Day 4
Today was a boat-centric day.
The morning wind was moderate and from behind. We doing pretty well with main, mizzen and poled out gib, but the swell up and the ride was rolly.
We seldom sail with only the main and not roll out the gib as well. With the wind from behind, the main sail can block the wind to the gib. This can cause the gib to collapse, then fill suddenly with a jerk only to collapse again or just beat itself against the rigging. It can be quite unpleasant.
The solution to this is to pole out the gib with a whisker pole, which I think is just a small spinnaker pole, but must check with Tim. This worked for a while. Our pole is telescopic. It needs to be extended so the gib isn’t completely blanketed by the main.
The pole is extended by sliding the two sections apart until the push button clicks into the hole on the extending section. The collapsed pole is store on the front of the mast.
So Tim gets the pole set up, all is well, he comes back to the cockpit and suddenly the gib is collapsing. Consternation. The pole had collapsed. This sometimes happens and Tim went out to reset it. After this had happened a couple of times, it seems that the ‘button and hole’ arrangement is failing. Nothing to be done for the time being and we rolled in the gib and stowed the pole.
With just main and mizzen we were going a long beautifully and we think the ride was smooth without the gib. A little slow but that suits are arrival time.
By the by, we almost always use the mizzen, putting it up even before we raise the anchor. It can be reefed down if necessary, usually when to much sail ( or any at all) on the mizzen causes yawing - the bow turning up into the wind.
We’re running out of prepared meals, and I really didn’t fancy cooking. We were actually considering chicken curry from a tin that Tim bought in Fiji when I was in Canada. It is however a meal I feel quite strongly that Tim should eat on his own. After a some head scratching, I decided we’d have the remaining chilli and falafels from previous meals on rice with a bit of grated cheese on the chilli and mango chutney on the falafel and call it ‘fusion’. It was actually very nice and freed up space in the fridge which is still very full.
Day 5
The extra fridge space has been taken up with a lentil veggie soup. The morning was relatively calm so I went for it. We had it for lunch with toast with a vegan sun dried tomato pesto I bought to try I Cairns. I wish I’d bought more as it was a really good.
We’re very jealous of the boats that arrived today. It’s very hard to judge exactly when you’ll arrive at a particular waypoint. The next important waypoint is at the entrance to the river and we want daylight for that.
We’ve put the breaks on so to speak and have a heavily reefed mizzen and gib. If the wind could just blow at the same strength for the next 5 hours, it would be helpful. We’re trying to keep the speed down to 3 knots.
We had some excitement this afternoon when Tim noticed we were towing a big round fishing buoy by a length of green rope. The last time we would have had something like this happen was probably the south coast of England.
We haven’t used the engine at all and we hoped that would mean we were just towing it by the rudder. We turned Larus up into the wind and the buoy just drifted free.
It was wonderfully anticlimactic.
Throughout the previous night we passed quite easily between the many large fishing boats lighting up the sea. From a distance, they seen as eerie patches of the light disappearing into the distance. All were on AIS so their position appeared on our chart plotter, for both the boats and floats on the nets. They were very easy to navigate around.
After dinner this evening, Tim had a frustrating time trying while I was sleeping to get past ONE boat laying out several miles of nets. We sail with only navigation lights at night so we can see everything around us. They sail with huge deck lights and are blind to everything around them. We use AIS as well. If they chose to lookout for us they could, but you can’t be sure that they will. In fact you can be pretty sure that they won’t.
Maybe because it was the only fishing boat in the area that it felt comfortable to go this way, then that way, changing direction as and when it liked. Tim was sailing this way and that way to avoid them for most of the 3 hours I was sleeping.
He was a little frazzled when I got up, particularly as he’d just seen an unaccompanied fishing flag drift by. Even in daylight, you’re unlikely to see flags and buoys unless they catch your eye as they pass.
We will definitely check our stern before starting the engine.
Halfway through my watch, I can only see a few specks of light in the distance and will keep my eyes in them.
In less than 12 hours, we should be at anchor and waiting for Customs and Immigration to arrive. Very looking forward to it.
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