Broken Wing and Positioning for Cape Horn

Broken Wing and Positioning for Cape Horn

November 27, 2018

Day 54

Noon Position: 56 01S  77 05W

Course(t)/Speed(kts): ExN 7+

Wind(t/tws): WNW 25 – 27

Sea(t/ft): NW 8 – 10

Sky: Overcast with drizzle

10ths Cloud Cover: 10

Bar(mb): 1012, steady

Cabin Temp(f): 52

Water Temp(f): 40

Relative Humidity(%): 74

Sail: #2 poled to windward; #1 free flying to starboard.

Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good (nm): 160

Miles since departure: 7157

Avg. Miles/Day: 133

One cannot call these anything but excellent, simply excellent sailing conditions. Winds W, WxN, WNW at 20 – 30, day after day. And Mo churning out 150 mile 24-hour runs and better without effort.

Wind is slowly swinging into the north now, so at noon I took down the starboard pole and let the big jib fly free, while on port, the #2 was kept poled out. The big genoa can handle being cranked in hard and taking a wind deeply on the quarter when poled out, but only if it’s full. There’s just too much wind today for that.

I’ve used this tactic several times, and it always looks weird and feels weird. Mo appears to have a broken wing, and her motion changes, though how I can’t say. I watch Monte and the tiller for signs of imbalance, but there aren’t any. I still don’t like it. When wind went up a few ticks later, I rolled in the #2 altogether, and we’ve been charging at 7 and 8 knots on the big sail alone all afternoon.

As I type, wind is touching 30, and it’s time to start changing down to smaller sail.

—

If you have been watching the tracker, you saw that I changed course at noon as well. I put a little north in our heading, and will keep it there until we come back up to 55 58S. That’s the latitude of Cape Horn light. I’ve decided to position for a run north of Isla Diego Ramirez.

Why? Because I think I can.

The weather looks manageable; the strong winds between now and climbing over the continental shelf are NW and will be knocked down by the peninsula; and the seas we have, a lumpy 8 and 10, aren’t enough to cause problems in shallow water. And because a chance to see Cape Horn from sea–that’s once in a lifetime.

Cape Horn: 326nm at noon today. Two days and four hours at current pace.

—

It’s 46 in the cabin when I wake and never gets much above 50 on cloudy days. So today, after a cold lunch, I decided to warm up with hot cocoa. This is my first cocoa this trip and my second total on this trip and last.

I like cocoa. I make it from my own recipe, but I screwed something up when mixing the bulk-batch of 30 pounds, what I thought I’d drink on the Figure 8 Voyage 1.0, and never touched the stuff last year. I didn’t remove it once home either, but left it on board for this voyage. It is HARD AS A ROCK, and took a hammer to make small enough chunks to fit into a coffee cup. Still doesn’t taste right, but at least it was hot.