Wednesday 21, 4 pm South Pacific 26 degrees 7 minutes south 160 degrees 24 seconds east
Today’s entry comes from a crew looking forward to getting there.
Yesterday was a day of challenges. Hence no entry. Extremely difficult weather conditions, with constant squalls bringing severe winds and rain. The wind direction continues to challenge our course.
Our poor boat continues to have issues. In a heavy squall yesterday one of our running back stays (part of the rigging) broke, but was fixed. Numerous waves crossing the boat have found ever new ways to get water into the boat, causing some degree of dampness. Then our chart plotter decided to lose communication with the GPS, and caused the auto pilot to be unresponsive. This gave rise to an unusual situation. We were unable to turn off the auto pilot which was stuck on the last set course. We were thus given only one course to follow, which was fortunately the best option given the wind direction. So was the situation over night, during which the difficult weather abated.
Today the auto helm has been released from it’s relentless course which would have seen us collide with New Calledonia in a few days time, but, unfortunately we no longer have the services of the auto pilot or the chart plotter. Just as well for backups, and, well, thank you for the charts dropped off at the last minute Andrew.
The road ahead feels like some hard work now, but we continue to sail on.
And again, are we there yet?
Bill Vrijens