S/V Nereida sails around the world - Day 99 - Full canvas - and then the wind pipes up...!

S/V Nereida sails around the world - Day 99 © Jeanne Socrates

Wednesday 11pm Underway - wind has backed into the N at 20kt so we can make a course upwind to ENE. Dark, rainy, bashing into the seas - uncomfortable, as always! Suddenly heard a noise - the removable inner forestay was swinging around - it had come away from where it was lashed down to the foot of a shroud. Had to take a line forward and tie it down again.

Thursday 6am Up at 4am to check on things in first light and send position/weather report- all well before dawn. Unfurled full genoa to add in to staysail and main. One reef in main but wind dropping from 19kt to 12 kt so speed now down to 4.5kt. Will need to shake out 1st reef if wind stays down.

Grey, rainy-looking sky - clearly rained overnight. Adjusting Fred to make a course can get time-consuming - the wind constantly varies anyway so best to accept a course that's roughly correct and adjust occasionally at longer intervals.

9am Wind from NW - adjusting Fred and trimming sails for beam reach. Sun trying to get out but not having much success - total overcast.

10:30am Dull, fine drizzle. Wind has backed further - from WSW now and still light - 9kt. Staysail furled away - of no use, now that we're on a very broad reach. Will need to gybe very soon to get back on course..

Midday Well, I could have done without the sustained flurry of activity I just went through! With the wind backing quite quickly to SW, I should have connected that fact with a Cold Front (or deep trough?) coming by - often with strong wind - as just happened...!

Having let out the 1st reef earlier in light wind, I had to centre the full main as much as I could, in order to gybe and get back on course. But the wind was gusting up to 20-25kt (wind display has just gone down again so no precise info) and that proved very difficult...

Furled in some genoa to lessen our heeling, got the main in a good way and then gybed onto port tack. Headed upwind a bit more and the main was dropped enough to tie in the first reef, although a couple of trips to the mast were needed to help things along.

Good to see that my recent first reef line 'fix' works well. As it was all being finished, the wind began to ease - to 15-20kt, maybe - and we're now making 6kt on our ENE course. Our speed had gone up to well over 7kt for quite a time.

Annoying to be without the wind display again. Clearly it didn't like the strong conditions we just went through. Last time it went down was also in strong wind... On the analogue display in the cockpit, wind direction still seems to be showing correctly.

1900GMT (=1600LT) - end of Day 99. We made 84 n.ml. DMG over the 24 hr period, measured in a straight line between the two 1900 GMT positions.

Total distance covered from Victoria, B.C., to end of Day 98 (by daily DMGs): 9,453 n.ml.

Distances (at 1900Z): Cape Horn LH: 1230 n.ml. to SW; Falklands: 805 n.ml. to SW; Montevideo: 760 n.ml to NW; Buenos Aires: 855 n.ml to NW Cape Agulhas (SA): 2926 n.ml. to ENE.

Position & weather report for 1900 GMT posted to Winlink.org and Shiptrak.org (using my US callsign KC2IOV):

Time: 2019/01/10 19:00GMT
Latitude: 42-28.87S
Longitude: 043-12.70W
Course: 078T
Speed: 5.5kt
Wind Speed: 18kt
Wind Dir: WSW
Swell Dir: SW
Swell HT: 3.0m
Clouds: 90%
Baro: 1002.5hPa
Trend: -4
Air Temp: 20.0C
Sea Temp: 16.0C
Comment: Front came thro' before - wind gusted to 25kt.. wind display gone

This article has been provided by the courtesy of the S/V Nereida.