Cruising the South Pacific with Tackless II
Tackless II, along with her two captains, Don and Gwen, cruise from Fiji to Australia
Saturday, October 25, 2008
24 October- Day 4 on the BUMPY road to Oz
Today will not be our favorite day of the trip. At about 0330 this morning our genoa furling line chafed through releasing the whole genoa. You are not supposed to sail with the tension on the furling line for this reason. You are supposed to walk forward and put a pin in a little hole in the drum to hold it. Then of course, you would have to walk forward again to take the pin out should conditions worsen and you want to furl the whole sail. This is not exactly what you want to be doing when conditions warrant furling the darn thing in the first place!

Of course, you also don't want to have to deal with getting a flogging sail down in 20 knots and rough seas. And dark. Our soloution was to harden up the genoa (sheet it in for saiing) and then heave to and wait for daylight. Even in daylight, it wasn't a fun job, but we got the sail down and tied off on the starboard deck and soldiered on with reefed main, staysail, and old Perky. we needed the engine's help to point up sufficiently to get across a mid-ocean ridge we wanted to take at a certain place.

We should cross the ridge later this evening. the winds are backing into the south and are forecast to go southeast and the seas are already easing off a bit. That should make the last of our trip a little easier, letting us shake a reef or two out of the main and reach off the wind into Bundaberg. Right now, it looks like we might arrive sometime monday, but if not, it will be Tuesday morning. At this point I need to shift to using my computer for navigation (don't have a chip for Australia for the plotter), so once I do that, I MAY not be able to switch between the sat phone and the computer GPS. So if you don't hear from us, don't worry!

Really looking forward to Bundaberg!

The 2 Cs
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