Groundhog Day

That’s what it feels like. Well I’m still not much of a piano player yet but just as we think we can turn the corner and head South the wind veers around and sends mountainous seas right at us. We are so close, but we find we have to tack North East for more Easting but there’s a storm up there. So we tack South East and before long high seas and current along with the ever amusing wind, clocks around which has you thinking ok its South West but at least you’re heading towards your destination but you can’t give up your progress toward 66 degrees, and many say it aught to be 65 degrees.

Heading South early is so tempting because heading into this ESE wind is so painful, but if you do that, once you get below 23 degrees you have strong East tradewinds and current to deal with. That’s worse but…

Last night at change of watch I was pinching EV up into the South East wind and I noticed the wind had backed enough that we could claw back some of that Easting and still head South. Just enough.

By morning we were still rollicking along, still on course. Finally the long forecast East wind, maybe. We decided to shake out the nighttime reef in our main. Disaster, the Harken electric winch froze, which wouldn’t be so bad but our winch Handle won’t go into its socket because of some safety thing stuck in there. Really stuck.

I knew we’d have to head up into the wind to relieve some pressure on the sails. It’s about this time when I discovered that the starboard engine suddenly wouldn’t start. Bad six month old battery, hmm, but I can combine the port start battery with the starboard.

The workaround took awhile but I have the lines led out to a block on the side decks, turning to a manual winch on the cockpit back bench that we never use. Whew!

Clock strikes 6:59. Good morning, Punxsatawny! Same day, just different stuff getting broken.

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2 Responses to Groundhog Day

  1. Although there is always something getting broken, you seem to be able to fix/work around whatever it is. Bravo, Jack!

  2. PS: It is I, one of your peeps! (Always.)

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