May 29, 2019
It’s a beautiful night with consistent winds and calmer seas.
Charm is quite happy and therefore so are the rest of us. It isn’t quite
champagne sailing but at least I’m only getting drenched by the odd wave once
an hour instead of every 20 minutes.
We did have another sail mishap early this morning. Joe called me up to help.
Usually that’s not a good sign. I looked forward and our job had separated from
its track on the forestry so the bottom four feet were unattached and flapping.
Joe said he thought a shackle had broken but when he went up, he saw that the
luff tape had detached from the sail. So I eased the sheet and he held it
against the forestry while I tried to roll it up. I wasn’t sure I was going to
be able to get it but thankfully I managed to get it rolled enough for Noe to
let go of it and come back and help me.
So we’re sailing with just our main and still doing a respectable 9 knots. We
have had some miserable luck with sails but it could be worse. One of the boats
in the fleet had to get a new water maker and then the hoses got hooked up
wrong on the new one so it’s either non-functioning or dead. And poor Selene, a
new boat to the fleet, still hasn’t reached Suwarrow. Their engine went out and
they’ve had light winds so are making very slow progress. One day they averaged
1.5 knots. I don’t know what they will do when they get there because there
will be no resources for them apart from any other boats that are there. They
don’t have a watermaker on board so will have the water issue as well.
All things considered, I will take the sail issues!
I did figure out why the wind feels so much stronger than it is registering on
our display. When we turned downwind to get the jib furled, there was a
noticeable drop in the feel of the wind. I realized that we have been doing so
much downwind sailing that I had forgotten how the other points of sail (like
our current beam reach) feel. I am now calibrating my internal wind gauge for
the future. Nikitoo still is reporting 5 knots more than we’re seeing. Maybe
they just like to round up :).
We just broke 50 miles to go! As usual, it looks like a night arrival for us.
At least we have heard that it is fairly easy to enter Niue at night. It will
be almost morning when we get there so we should be fine.