by Judy Handley | Jan 25, 2010 | Passage to India, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 91, Year 5: Passage to Cochin, Day Ten
Date: Monday, January 25, 2010
Weather: Clear, Sunny Day; Winds NE 16-22
Latitude: 06 degrees 47.500 minutes N
Longitude: 078 degrees 15.779 minutes E
Miles Traveled to Date: 1,231
The Gulf of Mannar is not one I had ever heard of, but it is one that I won’t forget. By midnight tonight we will be fifty miles directly south of the tip of India and on our way out of the Gulf of Mannar, but until then we must endure what she has to throw our way. At 3 pm yesterday we were motoring because Sri Lanka was blanketing the wind. By 4 pm we had 12 knots of wind and we turned slightly NW to take advantage of the winds and turned off the motor. By midnight we were motoring on flat, glassy seas and were able to get back to our course, and then by 2 am the winds and seas started building, so off went the motor and sailing we were. And we have been on quite a ride since then. The six to nine foot waves come directly at our beam, raising our starboard side leaning us to port, sliding under the boat, and then tossing us back again. This happens every three to five seconds, so it’s a bit like riding a bucking bronco. When Mark got up this morning, he said he felt like he had been in a Mix Master But we feel very lucky that it is not rougher. Boats transiting the Gulf of Mannar during the past week have reported 25-30 knot winds and very rough seas with squalls. I think we hit it just at the right time. The GRIB files are showing 15 knots of wind, which means you can get up to 20, and that is what we have. And Freebird, who is about 24 hours behind us reported sailing through hundreds of fishing boats on the east side of Sri Lanka. Somehow we missed that treat as well. So far the decisions we have made jointly with Constance for this passage have been good ones, so we hope the good continues until we reach Cochin.
Tonight we will reach Cape Comorin on the southern tip of India, and then head out to the NW until we are about 25 miles offshore. We will parallel the coast up to Cochin. We could motor sail right next to the land, but then we would more than likely have to motor and contend with fishermen stopping us asking for things. We contacted a boat named Hafskip in Cochin and the captain, Joost, said he took the close-to-shore route. But we think we would rather put on the extra miles and go offshore. Right now it looks like we will be in Cochin mid-day Thursday. It’s been a good passage but it will feel good to be an anchor once again.
by Judy Handley | Jan 24, 2010 | Passage to India, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 90, Year 5: Passage to Cochin, Day Nine
Date: Sunday, January 24, 2010
Weather: Hazy Horizon; Winds SW 7-10 (daytime land breeze)
Latitude: 05 degrees 56.070 minutes N
Longitude: 080 degrees 02.550 minutes E
Miles Traveled to Date: 1,111
Here’s a quick summary of the past glorious twenty-four hours:
–Motor sailing through the evening to reach our first waypoint off Sri Lanka by midnight.
–Strong winds pushing us in just the right direction by 11 pm, so off with the engine..
–Overnight broad reach sail in 18-20 knot winds with two knots of positive current in fairly calm seas-Windbird was flying!
–Best ever 24 hours from 5 am yesterday to 5 am this morning-161 miles.
–Spotted only a few ships and a few fishing boats all night. Whew!
–Passed under Sri Lanka during the day, only eight miles offshore, with no indication that land exists there. We did see two light houses, but nothing else, not even a bird. Oh, Mark did see a whale that put on a little show for him. Unfortunately, I was napping.
–Continued great sailing until we entered the Gulf of Mannar which separates Sri Lanka from India.
–Lost our wind before noon and motored until 4 pm in calm seas.
–Currently sailing again with what we assume are temporary SW winds. We are on a beam reach but the winds are only 7-10 knots.
We’ll be spending tonight, tomorrow, and most of the next night crossing the Gulf of Mannar before we reach the southern tip of India. Depending on the wind, we should reach Cochin by Thursday. Right now we seem to be in the path of ships leaving Galle, Sri Lanka headed west, so we will have to keep a sharp lookout tonight. But all is well.
Now for the salt story. There is a book named Salt that outlines the role salt had to play in the development of the civilized world. Well, you can now add our discovery of salt to that outline. This morning I fixed French toast and needed to get the maple syrup out of the cabinet over our starboard settee. Right now that starboard settee is our sea berth and the back cushions are snapped up to the ceiling covering the cabinet doors. I unsnapped the far right cushion and let it fall, along with a cascade of salt pouring out of the louvered cabinet doors. It’s amazing how much salt is in one little 500 gram container. This one was on the top of boxes on the top shelf and the foolproof lid had come off draining salt down on top of everything. And of course, when I took the cushion down, the salt then spilled on to our sheets on the sea berth. So we had a whole morning of clean-up. How I miss my shop vac. With a vacuum the job could have been done quickly, but without, it took almost two hours.
We heard Robert of Shirena and Fatty of Wild Card on the net this morning. They have left Uligan in the Maldives and are headed to Oman. We wish them both a safe passage to Salalah. That is where they will regroup before heading into the Gulf of Aden.
by Judy Handley | Jan 23, 2010 | Passage to India, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 89, Year 5: Passage to Cochin, Day Eight
Date: Saturday, January 23, 2010
Weather: Clear Skies; ENE Winds 10-15
Latitude: 06 degrees 05.886 minutes N
Longitude: 082 degrees 43.463 minutes E
Miles Traveled to Date: 947
It’s all about timing. We have had days of beautiful sailing with no deadlines, so if we went a little slower, no problem. If we went a little faster, great. But now we need to reach a waypoint by midnight tonight, so that by 9 am tomorrow morning we will be starting the sixty mile stretch along the south side of Sri Lanka. We know there are fishing fleets in that area, but they move and you never know exactly where they will be. And we are hoping to stay close to shore and negotiate the fishing fleet during the daylight hours. Then by dusk tomorrow night we will be heading across the Gulf of Mannar that separates Sri Lanka from India. The winds have died down some but our problem is that they are coming almost directly from the east. Since we are going due west, that puts the wind directly behind us, so we finally had to make a sail change and we are now motor-sailing wing and wing. The seas have increased so that we are moving forward like a Weeble Wobble. I think this was the name for those little toy people with weighed, rounded bottoms. You could push them but they wouldn’t fall over. They would just weeble wobble. And that is what the bigger seas do to us when we are sailing wing and wing. The swell goes under Windbird’s aft starboard quarter and emerges on the forward port quarter leaning us one way and then the other. Unless there is a change, we will have to continue to motor sail through the night and then possibly through the day tomorrow. When you sail as close to land as we plan, there is often no wind. But even if we have to motor for the next 24 hours, we just have to be thankful for the past week of beautiful sailing.
Today was a baking day-bread and brownies. And, of course, there was more reading and daytime naps to fill in the gaps from the nighttime watches. The nighttime sky has been spectacular, but I have really missed having moonlight to sail by. We started out with a new moon. On our second night out, the tiny little crescent set just about the time our first watch started. Last night is the first I have seen of the crescent moon. It was low in the sky when I went on watch at 10 pm and I was amazed at how much light in shed on the water. But before midnight, it set, and things were pitch black again. We had one ship pass by us last night, but that is the first ship we have seen. I have a feeling that during the next few nights, we will see lots of ships. So watches will be a little more tense. I just wish I had the moonlight to guide me.
by Judy Handley | Jan 22, 2010 | Passage to India, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 88, Year 5: Passage to Cochin, Day Seven
Date: Friday, January 22, 2010
Weather: Clear Skies; NE and NNE Winds 12-18
Latitude: 06 degrees 28.537 minutes N
Longitude: 085 degrees 10.076 minutes E
Miles Traveled to Date: 799
Yes! We have passed the halfway point. We have traveled 799 miles and have 782 to go. And we have had another day of beautiful sailing. We have NE winds 12-15 putting us on a broad reach most of the time, but then we get periods of NNE winds 15-18 putting us on a beam reach. We are making great time averaging 140 miles every 24 hours for the past three days. We had one twelve-hour period where we averaged 150 miles, so no complaints here. Constance had another problem with their auto pilot last night, but once again Ed was able to come up with a fix. We’re all hoping things will hold together until we arrive in Cochin.
It now looks like we will be passing under Sri Lanka during the daylight hours on Sunday. Other boats doing that part of the passage in the last few days have had 25-30 knots and rough seas if they went offshore and calmer seas and less wind if they traveled about five miles offshore. The inshore route means negotiating the fishing grounds, but doing that in the daytime is not nearly as intimidating as doing it at night. We hear that the winds and seas in that area should be settling in the next couple of days, so a final decision will be made as we get closer and get a feel for the wind and seas and the time of day.
Congratulations to Ed and Lynne on Constance on the birth of the seventh grandchild, Arthur Edward Kurwin. He was born on the 20th, so doesn’t share a birthday with Sam, but is a healthy baby. We are happy for all. Welcome to this world, Arthur Edward.
One last note-We just had a late afternoon dolphin show. I love watching the dolphins race toward our bow, cross over and then jump out of the water. They look like they are jumping for joy.
by Judy Handley | Jan 21, 2010 | Passage to India, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 87, Year 5: Passage to Cochin, Day Six
Date: Thursday, January 21, 2010
Weather: Clear Skies; NE Winds 12-15
Latitude: 06 degrees 50.956 minutes N
Longitude: 087 degrees 31.182 minutes E
Miles Traveled to Date: 656
Happy Birthday, Sam! We got news this morning from Constance that they are awaiting word on the birth of a grandchild. Maybe Ed’s newest grandchild and Sam will share a birthday. And my first seedlings spouted today, only three days after being planted. I think they were joining in Sam’s birthday celebration.
We haven’t touched a sail since yesterday morning, except for reefing the main at night and unreefing in the morning. The winds have been a steady 12-15 from the NE and we are moving along beautifully, often doing seven knots on a beam reach. We couldn’t ask for better sailing than we have had since Monday. We are staying close to Constance. They were ahead of us all night but a couple of hours ago we caught up with them and are now just a little ahead. I think they could push to go faster, but since we want to stay fairly close our current tactics are working nicely. The next big decision has to do with how we go around Sri Lanka and how we negotiate the traffic lanes there. All of the shipping traffic coming from the Red Sea to Southeast Asia comes that way, so staying out of the traffic lanes as much as possible is a good idea. But if you go too close to Sri Lanka you get in the middle of their fishing fleet and that is no fun at all. But avoiding the fishing boats means heading south across the shipping lanes and then coming back through them when we turn north to Cochin and adds miles to the trip. I, personally, vote for avoiding the fishing fleet and going the extra miles. Decisions, decisions.
The fact that we are going to India is finally becoming a reality. India is such a diverse country with more than a billion people and eighteen official languages. We have no plans for what we will do when we get there. We know we will anchor off Bolgatty Island, the only anchorage available in Cochin. Cochin, now referred to as Kochi, is centrally located in the state of Kerala and most likely we will limit out travels to this area as there is much there to explore.
Not much else to report today. I did laundry. We had tacos for lunch. Yum! And life is good. There are more clouds on the horizon this evening, so who knows what the night will bring. But whatever, we are just so thankful for the past four days of beautiful weather and fair winds.
by Judy Handley | Jan 20, 2010 | Passage to India, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 86, Year 5: Passage to Cochin, Day Five
Date: Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Weather: Clear Skies; NE Winds 12-15
Latitude: 07 degrees 10.271 minutes N
Longitude: 090 degrees 05.582 minutes E
Miles to Go: 1,088
So far we’ve traveled 505 miles, so that makes us almost a third of the way to Cochin. And the time is passing so quickly. We’ve had another good twenty-four hours with no squalls, good wind, beautiful, starry nights, and bright sunny days. We haven’t even touched the sails all day today. I think that’s a first for us. I know this can’t last forever, but we are enjoying it while it lasts.
Mark has finally given up on trying to get the freezer going, so this afternoon we took what was still frozen and put it in the bottom of the refrigerator and I will cook the unfrozen meat and store it in the refrig. I had to take things out of the refrigerator to make room for the meat, and that prompted us to try something else. The refrigerator box and freezer box are side by side with an insulated wall between them. At the bottom and the top, there is an open slot between the two. We keep those slots closed normally, but we opened the bottom one and hope some of the cold air from the refrig will spill over into the freezer compartment. I put the two dozen eggs that I normally keep in the refrig in that compartment, along with bread, mayonnaise, mustard, pickles, jam, butter, and yeast. Many cruisers never refrigerate these things, but I will be happier if we can keep them a little cooler than room temperature which is in the 80’s. Once we turned off the freezer, our problem with keeping the batteries charged disappeared. The freezer was pulling a much greater load than normal and draining us of power constantly. Hopefully we can get the freezer fixed in Cochin and it will not draw the excessive amount of power any longer. For a while we thought our problem was our batteries, but now we think it was the freezer all along.
And speaking of power issues, Constance has been battling a battery problem for the past two days. They have two-year-old AGM batteries which should still be functioning great, but they are just not holding a charge at all. According to the sources we have with us out here, it looks like they can be jolted back to life in a couple of different ways, but Ed wants to wait until we reach Cochin to try that. Ed thinks it would be prudent to see what is available there before trying the procedures to revive what he has.
Tomorrow is our grandson Sam’s third birthday. It seems just like yesterday that we flew home from New Zealand after the first year of Windbird’s voyage for his birth. His birthday present from both sets of grandparents and Heather and Jed is a kitchen set. He loves to help Heather and Jed cook and the kitchen is one of his favorite areas at the nursery school. Yesterday Heather had been shopping with Sam and Jonah and when they returned home the kitchen set shows up on the front porch in an enormous box with a photo of the contents on the side. Heather wrote, “We got home from the grocery store and I told Sam to head for the front door, as usual (not noticing the box). I heard “holy moly!” and then “it’s for me! a kitchen for me!” So the cat is very much out of the bag. As I was dragging the box into the house (barely possible for a single person), he was chanting “S-U-P! S-U-P!” which it turns out was supposed to be “U-P-S!” (i.e. hooray for the mail man!). He’s been asking to open the box non-stop, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to put him off. So he may get the kitchen early.” So happy birthday a day early to Sam.
