SunShine in Majuro

[fenixrises]

Hi all,

Since it is now 2011 and I am in two new hemispheres I decided to start a new thread.

Here I sit, gentlely rolling along on Monday April 25th. At least I think its the 25th. I originally planned to sail due north after clearing Samoa's west end. The wind however decided to blow from the NE. I didn't want to start my passage with the wind forward of the beam so laid off to a beam reach.

The first day at sea after a long spell in port can often bring on
the "Queezies". So I held enough north to clear the Western Samoan Islands and sailed easy to the NW. As typical the seas were a bit confused near an island. With the light breeze this made for a somewhat lumpy motion.

As is normal for me, an evening's meal and a night spent dozing in
the cockpit brought back my sea legs. I would have spent the night in the cockpit regardless because of the proximity of land.

By Friday the wind was more NNE so still I held off to the NW. By now I had cleared Western Samoa and had plenty of sea room. Conditions remained light to moderate and the weather was
beautiful. Warm and sunny, definitely shorts only or nekkid if you prefer. The night breeze held enough cool in it for me to require a sheet while napping topsides in the evening.

By Saturday the wind settled in the ENE and held to 10~15knots. The seas were never bigger than 6' so the sailing conditions were superb. On Sunday after my noon site, which normally requires about 10 minutes I decided on some music. Noon sites are sooo labor intensive. Push the button, write up the headings in the log, check the time, when it is within a minute or so of "Noon" press another button. Bingo! One noon site done. Check against the morning WP for the last 5~6 hours run, write it down. Check against yesterdays noon site WP, get the days run, write it down. Ha! A pretty good day this Sunday 130 miles since yesterday's noon site.

Now it was time for the music. I went below and looked through my CD library and decided on an "Eagles" album. No sooner had I done that and gone back into the cockpit when I had a pod of small dolphins swiming and cavorting about. They love the bow wave and swim off to one side of the boat in pairs. Then the pairs dash up to the bow wave and swim back and forth under the bow a few times and then they race off again to be replaced by another pair or two. Evidentally they approved of my choice in music. I have often noticed the arrival of dolphins shortly after playing music. So far they have liked anything I have to offer.

How delightful it is to watch these sea creatures frolic about the boat. If I go stand up in the bow they will roll slightly and look up at me as if to say "Hi!" I think their antics are like a game to them. When they're swiming back to the side before they make their dash for the bow I imagine them saying to each other " I dare you to get as close as you can"."I bet I can get closer than you" or dolphin words to that effect. Later in the afternoon I had another visit from a different group. These were larger and not as many. But they must have had some serious business to attend to because there was no playing in the bow wave for them.

Monday came and went much the same. The nights were just as easy and brilliantly lit by the waxing moon. I like to start a long passage on the first quarter moon. This gives me moonlight
for at least half the night for two weeks. This time I started on Thursday, two days after the first quarter. Tuesday evening brought an increase in cloud cover. There had been rain showers
all around the boat during the day but nothing directly overhead.

By Wednesday I was seeing what looked to me like "Doldrumy" type skies. The wind was off a bit and I was getting light rain from time to time. Late in the afternoon I saw what I thought
might be a fishing boat 3~4 miles ahead, fine off the starboard bow. The boat/small ship was heading maybe ESE towards the Kiribati group, some hundres of miles away. By dark the breeze was up again and the sky cleared off.

Thursday came with similar conditions, except for a strong short squall just at sunrise. By now I thought it would be fun to cross the equator and the International Date Line(long 180*)
at the same time. I held my course more to the west. SunShine and I reached the 1/2 way point to the Marshalls, distance wise, at about 18:00 hours. Shipboard time was -11GMT the same as Samoa.

With daylight on Friday the doldrumy skies became more pronounced. The winds remained 10~15K throughout the day. I was wondering if I would run into any real calms. I made sure I had a full tank of diesel(75gals) with an extra 5gal jug just in case. But so far the only fuel I used was to get out of the harbor and a couple of hours besides. I did this to fully charge the batteries
and to make sure the engine would run smoothly, not having checked the boat under power before leaving. I did run the engine numerous times in port, checking it's function and for battery
charging.

I didn't take the boat out and putt-putt about the harbor as the bottom and prop were very fouled. Since I use soft abaltive paint I didn't want to scrub the bottom too often and wear away the paint just sitting. Fortunately one of the other cruisers, Don & Judy aboard WindRyder, had a 12v. hooka setup that they graciously allowed me to borrow a couple of days proir to departure. Man was it a lot of work cleaning off 5 months worth of growies.

Saturday morning announced itself with a squall, AT 3AM!!. At the time I was sailing quite nicely under single reefed main and poled out genny. What an exercise to get every thing under
control in the dark with a rising wind. This included dropping and stowing the pole. Of course these things only last a short time and then its back to normal. Normal except for the "Big Blackness" I could see up to windward. Sure enough the BB reached me by 4AM and there I was pulling down the main in pouring rain and rising wind. Mostly these tropical squalls do not get too bad, in either strength or duration. Sure enough this one was quite a bit stronger than the 3AM one but blew itself out in about 40 minutes.

By now I was too keyed up to easily go back to sleep yet still a bit pooped after my foredeck calistenics of the wee hours. So at least I went below, dried off and lay down for awhile doing my best to relax and let the tension drain away. By sunrise I was up again. I find it very hard to continue to snooze once the cabin starts to lighten up. I had my normal breakfast, hot cereal, up in the cockpit watching the sun climb the sky. I gave it my usual greeting
"Good morning Morning and Hello SunShine!" Kind of get two birds with one stone on that one don't I?

It looked like another squall was headed my way. By now of course I could see it's approach quite easily. So well before panic time I was able to bring down the main and get it neatly tied. Then about 9AM whammo, the squall hit. The routine is pretty simple. Reduce sail, bear off a bit. Crank some extra helm in with the main rudder and ride it out. In a big gust I would have to tweak to the rudder for a few seconds. Like all the others this squall passed without much problem.

By now I was getting excited about my double crossing and down to the last few miles. A little after noon I started to hand steer SunShine. We were getting very close. I sat behind the wheel
with the GPS in my hand. I was going to thread the needle. A litle left, a little right, watch the time, be prepared to key in the WayPoint as soon as we hit. Back and forth, back and forth we went. Here it comes, here it comes. Now! Wow, I nailed it pretty close! First I watched the GPS as the readout went from S to N latitude then in about two seconds W to E longitude.

Pretty cool, eh! At 12:17:19 PM we changed two hemispheres at the same time, well nearly so. Later that day when I checked in to the PacSea Net, Tom, that day's net control gave me a Golden
Shellback award. I know that you get a Shellback when you cross the equator for the fist time. I guess the "Golden" part is an extra for crossing the date line. One of the other net relays called and we talked, on another freq, about the experience.

I gotta tell you though, about those pesky "Space Aliens and UFOs". Here I was sailing along quite nicely on Saturday afternoon when all of a sudden I was abducted for nearly a whole day. Next thing I knew it was Sunday and an hour earlier. Who stole my 23 hours? I want to know. I'm sure it was those Space Aliens. And I have absolutely no memeory of it. Did they do secret experiments on me? I related to Tom on the net about how they(the Space Aliens) were having a big tail gateing party there at 180* X 0*. I mean look on a globe sometime, there ain't nothig' out there for 100's of miles but water. They invited me for a burger but I passed, wanting to keep going on my way.

Tom asked if I also had some cheap swamp land in Florida that I wanted to sell. We all had a good chuckle. Tom is soon heading to the east coast, the Philly area. He was going on about cheese steak sandwiches. He offered to send me a used wrapper;) I asked him to waft me some fumes this way.

Monday brought a great sailing day. The wind got up to a steady 15k + a little. SunShine really liked the conditions. Off on a broad starboard reach we went, making an easy 6k. Glorious sailing,
perfect conditions and they lasted for the whole day and into the early hours of Tuesday. The early hours brought a series of line squalls. Some rain and slightly increased wind were not too unpleasant. By daylight the wind was up and so were the seas. I had been sailing with a 2r main and genny. With the strengthening wind I dropped the main. The ride was getting a bit wild as the
seas were now around 12' and the gusts in the squalls up near 30k. I rode the conditions for a while trying to determine if things would deteriorate.

After my noon site on Tuesday, I decided it would be prudent to change over to the cutter sails. I had already dropped the main as it was overpowering the self-steering and I did not need the drive.
This was a bit of work. I got the s'sail up on deck, hanked it on and arranged the sheets, then hauled away on the halyard and trimmed the sheet. Next I had to drop the genny and lash it to the
mid lifeline to port. This is my normal routine at sea. One headsail or the other is usually lashed to the lifeline while the other is set. Under just the s'sail we were making about 3.5k. Then I unbagged the small yankee, hanked it on, changed the sheets over, made sure everything was clear then haulded away and trimmed the yankee.

This took about an hour and I only got a couple of small splooshes from the sea. There, that is much better. Splitting the sail area makes it all more manageable and why I like cutter rigs so
much. We were still making 5+k but it was sometimes very rolly with the big beam seas. I kept looking to windward hoping to see the sky clearing, no deal. The overcast was near 100% all the
time and the line squalls kept coming every hour or so. With the average wind speed increasing it was now blowing a steady 25k. It kept on like this through the night but while there was rain about it wasn't falling on SunShine and me.

Tuesday night and all through Wednesday and on to Thursday morning these conditions persisted. During Wednesday afternoon the wind moderated a bit so I added the 2r main. I was able to ease my course a bit more to the west. By Thursday evening and through that night the wind remained quite strong. Strong enough that SunShine did 108 miles in 15hours 20 minutes, that's an average of 7 knots. We were almost flying. This brought about the best noon to noon of the trip so far, 159 miles, that's better than 6.5 knots average speed for the 24 hours.

By Thursday noon conditions finally started to moderate. The sun returned and the sky cleared. I expected to go through 2~3 days of calms transiting from south to north. Never happened. Instead we got strong winds along with squally conditions and heavy cloud cover. Fine by me. I got good boat speed and was able to steer a near rhumb line course.

As sundown neared the wind was back up around 25k. Since I didn't know how unsettled conditions might be I decided to drop the 2r main. SunShine was really zooming at 7+k but was getting a little squirlly. And at that speed I knew I would get to Majuro too early. Even under reduced sail we were still making 5+k but under much better control. The rest of the night passed without any excitement and by dawn it looked like another beautiful day was in store for SunShine and crew.

At sunrise I checked my position. 7*30'N is where I wanted to be. That would give me about 7 miles clearance north of Arno atoll, a bit east of Majuro. Now I had to alter course to due west. The
wind was now at 20k and ENE. So I reset the windvane and rehoisted the 2r main. Then I brought the yankee over to starboard, the windward side, and set it on the pole. Delightful sailing. Wind about 160* appearant 5.5k boat speed and a gentle roll. Sunshine and warm temps made for a wonderful day.

As we neared Arno I realized that we were too close and I would have to slow down. Only problem was the wind increased throughout the day and the heavy clouds and squallyness returned. After dark we were north of Arno. I had already dropped the main and yankee but was still going too fast. No way I am going to enter a lagoon at night. Even though the lagoon of Majuro is big and deep and the pass supposedly well bouyied, just no way.

So I dropped the s'sail as well. Then just drifting downwind SunShine was still making 3&1/2 ~4k. I rigged up a drouge from my lead pig, some anchor chain and rode. That finally got us down to 2k. But of course the rolling was no fun. So not much sleep that night. At sunrise I got the 2r main and s'sail up and headed off for the pass. Timed it pretty well and got there at 9am. That was
supposed to be low tide slack water.

In full daylight the entrance and passage the the pass was a cakewalk. Then things got tough. The main settlement of the atoll is at the eastern end about 10 miles dead to windward from the pass. Powering into the short steep chop and 25k winds made for a slow journey. Then an unknown problem cropped up. The engine would stop, just stop. I suspected an air leak in the fuel system though I had no problem until now.

With the strong wind and no chance to anchor(200' deep) I just kept on. It took 5 hours to make the 10 miles because I couldn't run the motor over 2,000rpm. Even so it would stop after 20~30 min of run time, very frustrating. Finally at 2PM I grabbed a mooring bouy. Then spent some time tidying the boat, made an evening meal and crashed at 7:30 that evening. Man I was pooped but I was here.

Daily runs: 101,101,130,122,124,115,123,103,104,114,134,122,159,133,125 = 1810 miles approx.

Take care,
Fred

[bgephart]

Congratulations, Fred, on another great voyage! I enjoyed watching your progress on ShipTrak, and your posted description of your trip makes for a terrific read. Thanks for keeping us up to date on your travels.