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| This was the last dorado Gus caught now almost a week ago, before we put up the spinnakers. |
FARRFLY, Friday 13th May 2011. S0845 W133.50
Extract from the weekly log;
Friday 13th, all lucky so far.
So did we finally get the kites up? yep, plural. We popped up the big blue on 10th to see how it would work out, 48 hours later it was still up there. But then the various yachties keeping an eye on the tracker gadget will have figured that out already. A couple of 230 mile days and what was starting to look like a bear away to Hawaii have all the hall marks of loonies let loose in the Pacific with a spinnaker. It was a glorious 2 days and nights. It is rather cool if a little unnerving alone on deck at night on a 58 foot FARR with the kite up.
The trick is to ensure things never start to get out of control. Once trouble starts its all over you will not stop the broach single handed. Its simple enough... must be if Tony can do it! You just have to keep the boat ‘under’ the kite.. literally chase it by steering. You don't have the hands or eyes to trim or ease any sails, so the only option left is to steer. Big gust... smell it coming, and drive down before its too late, work back up, drive down again. No snoozing on those watches. Often the wind was light and steady enough for the boat to drive itself. I have a great video of FARRFLY skimming along at 10 knots, spinnaker up, not a soul on deck. Looks very, very strange, rather Marie Celeste. But she is a great boat and despite her size is very manageable.
Anyhow after 2 days of fun we realized that we were headed for hawaii and to bring matters under control, took down big blue and put up hot red instead. Its a gennaker and sure enough we were soon blasting towards Marquesas at 11 knots for most of the day and that night but by the morning we saw we had been headed during the night, Hawaii again, so down it came and back to boring white sails. We got hot red up again today friday for a few hours but took it down before dark as no doubt during the night we would have driven off course with it up.
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| It would appear to the casual observer that Captain Kenny and his crew have everything under control? So where are we.. 300 miles from Marquesas. We will be there on Sunday so this is the last blog from the big crossing unless something goes horribly wrong over the next 48 hours. I have to say that the crossing has been very uneventful. The weather has been near perfect. The 3 days with the kites up were as close to sailing heaven as one will ever get. Bauble large stars at night, dancing clouds skimming past with ever changing faces. Long rolling flat seas gushing us forward. In my cabin the hissing sound of the boat sliding effortlessly on top of the sea....(there is very little of farrfly under the sea). No bouncing around, no banging, no lean too, just the silent hiss of the water skimming by. This was in stark contrast to days 8 to 10 as the seas became very confused and we were rockin’ and rollin’ all over the place. It would have been easier to sleep in a concrete mixer. But fortunately technology came to the rescue. Our satellite weather gadget showed much more favorable wind conditions about 100 mile north and we went for it.. A great decision, which led to 5 days of sailing heaven. Now we are lining up for the final run in. Its a bit bumpy tonight as we climb upwind ready to set the kite again in the morning. For the past two afternoons we have been visited by dolphins.. up to 50 each day. Mostly young ‘pups’ and at exactly the same time.. about 5.30pm.. it looks like they have just been let out of school and charge over to look at the boat and play in its wake.. again have a nice video and some good photos. The quantity of visible sea life has quietened down. No more flying squid and very few flying fish on deck. We have not caught a fish for over 5 days.. usually can’t catch them with spinnakers up. However all the dolphins are a good sign that things maybe reasonably healthy down there.  She laughed with counterfeit glee at all his jokes for many a joke had he. Life on board is very harmonious. A new phenomenon that has replaced the flying fish is the flying coffee. My watch is the the 6 to 10 watch both am and pm. Every morning 5 minutes after coming on deck I am hit with a freshly brewed cup of coffee that just flies into my hand. Katja is always up first. The coffee is quickly followed by a great breakfast.. its better than the Hilton! Just in case you think we are roughing it out here, this mornings breakfast consisted of fresh coffee, muesli garnished with apples, bananas, prunes and nuts, followed by pancakes with stewed apples and cinnamon. First lesson of Ocean sailing; bring a professional cook! We do the night watches single handed. On the Atlantic there were 2 or even 3 on watch together. Being on your own is definitely a bit boring. One misses the antics of the fun watch. It is also hard to stay awake. To some this will sound strange.. how could you possibly fall asleep in the middle of the ocean?, it would seem so dangerous.. truth be told there is nothing out here and we have more alarms than fort knox. Well it is not strictly true to say there is nothing out here, there are at least 10 other yachts. It is just that we can see none, nor are they on the radar, they are all too far away. They are spread out across an area about 3 times the size of Ireland. We are in contact with them every morning. When we were in Galapagos my-self and another owner got the idea to keep in touch on the SSB (Single Side Band radio) At the beach BBQ we told some others and soon we had our own ‘net’. We called it the Isabella net, and we go on air every morning at 8.30 our time.. 14.30 UTC. All the boats call in and report their position, weather and if all is OK. Its really very social, but very hard to hear some boats. Of the main group of 6 we left Isabella last. The first to leave was Pelagic followed by Nu Mornings... mentioned in a previous blog. Over the following 4 days all the others left then us. We left Bonair and Argentinia behind who left two days later together.. At this stage we have well and truly passed out everyone and they are all now hundreds of miles behind us with the exception of Nu Mornings who was 800 miles ahead when we started out. Yesterday they were less than 600 miles ahead and were due to sight land fall. They too had a fast run. There is no doubt that Farr boats are simply very fast. We have exactly 303 miles left. I fear we will be out of range in the morning and will not hear the net, we couldn’t hear it this morning. (update, correct we could not hear them). Remedy (wendy) Changing spots (ross) C U L8er. (Claudia), Idle islands, Trifon (carl) Papillion, Kite, RIRI, Pelagic graham, Bonair Tim, Argentinia Marchello, Squander Gavin, are most of the boats in the group. There is also another net we found, the Southern Cross net, which seems to have about 6 boats in it, plus now most of our lot who joined it as soon as the word spread.. they joined our net too.. so its starting to be a bit duplicitous. So far only trifon has had any problems, broken roller furler, and his daughter burnt her hands on the spinnaker sheet. Some of the heavy catamarans ran out of wind south of us and had to motor for a while. |
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| Yes it is true, the crew actually do something every once and a while. Here Katja sews the spinnaker sock. |
Smelly fellows;
And finally an interesting Ocean phenomenon that no doubt will interest my smelly nephews Jack and Tom;
‘smell the whales’.
If you are down wind of a whale when ‘she blows’ you can clearly smell her breath.. it is very strong and as you would imagine, smells like an Irish stony beach when the tide when is out, only a lot more fishy. A bit like the boy’s socks! On the night of the 12th I got the strong wiff of a whale twice within 30 minutes. Got the high beam out but unfortunately saw nothing. Female mating whales are a problem for sail boats between 40 and 60 feet as the female can mistake the boat for a male and come up underneath the boat with devastating results. It is worse than going aground and has been the source of at least two good survival books, and probably many more untold fatalities. (We don’t have to worry about this as we have written in whistling 'whaleish' on the underside of the hull “hooo whooo eeeooo”... which we understand means ‘sorry darling I’m gay.’)
That all folks, next stop Marquesas.... dc.
