Escape Adventure:  Passage from Valdivia to Galapagos Part 2  (22 – 28 August)

In Part 1, I took you through the final preparations for our passage from Valdivia, Chile to the Galapagos Islands and the actual departure.  That was Saturday, 22 June.  We ended that blog saying we were starting our first night watch after seeing the first glorious sunset.  I can’t really say I slept much during the night.  I could hear the water gurgling past the hull and the frequent SLAM of a wave hitting either the underwing (basically the floor under the bridge deck) or one of the hulls.  Each time, it sounded and felt about like driving your car off the road and hitting a huge rock on the under carriage with enough force to take out the oil pan, transmission, and rear differential all in one swipe.  The other thing that made it hard to sleep was that the waves were coming from the aft quarter and they were moving faster than we were so each one would push the stern of the boat around to one side until the auto pilot applied enough force and angle to the rudder to correct it.  So we didn’t really go in a straight line, but rather sashayed through the waves with the bow sweeping back and forth about 30 degrees.  Each time I felt that, I couldn’t help, but think that the auto pilot had dropped off line or wasn’t up to the task and that we would soon find ourselves sideways to the waves, which is not what we wanted to do.  Anyway, I was on watch when the sun came up and it was another clear day—overcast, but no rain and the winds had maintained about 20 knots which is what the weather forecast said they would do.  For once in my lifetime, the weather forecast was turning out to be right on and the winds were not only maintaining speed, but were shifting to the south so they were pushing us in the direction we wanted to go.  I looked at the speedometer and it said we were going over 10 knots speed over ground (SOG) according to the GPS and about 12 knots through the water.  I went down to my shower and looked out the porthole at the other bow to see what it looked like to be flying along at 10 to 12 knots.  I posted a movie on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwdYZDUjEwQ9 so you can see too.  It’s pretty impressive and gives you the illusion that you’re really making progress.  Of course, you are making progress, but at 10 knots it takes a long time to see movement on the chart plotter when the course is 2539 nautical miles.  I also took this movie off the back deck so you can see what it looks like at that end of the boat when you’re cruising along at about ten knots.  (See You Tube  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz0lEWl5LZg).  There isn’t a lot of entertainment other than watching the ocean go by on these long passages.  The land has long disappeared, so without the instruments (compass, chart plotter, speed and wind meters, etc.) there isn’t much of a reference as to where you’re going or how you’re doing.
 

On the first day out after sailing with the screecher and the mizzen jib for about four hours I was sitting in the bridge deck when all of a sudden I noticed the speed dropped to about 4 knots from 10.  I looked out and noticed that the screecher was gone.  I yelled to Jay and Sven to get on deck and help me stop the boat, which they did.  The screecher halyard (i.e., the line that holds the top of the sail up) had chaffed through at the top of the mast allowing the huge sail to drop into the ocean in front of the boat which was moving along at about ten knots.  The forward force of the boat put tremendous stress in the fiberglass bowsprit once it entered the water and that broke the bowsprit where it fastens onto the seagull striker in the center of the cross member between the two bows.  Once we got the other sail furled and the mast foils weather cocked so they weren’t propelling the boat forward any more, we took the boat hook and tried to pull the sail in from the bow, and again from the stern, but it just wasn’t moving.  Finally, Escape drifted a little backward and the sail stayed stationary in the water, so we were able to pull it back up onto the trampoline by brute force.  It was wet and heavy, and had black bottom paint smeared on it, but it did not appear to be damaged.  We lost about 15 minutes recovering the sail, so now we had to move quickly to get the boat moving again with the two jibs and get her back up to at least 7 knots so we could stay ahead of the storm that was brewing.  With a True Wind Speed (TWS) of  15.9 knots right on our tail, we were only able to get about 6.6 knots of Speed Over Ground (SOG) which is measured by the GPS, not the speed through the water.  We had two problems:  (1) the bowsprit was damaged where the pin joins it to the seagull striker as described above, and (2) the halyard that holds the screecher to the top of the mast had chaffed through and had fallen down inside the mast in a pile of spaghetti at the bottom of the mast.  We sent an emergency e-mail to Alwoplast via the SSB radio explaining the situation and requesting guidance on what we could do to make temporary repairs because in the light winds we had right behind us, we needed the screecher to stay above 7 knots. 

Between midnight and 6 AM on the 23^rd the winds were really picking up as the weather forecast had predicted.  The winds were still from the south, but were now in the mid 20 knot range with gusts up to 35 knots.  We put one reef in the main and two in the mizzen sail and we were flying along at 8.8 knots.  These winds were pushing bigger waves now that were crashing into us from the aft quarter and since the waves were going faster than we were, they wanted to push the stern of the boat around.  We decided to feather the mizzen mast foil so there was less force from the wind on it and less of a tendency to turn to weather.  By noon on the 23^rd the bilge pump alarms were going off because we had several gallons of water in the starboard engine compartment, about two gallons in the starboard bedroom bilge, and quite a bit of water in the starboard aft hull bilge.  These events triggered another flurry of e-mails to Alwoplast and Chris White trying to find out where the water was coming from and what to do about it.  Chris said that Pounce, the second boat in the Atlantic 47 series, had experienced similar problems and that the source of the leaks was the bilge pump hoses the exit in the side of the hull beneath the under wing (i.e., the floor of the bridge deck).  Essentially what was happening is that as the big waves came underneath the boat, they piled up under the bridge deck causing pressure on the bilge exhaust lines and forcing water into the bilges.  Another source of leaks was the hole in the very back of the starboard hull beneath the steps, where the steering shaft goes through the hull.  The hole is about 3” in diameter and the shaft is about 1” in diameter.  It needs the larger hole to allow sidewards motion as it moves the rudder.  The obvious solution is to put a flexible rubber boot on it, but I didn’t happen to have one on board.  The solution I came up with was to stuff rags around the shaft so that the water couldn’t just come splashing through the hole.  The leaks weren’t about to sink the boat, but the frequent squeal of the bilge pump alarms was really annoying so we ended up shutting them off, and just reminded ourselves to go bail out the bilges each day after the sun came up.  Throughout the rest of the day on the 23^rd and the morning of the 24^th, the winds continued to stay in the high 20’s and the waves continued to grow to between 15’ and 20’.  We were surfing down some of the waves and on some occasions we were reaching between 17 and 20 knots. 

I’d been reporting our position and other status updates each morning about 0800 so I was hoping to get some insights from Alwoplast about what to do about the broken bowsprit and the water coming into the bilges.  Unfortunately, the message I got was from Sailmail telling me they hadn’t sent my last message because I was using more than my allotted 90 minutes per week.  I sent an e-mail to the Sailmail Admin and Operations Officer explaining that I was out in the middle of the Pacific, I had mechanical problems, and I needed an additional allotment of minutes.  They were very nice and said that they always provided the service we needed under the circumstances I described so the e-mails started flowing.  One of the first was from my wife, Elaine, wishing me a Happy Anniversary and reminding me that I had been away from home for my birthday and Fathers’ Day as well.  I also got an e-mail from Roni saying he was sending me some one-way valves to install in the bilge pump hoses to keep the waves from forcing water in, some flappers to go in the engine compartment exhaust hoses to keep them from filling with water, a stainless steel fitting to repair my broken bowsprit, and some new stainless steel guides for the top of the mast to protect the screecher halyard from chaffing.  I told him to send them to John Rohrback, who is the brother in law of one of my Search and Rescue buddies, and who had volunteered to come to the Galapagos from Seattle to help me sail the boat to La Paz, Mexico.  He and one of his friends, Eric Buxton, were both coming to crew from the Galapagos to La Paz so they could carry the parts with them, along with the VHF Radio and some other items we needed.  During the rest of the 24^th we continued to have winds around 27 knots TWS and we were making between 8.5 and 9.5 knots SOG.  Very late in the day on the 24^th and early in the morning of the 25^th, the winds died down to the high teens and the seas began to calm.  We definitely had a better night’s sleep on the 25^th with the calmer seas and lower winds, but we had dropped down to around 6.6 knots SOG and I was worried about getting behind schedule and we intended to meet John Rohrback and Eric Buxton on the 7^th in the Galapagos. 

On the 26^th, the winds had died sufficiently and the seas calmed enough that we motored much of today while we lowered the foresail so we could use it's halyard to raise Sven up the mast to install a new screecher halyard that he had already repaired.  We did that and then raised the foresail again.  We made a temporary repair to the bowsprit with wire and epoxy by drilling two small holes through the remaining solid material beside the hole where the pin goes through and then running several wraps of lacing wire through the holes and around the damaged part of the bowsprit.  We filled the gap with epoxy and smeared more epoxy on the wires to hold them in place.  While we were motoring, the port engine stopped providing any thrust.  The engine runs fine, and the shifter seems to go through the normal range, but the propeller does not provide any thrust.  We suspect there is something keeping the folding propeller from deploying.  This triggered more e-mails to Alwoplast and Chris White to see if they had any suggestions.  I started pouring through the manuals for the engine controllers. 

We continued to motor or motor sail all day and through the night on the 26^th due to very light winds, but I was worrying a lot because we only had one engine that was working and if it went out, we would have none.  The winds started picking up a bit around 0900 on the 27^th so we were able to shut off the starboard engine and get under way once again under sail power although only at about 5.5 knots.  Roni had suggested in an e-mail that the Micro-Commander, that is the electronics box that controls the engines and shifts the transmission on the sail drive, might need to be adjusted and that it might not be moving the cable far enough to put it in gear.  That matched our own observations because we stopped once so Jay could put his diving mask on and look at the port propeller from the starboard aft steps and he didn’t see any obstructions.  So I read up on the paragraphs explaining how to adjust the Micro-Commander and Sven and I crawled down in the engine compartment to adjust it.  That worked and we soon had two operational engines again, and a repaired bowsprit and screecher halyard, although we hadn’t tried them out yet because the winds had steadily been building throughout the 27^th into the high 20’s with gusts in to the mid 30’s accompanied by 6 foot waves, but with very short periods between the waves making for a very uncomfortable ride.  Apparently, we hadn’t totally outrun the storm.  The winds were shifting to WNW and pounding us, so I figured the storm had moved east faster than forecast and maybe a little farther north than forecast, and that we were just on the northern edge of the storm.  If I was right, we could use these high winds on a broad reach and make good time to sail out of it.  By the middle of the night we had two deep reefs in the mainsail and had reefed the mizzen sail down to about 25% of it’s normal area, and weather cocked the mizzen mast foil, and we were still flying along at 11-12 knots.  By noon on the 28^th we had largely sailed out of the effects of the storm, the winds had subsided, and the seas calmed considerably.  In the afternoon the sun came out for a little while and we were sailing along at about 6.5 knots with 13 knots of TWS. 

Around midnight on the 28th the Wind had shifted to the SE and died down to the point that we could only make about 3-4 knots under sail so we started the port engine and motor sailed at 6.5 kts. The wind picked up again around 0515 to around 12 knots so we let out the sails and shut off the port engine. 

During the night on the 28^th we saw steaming lights from another boat around 0500 at about 110˚ M.   That’s the first boat we’ve seen since we left Valdivia seven days ago.  We could not pick him up on radar but we estimated his range to be 6-10 nm.  Since we had seen no radar targets during the previous seven days, we turned the radar off during the day because it only has a range of 35 nm and it’s several hundred nm to any land at this point and any boats that come over the horizon, we can see during the day time.  At night we turn on the radar and I require the crew to physically go outside and look forward and backward at least every ten to fifteen minutes.  So far we haven’t seen any boats other than the one mentioned above and no critters of any kind other than occasional sea birds.