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St. Helena to Ascension Island…..Day 4

June 13th, written the morning of the 14th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT

Right after I posted the morning blog yesterday, the winds dropped to 10-12 knots and I was sure we wouldn\’t make the Anchorage today.
About three hours later, we put up the spinnaker on port tack and the wind shifted against us! Hence, it was time to jibe. We first had to take down the spinnaker,
jibe the boat and our new course was laying the island. Back up went the spinnaker and the winds came up to 17-22 knots. We decided to stay with it for the night and under full main and spinnaker we were flying! We did 105 miles in 11 hours, mostly between 8.5-12 knots. The seas were not building up, the waves right behind us. The night was clear, the fair weather cumulus clouds created no squalls and we were making time.

Nikki did a great job of steering with the auto pilot which was no mean feat with the constant shifts in the wind and the varying strengths. It wasn\’t really even a pattern you could anticipate. The winds would go ESE then SE and back. The speed went between 17 and 22 with a few gusts in the 25 knot range. He two watches is why we will make it in today!

When we changed watch, we dropped the spinnaker at 4 a.m., tacked (not jibed) the boat and put a reef in the main sail as we did it.
This allowed us to change to a better heading to the island and not have to go through the jibe maneuver. Raised the genoa on the pole to port and now we have only 49 miles to our way point with 12 hours of daylight left. This anchorage is a bit trickier than St. Helena and I want full daylight when we enter.

We\’re still making a healthy 6.5-8 knots and should see the island within about 3 hours. Looks like we\’ll put in a very respectable 190 nm day of which the first 6 hours we never went over 7 knots.

Next report should be from the anchorage. I\’ll send the position report shortly and update it when anchored.
KIT,
Scott and Navigator Nik!..

St. Helena to Ascension Island…..Day 3

June 12th, written the morning of June 13th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT

Yesterday started out a bit blustery, but we were able to use the full main and genoa for several hours before the winds came up over 22 knots and decided
to put in the first reef. We sailed that way all day and just before dark it started to come up to the mid high 20\’s so we took in the second reef.

Just before dark, we gybed on to port tack and we sailed that way till 4 am. Then took out one reef and this morning we\’re \”full laundry\” with the full main, genoa poled out and the reacher to leeward. We\’ll be on port tack most of the rest of the way. We didn\’t over stand, but might have gybed yesterday morning or noon in retrospect.

We\’re doing 7-8 knots and I\’m now pushing a bit as I want to make sure we\’re anchored before dark tomorrow night at Ascension Island. There is a large commercial
mooring field there, the buoys are black and I want to keep clear of it in daylight. Friends Dave & Kathie said there was a likely fairly shallow anchorage spot inside the field and I\’d like to try that for our anchoring spot. No small boat moorings here as there were in St. Helena.

The other tricky business is the dinghy landing there. No shore boat either! We\’ll have to tie a line to a float that is off the dock so that we can pull the dinghy away from it when ashore. The surge is apparently quite an affair there and we want to make sure dinghy and crew don\’t get bashed. Fuel will be by jerry can there as well and the good news is, we won\’t need more than about 80 liters (20 gallons) if that.

One of our instrument plastic cases self destructed yesterday, but I\’ve got it all taped back up. This was a defect problem in the plastic cases of our Maretron sailing displays. It\’s more of an annoyance than anything. All else is well. Exercise day was yesterday..we\’re getting fitter and the flab is going…:-)

We\’ll do around a 168 mile day. Position report will be up in an hour. Hope to see the island shortly after sunrise tomorrow morning.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki

St. Helena to Ascension Island…..Day 2

June 11th, written the morning of June 12th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT

Yesterday started off a bit slow and during the day we were a bit slow despite all the \”laundry\” (all the sails) up.
Late in the afternoon when we were on radio schedule with Peri Peri Net (Paul) in Johannesburg, a 10-12 meter \”Sei Whale\” swam up about 100 feet away from us
and had a look. He seemed as curious about us as we were about him. Tagging along were 6-8 very large white dolphins. If I\’d been in the Santa Barbara Channel, I would have thought them to be \”Riso\’s Dolphins\”. However I\’m not sure that species is here in the South Atlantic?

We\’ve been surfing on and off much of the night. At mid night we took down the big reacher and almost reefed at 4 a.m. Glad we didn\’t but now it\’s picked back up
strongly. We just surfed at 13 knots for almost 30 seconds (as I write this). It\’s predicted to back off considerably in the next 5 hours, but if it doesn\’t start soon, we\’ll reef just the same. It\’s really easy to take the reef out. We can do it while sailing on course. We have to head up wind to put the reef in.

I\’ve been a little sleep challenged and had some most unusual dreams. I rarely ever remember my dreams, but last night it was like living color. I wrote the person who it was about. I hope she finds it as amusing as I did….Ah, memory lane!

The boat is still remarkably comfortable and the swells are occasionally 3 meters (10-12 feet). We\’ve 368 miles to go and had a very nice (much more Miss Piggy like), 175 mile run yesterday.

All is well…Just did the laundry (the clothing kind…:), made water and charged the batteries. We\’re zipping along. I\’m off watch and will hopefully get some sleep.
KIT,
Scott and \”On Watch Woodrow\”

St. Helena to Ascension lsland……Day 1

June 10th, written the morning of the 11th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT

It\’s always nice to have a few regrets leaving a place. That means, you enjoyed it and would consider coming back or at least recommending it to others.
St. Helena fit nicely into both categories. We took our last photos and memories and about 30 miles out finally lost sight of St. Helena.

We said our goodbye\’s and waved to fellow sailor\’s aboard s/v \”This Side Up\” (out of Texas) and departed the anchorage at 0900 local/GMT time.
The weather looked excellent for the expected 4.5-5 day passage of 700 nautical miles and the was as advertised.

We set the full main, genoa to windward on the pole and our big reacher to leeward and were off. I\’ve gotten in the habit of making our passage plans for 160 mile days down from the usual 180 miles as the conditions are very benign compared to many other passages we\’ve done around the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Believe me, I\’m not complaining. If it was this nice out here all the time, you\’d all be doing this….:-)

Indeed, the 15-20 knot, very steady winds and 2.0 meter (6 foot) swell is easy stuff. Mile after mile of just \”onward\”.

We did see lots of flying fish today which is a first for us, but none errantly \”flew\” aboard so none on deck to report.
It was an exercise day yesterday. We shook up the routine a bit and are on our day off today.

Yesterday, we\’d put up a brief blog about St. Helena and were able to upload the photos to the website system, but alas a small glitch has prevented them from being posted. Hopefully web guru Jeremiah will be able to resolve this soon.

525 miles to go. We HOPE? to be there on Friday before dark as we will have to anchor in close to shore. No moorings here. The dinghy landing is supposed to be quite tricky too. Hopefully Customs/Immigration will be working a half day Saturday as well as we are not likely to get ashore on Friday at our current speed.

More tomorrow, position report is up as well.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SKYE!
KIT,
Scott and Nikki