avionbianca   Blog for s/v Avion

Day 11 Post By Jon

Repetition

Day 11 8:00 A.M. (682 Nautical Miles (NM) from Hawaii)

176 NM Made Good to Hawaii over the past 24 Hours.

Day 11 4:00 P.M. (627 NM from Hawaii)

We are steadily getting closer and making decent progress. The new starboard tack is working out well for us. On the most part we are heading directly for Hawaii which means our speed and velocity made good are the same. The seas are moderate and less confused as before and following. The winds are holding nicely at around 15 knots so we are able to sail with our largest spinnaker and full main. Unlike early this morning when John was at the helm, just about ready to go off the helm at 5:00 A.M. when we were hit by a wind gust to 25 and he lost control of the helm. Nico and I were with him and we had blown the boomvang immediate with no relief, we then let the guy out so the spinnaker pole was all the way forward without touching the forestay. We then started to ease both the main and spinnaker sheets still with no relief. At this point there is nothing left to do but hope the wind lessens and the rudder is able to catch hold. We waiter, and waited, and then I could feel the boat slowly fall off but still not out of the woods. At this point if the wind stayed the same or increases we were stuck, however Mother Nature must have had her fun because to our relief the wind decreased just enough to allow us to fully recover. As we were resetting all of the lines Juan was struck with a disturbing thought. It was his turn at the helm next and there is nothing worse out here than to be the helmsman during a major knock down. First off it is a helpless feeling because you are no longer in control. Second it is very demanding because you are constantly fighting the tiller to compensate for the boat wanting to either lay down or become a wind vane pointing into the wind with flogging sails and thrashing lines everywhere or worse yet roll down rather than up. Not being one to keep his opinions to himself Juan, rather strongly suggested that the crew through in a reef. Typically Juan’s suggestions are usually met without a lot of enthusiasm by his crew mates but this time it was completely different where they all responded with a resounding yes. The only issue was that we had to use one of the starboard wenches that was currently occupied by the spinnaker sheet under an incredible amout of load. Juan attempted to help Nico move the line but when it became obvious that Juan was making matters worse by tying to wrap a clockwise wench (BTW they all are) counter clockwise he decided to set back and watch in amazement Nico do his thing. Seems dyslexia may be another Juanism! Under a reefed main Juan was able to complete his turn at the helm with only one minor roundup.

I headed this entry “Repetition” for a reason after reading Nico’s last entry (not sure if it is posted yet). He is correct when he said that our days are basically 8 hours long; four hours on watch and four hours off watch. The repetition sets in with this constant 4 hours on 4 hours off routine with very little change unless there is a sail change or a knockdown. The only non-repetitive part is what you do on your off time when you are not sleeping because even under these extreme conditions you typically do not need to sleep half the time. This give you some time to yourself that I have been referring to as “Me Time”. Some of the crew, like me, read and work on the computer either blogging or navigating. Some do sleep more, I’m amazed at how easy David falls asleep. Some cook and some clean up, all wanting to contribute. Today was one of the few days with no overcast skies so there was a parade of 5 naked men taking turns showering. Kent brought a 5 gal. sun shower filled with sea water, providing a marvelous warm shower. Nico and David went the macho route and simply used a bucket dipped in the sea and dumped it over their heads. Juan wasn’t quite up to that exhilarating of an experience and John said he will give it a couple of degrees first.

It is important to note that repetition is not synonymous with boredom. We all look forward to our one hour stints at the helm, we look forward to our rest time and we look forward to our Me Time. How can you get bored sailing with a crew of great guys trying to make Avion go as fast as possible, in a setting comprised of beautiful seascapes, determining and taking your best judged course while competing against some of the best sailors in the area. This was the adventure I signed up for and it is the adventure being delivered.

Day 11 11:20 P.M. (576 NM To Hawaii)

The weather is benign, Kent is at the helm and David is his sidekick so I thought I would finish this post before waking Tom up at Midnight. What a difference a day makes. We currently in 12 to 14 knot winds, calm following seas and entering the next phase of the race; trade winds and dodging squals. We have the smaller spinnaker, a small jib, and the jib top all on deck and rigged if needed during the night. We do not see any cumulus cloud formations on the horizon so we think we can go with the largest spinnaker. I will be ready for an All Hands On Deck order if it comes while I’m asleep.

The good news is that my hand held GPS is finally showing an estimated ETA based on a running average of velocity made good. It seems it is limited to 100 hours, I never had a race where my next mark was that far away so I didn’t know that particular limitation. It shows about 95 hours; that should put us in about this time Tuesday the 14th day. I will include this figure in my headings along with nautical miles to go. We do have friends and family arriving tomorrow to be there for our finish so they would probably like to know.

Day 10 Post By Jon

Exhaustion Set in
Day 10 8:00 A.M. (858 Nautical Miles (NM) from Hawaii)

Note I think we reported the wrong Latitude on Day 9 by one degree which would have made the distance made good calculation of 184 NM rather than 132 NM and today’s 181 NM rather than 228. I’m sure it will be no problem for the race committee since it was an honest mistake and not a tactical move to give all of those boats in front of us a false sense of security!

Day 10 6:00 P.M. (784 NM from Hawaii)

No earlier posts today because I found myself too tired to do anything but sleep. I was unable to sleep my two previous off watches prior to going down this morning at 6:00 A.M. I’m not sure why. You would think that after 9 full days my body would have adjusted and wanted sleep. It may have been the excitement of having made the halfway point; whatever the reason the crew was worried. Tom, my hot bunk mate, took one look at me and said. “Do you want to be off for 6 hours rather than 4, you look like you could use some extra rest. ” My response was, “Is it that obvious”, and he countered with, “Oh yes”. Thankfully once my head hit the pillow I was out for 6 hours.

Our winds are still staying moderate at 17 plus knots with an occasional bump to 20. Our boat speed hovers around 7 knots with a few joy rides making it above 9 knots. While I was down the crew changed spinnakers from the reaching asymmetric to the more downwind symmetric, giving Nico another mark on his arm to 17, Juan still likes the idea of converting them to tattoos. We shook the reef out of the sail around 3 P.M. We just completed one of our few All Hands On Deck commands to jibe the spinnaker. After 8 days of being on a Starboard Tack we are now on Port. This means that he wind is now coming off of our port side (you’re left facing forward) of the boat rather than the starboard side (you’re right while facing forward). This was the first time we were able to test out our new two spinnaker pole rig. Tom wanted two poles and worked on various options before settling on the new aluminum pole to complement our standard carbon fiber pole. The broken end from yesterday’s broach was on the aluminum pole but our MacIver fixed it so we are now functional with two poles. We will see how good of a fix Kent made because it is now the pole flying. My guess it will get us to our next jibe.
Before the jibe we were running a course of around 250 while our current course is around 200 with the bearing to Hawaii of 221 degrees. At some point we will have to jibe back over to starboard to complete the course to Hawaii. We planned this setup 3 days ago when we chose to go more west early and then swing south later hoping those boats that went south earlier will be experiencing less wind tomorrow giving us an opportunity to catch them. The waves are getting larger and more spread out but they are very confused causing the boat to list in all directions. The larger sets are coming off our stern but there are some smaller sets that are crossing our bow resulting in a rather uncomfortable ride, but nothing serious.

Now that I am rested all is well on the boat. Tom and I have modified our watch schedules by two hours so I am off until 8 so it is some Me Time now. I will post this and see what this evening brings with our new tack. If these winds hold we are hoping to arrive in Hawaii on Tuesday giving Lindi and Angie plenty of time to provision and plan for the return trip since they are arriving on Saturday. Not that they won’t be partying with Al and Michelle and all of the boats that arrive before us!

While I was setting up to post Tom at the helm made another entry into the Rocket Club with 10.11 but not his personal best. John still is in the lead with 10.75, my best is 10.36.