Lewmar again…

This morning brought a new surprise. On his watch, Robert collected about a dozen inch long pea green round tubes, and asked me what they might be. My first thought was some strange sort of chewing gum pieces. On inspection they proved to be the inner rollers of one of our Lewmar main sheet blocks, which was spitting them out. We rigged a replacement block and were able to replace all the rollers in the original. Situation solved? Nope. Two other similar Lewmar blocks proved to have far less than their full compliment of rollers. Hopefully Lewmar will sell us some replacements and we can get them to Chile with our crew change at Puerto Montt. #@$%!!& Lewmar.

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Location 40° 41S 86° 42W
Tuesday11.06.2007

The Schooner Maggie B’s noon position on November 6th was 40° 41S 86° 42W. We are motorsailing downwind towards Puerto Montt at 6.5 knots. The wind is from the West at 10-12 knots. The Maggie B doesn’t do well going directly downwind, and, after about 4000 miles, we are more in “delivery mode” for the last little bit, rather than extracting every last knot out of whatever wind we have.

We have come 4359 NM from Rangiroa and have 597 NM to go to Canal Chacao, the channel entrance to Puerto Montt.

We are focusing on arriving at Canal Chacao at the start of the flood, which is one hour before low tide. Low tide on November 10th is at 0830 local (GMT -3), so we are shooting to be there at 0630 local — better early than late. The math is Fourth or Fifth Grade, but still so often done wrong: at noon today we had 597 NM to go. Ship’s noon now is GMT 1800 (we are now -6). We want to arrive at 1130 GMT in @3 1/2 days, or 90.5 hours. 597 divide by 90.5 equals 6.6 knots average speed. Could we arrive by the end of the Friday flood? It starts at 0940 GMT, it would end at @1530 GMT or 69.5 hours equals 8.6 knots. Hmmm. Could do it, but not with 10 knots of wind on our stern and tight on diesel (we have fuel for 6 knots for 600 NM, but not 8.5 knots - which would require approximately twice the fuel flow for the 40% more speed). So Saturday morning it is.

It was lovely at noontime today. We had lunch at the table in the cockpit. It is so strange to go from snow flurries two nights ago to lunch on deck.

No one on board speaks Spanish, but we are all trying to learn. The Armada, the Chilean Navy keeps tight track on shipping. One must report to each lighthouse or Naval Station one passes. But what to say? Probably not buenas dias or Mas cervezas, por favor, the Spanish we are learning. So catchy phrases like “A que hora es el corriente de creciente nel canal Chacao?” are the order of the day (”When does the flood start in the Chacao Channel?”). But will we understand the answer? We’ll know Saturday. I wish my daughter Alexandra were on board with her fluent Spanish!

I am pleased to report that we seem to have shopped successfully for this leg. It appears that we will have sufficient supplies of good coffee, garlic and chocolate.

All is well.

Location 41° 21S 89° 45W
Monday 11.05.2007

The Schooner Maggie B was at 41° 21S 89° 45W at noon on November 5th. We are making good time, 8.1 knots more or less directly for Puerto Montt. The wind is from the NW at 13-16. It is overcast with fog. Visibility is up and down from 100 meters to 1/2 mile.

We have come 4207 NM from Rangiroa and have 727 to go to Puerto Montt.

This has been a fairly mixed period, with the wind going up and down in strength and all around in direction. I wish that I could say that we are following a clever strategy with carefully defined tactics for dealing with this little high sliding out (the barometer is falling) and the strength of the low coming to bear, but we aren’t. We are just taking the wind and waves as they come and doing our best to keep the boat going as much towards Puerto Montt as we can. In the last three weeks we have been almost completely on the port tack with the sheets almost nailed down. In the last day have jibed three times and even now Hannah (The Watch) is eager to go back to starboard. It “should” steady in from the south, but the wind hasn’t gotten the message as yet.

All is well.