Having had good winds and made good progress for quite a few days it was actually a relief to hit a high pressure system coming off of the Azores. We are still pretty far North of the islands. When we got into the high, the winds died down to barely anything and the seas calmed. The calm seas were a bit of relief because it was easier to be on the boat. You have a chance to rest some muscles that have been working for weeks. It also made possible for some good sleep. We put the boat in a position called “heave-too” - I’m not sure of the spelling on that. It basically puts the sails in opposing direction from each other and the rudder, making it possible to just float along with the winds and current.
While heave-tooed (?) we had popcorn and movie night (Winter’s Bone) and quit the one hour watches and got a whole night of rest and just let the boat float along. It was great to get some rest. The next day was calm as well and we simply sat out on the ocean floating along, letting the drift current carry us. As it turns out the current was in our favor and we were making about 1.2 knot VMG towards Horta while just sitting. We had movie night again and watched Babel for the feature presentation.
Sitting in the calm seas gave us out first opportunity to get cleaned up on this leg. I jumped into the 70 degree water and went for a little swim. It’s a little freaky swimming in water that deep but a really neat experience. Rays of sun project deep deep into the sea and you have a long underwater view. The water is of course perfectly clear. I got all clean with a bath of Joy and had the luxury of a fresh water rinse afterwards. Joy you say? Yes, the dish soap Joy is what we use to bath in the ocean. It’s the only soap we have found that will suds up in saltwater. Plus it leaves you lemony fresh!
From the weather faxes we had received, it looked like the high was going to be moving out the next day. Sure enough, as the sun came up the winds began to come up and we started under way again. It was still relatively calm so Don wanted to try out his new spinnaker. The spinnaker is a larger sail than the normal jib, the sail that goes out in the front of the boat. It takes some re-rigging to get it going and Don and Charlie were able to get it flying after some tinkering. It’s really a pretty sight when it is up - it is kind of like flying a big kite.
When the winds stayed around 9-11 knots the spinnaker was perfect and it moved us right along. I could see it quickly getting to be too much sail if the wind came up quickly so I stopped thinking about that. We flew the spinnaker until almost sunset and had a great day. Flying it at night would have been a little risky due to the complexities and the possibility of the winds changing dramatically during the night. We (not me, usually Charlie) have to go out on the foredeck to put up and take down the spinnaker and it can get to be a handful because it does not roll up nicely like the jib, it must be stored in a bag inside the boat.
The regular jib rolls up on itself when not being used. This is called auto-furling. You can let out and pull in the jib from back in the cockpit. When you are using the regular jib and the winds get too heavy then you can “reef” the sails. This means you bring in the sails a little bit to better match the amount of wind you are experiencing. This can all be done from the cockpit on both the jib and the main sail. It’s a bit of a complicated process for the main sail involving some pulling and pushing on lines, locking and unlocking things and it all has to be done in the right order and with the right amounts. It is easy to make mistakes doing it and I have messed up the process many times. I’m started to get better at it though.
I've included a couple of pictures of the flying jib.
