There’s not much new to report today. The conditions are about the same as yesterday, with 15-18 knot winds from the Southeast settling in. The sailing isn’t super fast, and it’s not straight at New Caledonia. We’re sailing about 30 degrees off of dead down wind, so at some point we’re going to have to jib over and sail the other way for a while. But for now, while the wind holds, we’ll ride it even if it’s not taking us far enough West.
We did have a brief bit of excitement when Kathy noticed on her watch that the shackle holding the tack (the lower front corner) of the head sail had come off. Rather than wrestle it in the dark to fix it, we furled the sail. The wind had been fading anyway, and that capped off the decision to motor for a while until the wind filled back in. In the morning we found the shackle on the deck, but attached a different one on and “seized” it with wire. “Seizing” is winding wire around the shackle pin so it can’t come unscrewed; I can’t find the links from off shore, but I discuss this in some detail in one of our posts about getting ready for Hurricane Sandy in 2012 if you’re more interested. Here it is -Ed It appeared we failed to seize this shackle on, or less likely the seizing failed on it.
Still no fish, though we had a line out for most of the day. There is still a chill in the air if you’re in the breeze, but it is getting warmer. The water temp is now up to 71.0° F.
Current arrival predictions are for some time on Monday, the 21st (remember the date line, US based readers, that’s the Sunday the 20th for you). We’re hoping to reach New Caledonia during the day, because there is a reef entrance to be navigated, as well as a roughly fifteen mile trip from the pass in the barrier reef to the city of Noumea that has a few twists, turns and hazards. So we won’t be making that at night. If we get close to the pass in the middle of the night we’ll stand off shore until the sun is well up for the best visibility.
Hopefully we’ll have a better ETA soon, but with the winds the way they are…who knows for sure?
