

One day at a time

What else happened today? We’ve been motor-sailing most day, and only now as I write this and the night is falling is the engine off. We had a light wind about 70-90 off the port bow for most of the day, which worked out great! Now the wind is shifty, but I hope will establish itself firmly soon. Since we motored so much I had to refill the tank. The refill cap is at deck level, which makes this task difficult. I didn’t spill to much (I have absorbent mats) but the funnel extension fell into the fuel tank refill hose! I’ll have to fish it out some day. With light wind today I went up to first reef. I discovered that there was major chafe, and had to do a temporary fix on that. It’ll need replacement. I also bagged up the staysail (should have done that October first!), and moved the corpse of “Big” in the forepeak. I ended the day with nonna’s lasagna and a decadent dark chocolate cheesecake. Yeah! Now if the wind could stop shifting to the north everything would be peachy!

SSS

No, not the Singlehanded Sailing Society, instead Serenity, Seamanship, then Speed. So far I had not been at sea more than 16 days, and that was on a heavily crewed boat. Solo, my max was less than 12 days. I had forgotten some essentials. Or more specifically, I knew them but was not acting accordingly. Serenity: the skipper must be at peace so as to be able to focus on the task at hand with his/her undivided attention. Seamanship: everything must be kept under close watch, and if necessary, corrective actions taken swiftly. Do not leave anything for the hand of Neptune. He’s quite mischievous, and will play tricks on you that you hadn’t even thought of possible. Speed: when skipper is happy, and the boat ship shape, then pedal to the metal. Only then. Dang, still shifting to the north. Something will have to be done, and since I want out of the doldrums, I may start the engine again. Look up into the stars! Until next time.

I think I owe it to Marie and the doldrums!

My last post may have sounded like in a way I didn’t care. I do. This sequence of events was not the preferred path, but for some reason I’m resigned, or more specifically looking ahead. I’m uncertain of what will happen next. Tom, Randall and Skip, to the extent possible, are helping with the search for a replacement boom, or a repair, for which I’m very grateful. Then there’s of course the sail home, which is no walk in the park! Finding employment again? Refit Changabang for another start? Train more? Try again? I’m comforted by all the positive comments from everyone. I’m glad too I was able to give you all some excitement! So let’s restate the goal of what started 17 days ago: go South, through the doldrums, hit your first southeasterlies squall, then come back home. That would be some serious shakedown cruise! I will say that in the end, although too late, one competent person did tell me that I should slap a fiberglass sleeve on the boom (which we were considering), and carry on. French. And I agree it would likely work, but should it fail then it would likely do so in the worst place, where recovery of the damage at sea would be hard, where shipping would be very expensive, and other red tape might make delivery a concern. This is not even considering that some countries are closed due to covid-19. There was more than “will the repair hold?” that went into the decision to stay in the Northern hemisphere. Right now, I’m nurturing the boom, probably a little too much, and we’re slogging along. In fact, I motored for an hour or so today. Yesterday, I fixed the 2:1 fractional spinnaker/code O halyard, and had some good learning with the small code 0. Today I played a little with the gennaker. We had to manage a couple squalls with winds hitting 20+ kts on the nose, which all lead to good reefing practice. As night fell we were left with a few knots of wind on the nose, so we’re back to slowly motoring at 3.5 kts. There’s no sound insulation around the engine “room”, which means it’s really loud inside, making sleep impossible for me. Life aboard is just the same as it always was: sleep, wake up finding the boat or sails need attention, prepare food, dispense water, respond to messages, take a nap, adjust the sails, look around for squalls, write a blog post, check emails, use the outdoor “fasealities”, check the weather forecast and ponder where to go, change sail, try something new, take a picture, eat a snack bar, drink, listen to music, fill in the log book, get hit by a squall, brush my teeth, go down to try to sleep, wake up, check boat status, close eyes, drift, wake up, check boat status, adjust sails, try another position in the bunk, what time is it?, drift into a strange dream with a raccoon encounter, wake up, check boat status, is that sunlight? And another day starts. The picture is from yesterday.