Day 9: Steering Her Downwind

4/25/2010, Sunday, 1700 Zulu, Lat. 23 19.6 N, Long. 089 11.7 W, Day 9

“Galveston, oh Galveston, I will hear your sea wind blowin’, I still see her dark eyes glowin’, she was 21 when I left Galveston……..” Oh, Irene, don’t get too excited, it is only the lyrics to a song. I have never been to Galveston in my entire life. I’ll be home soon. Just check the GPS, Galveston is only 458 nm away due Northwest. Our ETA is early Thursday morning at dawn on 4/28. Please look into booking my flight home on Friday.

The wind is completely different than 24 hours ago. It was over 20 knots with 8 foot seas. Now it’s 6 knots with calm lumpy seas. We have been successfully flying the A-sail (asymmetric spinnaker) since 0930 this morning. With this sail we can sail deeper and be closer to our mark.

Not much happening the last 24 hours, except catching up our rest and rode out the rough sea. Terry was a bit fatigued from all the work and planning and worries about this trip. It finally got to him after the water filter repair. He had a slight headache last night after dinner, so I sent him to bed and took over his watch. He feels a lot better now with the extra rest.

Auto was driving pretty much yesterday due to its ability to hold the course in rough weather. After lunch yesterday, Terry asked me to take over steering and get a feel for Living Water going down wind in such rough condition. I gave him a dirty look and gingerly reminded him that I had hand steered my entire way to Hawaii some 16 years ago. He, being a tactful person, said if something happened to Auto, he just wanted to make sure I can drive. So the challenge was on. I told him to let me take my nap and I would hand steer for an hour. At 1500, I got up, put on my gloves and passed him at the Nav Station (where he always sat) and started my way up the companion way without saying anything to him. “The course to steer is three zero zero.” He said. I continued my way up, got behind the wheel, put Auto on standby and started to hand steer a 300 heading.

So something you landlubbers should know, a good helmsman can steer a boat to its proper course plus or minus 5 degrees on a good calm day. But in rough seas and especially down wind, the boat tends to wander and round up quite easily due to waves bearing down on its quarters. One has to anticipate such motion and aggressively commit to countering it by steering the helm down when the waves hit, but almost immediately you have to turn the wheel back or disaster will happen. It takes lots of concentration and stamina and balance. (Enough said about myself)

15 minutes into my steering, the loudspeaker on the intercom next to the helm crackled, it was Terry, “Hey Frank, good driving, the boat has kept its course.” I keyed the mike down and said, “It was still Auto driving, I haven’t started yet.” “Oh.” he said,” Are you sure?” I said, “What do you think?” There was a long pause and he finally hung up. I guess I have passed muster on driving Living Water.

Our 24 hours noon-to-noon run was 139 nm. Thank you, Bob and Kathy, Bill for the hilarious e-mails. We quite enjoyed them and will look forward to seeing the US Coast Guard, the Texas Fish and Game, the Mental Health (in white coats) people waiting for us at the dock in Galveston. Dinner last night was leftover Curried Beef Stew I made back in Colon. Didn’t feel like cooking with a rocking boat. Besides, Terry wasn’t feeling good. Will do better tonight…..later.