Tonight, we sit about 140nm from Sydney, making inconsistent progress. The
wind comes and goes, driven partly by a high pressure system off the coast,
partly by they day/night cycle of temperature differences between land and
water. Either way, it's coming pretty much straight from the north, the
direction we want to go. Our boat is designed for downwind sailing, not
upwind. The engineer in me really wants to know what the difference is, but
for now, what matters is that we can go about 45 degrees off the wind, no
closer. So to do 10nm north, we basically have to do 7nm NE, then another
7nm NW, which cuts a bit chunk off our effective speed. The sailing term is
'velocity made good' or 'distance made good'. So we might be doing 7 though
the water but only 5 VMG. And it often isn't even that good. That assumes
you're actually going straight NE, then straight NW, but there's no chance
of keeping the boat going that straight when the wind is gusting and waves
are pushing you around. This is where having good people on the helm makes
a big difference.
We're now in the lee of mainland Australia. The weather is getting warmer
and the sea state has settled down a lot. While sailing upwind is still
tough, especially down below, the reduced slamming around is welcome.
The day's highlight was a pod of dolphins that visited us twice (or
possibly two separate pods). They were all around us, probably fifty or
more, including some that must have been young ones. They swam beside the
boat for a while, throwing in a few spectacular leaps as if to show off for
us. It was great to have them around, a definite boost to everyone's
spirits as we near the end of what has been an often tough two weeks.
As for the sailing itself, I've been on the helm a bit, and I think I'm
developing a feel for it. It is completely unlike driving a car. You're
very constrained in where you can point the boat. As I mentioned, there are
all sorts of things pushing you around. The boat reacts slowly to moves in
the wheel. And many of the instruments (which you sometimes have to rely
on, for example when it's a cloudy night out and there's nothing else to
see) react with a delay as well. Today, Regina taught me about how to helm
by watching the sail, to see how well it was filling with breeze and
balancing that against the angle we wanted to be at. There's also an
element of just feeling the boat slow down or speed up slightly that also
tells you you're not pointing quite right. Then, you need to feel these
things early so you can adjust your wheel before you overshoot. In the
beginning, I was actually doing the opposite, having been warned so much
about making small movements on the helm that I was underreacting. Watching
others helped me fix that. It reminds me learning to drive stick, when my
dad had warned me so much about not riding the clutch that I was pulling my
foot off way too fast until I watched how he did it.
I've been doing more mast work as well and loving it. I'm becoming a
regular up there and even managed a night-time reef when things didn't go
quite right (some tangle in the handy billy, which is a rope and pulley
arrangement) and I sorted it out. I also got sent to the bow to check the
trim. I took a minute up there just to soak it all in, the bioluminescence
in the foam being stirred up as the prow crashed through the waves, the
lights of Canberra (maybe?) off to port in the distance, a few other ships'
lights scattered around, the sky full of stars.
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