Forty Days and Forty Nights

Day 40
Noon Position: 37 46S 118 02W

Course/Speed: SSE 5

Wind: NNW 10

Sail: Twin genoas poled out full

Bar: 1029

Sea: N 3; the big odl swell from the SW is gone.

Sky: FOG!

Cabin Temp: 77 

Water Temp: 63
Miles last 24-hours: 138

Miles since departure: 5238

When I wake in the morning, I will have been at sea longer than Noah and his Ark. All day I have felt this deserves celebrating, that forty days and forty nights is significant. Clearly that number had import to the Patriarchs. So, I’ve dug out a beer I particularly like and tonight will raise a toast to not running aground on Mt Ararat. 

Fog is today’s story. Drizzle overnight with fog and fog all day. I stole a latitude shot at noon, but the horizon for longitude was so close I could have licked its ice cream cone. 

Both genoas are poled out full and only in the last hour has there been enough wind to make them happy. When unhappy they are a terror, barking and slapping as the languid breeze slips through their fingers. Winds are between 10 and 15 now, and they are humming contentedly an inaudible tune.

I came on deck after breakfast to find the starboard genoa sheet had escaped the pole. A straighter shackle that doesn’t impinge the release mechanism was easy enough to rig, and I was just finishing up when the pole fell right out of its socket at the mast. Down on deck it came with a crash, caught by the shrouds and the fact that its control lines were still attached. No idea what triggered the release. I reattached the pole and yanked on it furiously for several minutes trying to repeat the accident. Didn’t budge. 

Southeast is still our course as we attempt to skinny between the center of the high to the east (pressure 1032) and that fast moving low to the northwest (pressure 994 at the center). I’m guessing the fog is the “leading edge” of the low, whose winds should start passing over us tonight, though the better part of the punch seems well to the south!
By way of final preparations, I’ve spent the day at odd jobs. The heavy weather staysail has been permanently rigged for a couple weeks, but I’ve now run the sheet. The starboard running back, useless this last month and so stowed to protect from chafe, has been recommissioned. The clear plastic rain guard is now zipped in over the companionway hatch. Lines have been tidied, tut stowed below. 

The extreme weather chores have been saved for another day–removing the dorades and blocking the holes (still too warm) or locking down the floorboards in the pilot house. The box of wine, jar of nuts, and gallon jug of water I use to gauge my daily consumption still sit on the galley counter. 

I mean, it’s just a low.