Steady As She Goes

March 15, 2019

Day 162

Noon Position: 53 51S  87 56W

Course(t)/Speed(kts): ExS 6+

Wind(t/tws): NWxW 13 – 20

Sea(t/ft): NW 7

Sky: Mostly clear with high cirrus streaming in surface wind direction

10ths Cloud Cover: 2

Bar(mb): 1010, steady

Cabin Temp(f): 59 (48 at 6am)

Water Temp(f): 44

Relative Humidity(%): 76

Sail: Twin headsails poled out

Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good (nm): 144

Miles since departure: 22,258

Avg. Miles/Day: 137

Days since Cape Horn: 105

Miles since Cape Horn: 14,617

Avg. Miles/Day: 139

Longitude Degrees Made Good (degrees minutes): 3 54

Total Longitude Made Good Since Cape Horn (degrees minutes): 341 39

Avg. Long./Day: 3.25

Miles to Cape Horn: 638

Wind ever so slowly backed into the west overnight so that it wasn’t until midnight that I could fly the twin headsails. And it was a relief to do so because with a quartering breeze Mo can be difficult to balance.

This is not Mo’s fault, but rather is due to the constant shifting in wind speed (the hallmark of sailing down here) that changes how the boat sails, and it changes how Monte reacts. The net is I like to be available to help by adjusting Monte or easing sheets with a variable wind on the quarter. With wind aft, I can sleep.

Clear skies and a cold sun until noon. I laid things out to dry–rugs, towels, foulies–but they did little of that in temperatures barely above 50. All gray on gray this afternoon.

Lately, I’ve been having trouble piecing together fast 24-hour runs. The last three days of 157, 145 and 144, respectively, have been our fastest in over a week but are five to fifteen miles a day slower than our first approach to Cape Horn. Partly this is due to lighter and more variable wind, and partly this is me. I’m tired. I’m not driving the boat like I was, especially at night, when I’ll sometimes defer sail changes till morning.

It’s disappointing. I’d like to end the circuit with an average of at least 140 miles a day… but tomorrow we hit another dead spot followed by a day of being hard on the wind in Force 7. So it goes down here. “Be angry at the sun for setting if these things bother you,” says Robinson Jeffers in my ear.

“Steady as she goes, mate,” he would say, if he knew the first thing about boats.

Today we came to the last page of our second logbook and now move on to the third. I log ever two hours from 6AM to 8PM–the tablet in the nav station chimes at these intervals by way of reminder–and what I record each time is all of the data you see at the head of these posts. I’ve found I appreciate later having such detail to refer back to, but I sure do burn through a lot of pencil lead.

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