We have been sailing close-hauled since yesterday afternoon, on port tack, and heeling dramatically, which really sucks. But at least we are making good progress in the right direction, and appear to be getting out of the influence of the current.
I had some very distressing news when I spoke to Sue on the Iridium this morning. Our cat, “Maxx” was hit by a car and died last week. It is strange that I had a dream about the cats last week, and felt that something might be wrong. Maxx was our youngest, most playful of the three cats, and I will miss him greatly. I always think of him when I am in my bunk on port tack and holding onto my lee cloth line, the same way that Maxx would hang onto my arm when I picked him up.
Maxx the Cat
Because of the large discrepancy between the GPS speed and the log speed, Eric decided to do an experiment. He sent David to the bow to throw a beer can into the water and shout “Now!!”. At that time I would start my stopwatch and Eric, standing at the stern, would shout “Now!!” as soon as he saw it float past the stern. We then took the elapsed time and extrapolated it out to the speed in knots. We took a few attempts to get a good reading, as the beer can went under the boat the first time, and Eric didn’t see it coming. We ended up using paper towels instead. Our last calculation was that we were doing 6.1 knots, which is within the margin of error for such a test.
Nothing gets me in a foul mood more than sailing close-hauled for an extended period of time. It is one thing to have the boat in constant motion, but to constantly be fighting gravity on top of this is no less than infuriating. These are the times when I question my wisdom of taking on this journey. I can only assure myself that all points of sail are temporary (some less than others), and if we EVER get to the southwest trade winds we will be on a reach for the remainder of this leg. We have not had good luck so far with trade winds, so I won’t count on it.
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