LORD'S PRAYER LOG, Part 02:
January 27, 2000
0100 - 0300 (about) The waves have become substantially larger. The staysail flops around now and then with the boat on a broad reach as she yaws to the waves. At one point the leeward staysail jib sheet got in between the mast and the starboard mast pulpit.  It caught the lower end of the starboard whisker pole and jerked it from its mast-chock. This left the pole swinging back and forth banging
into the mast pulpit. Both poles had been strapped to the mast with a Velcro strap to assure they would not come out of the chocks. After re-securing the pole and passing a line around the lower ends of the whisker poles, I ran a line from the top of the mast pulpit over to the mast to prevent the staysail sheet from "getting at" the ends of the poles again. Shortly after re-stowing the whisker pole, there was another loud banging on deck. This time it was the dual jib. The clews, which had been tied together, had become disconnected and the weather jib would fill and then collapse as the boat yawed about in the big waves and 20-30 kt winds. I stowed the dual jib by fully rolling it up on the headstay. Not long after stowing it, the boat executed an unintended jibe. The Starboard preventer
stopped the boom from flying all the way over. The boat was left kind of hove-to and laying over in the wind. I took over manually and put her back on course.
0330 (about) In rapid succession I encountered two merchant vessels in rather close crossing situations. Both situations required heading alterations.
0808 Passed waypoint #4 and turned to a heading of 126 T. The next waypoint is 526 NM ahead (about 70 NM SW of Bermuda). It will probably take 3 or 4 days to reach that point, which would mean that the next turn would be on the 30th or 31st of January.
0830 - 1130 I started the engine and turned the boat into the wind to haul down the mainsail - a real beast to manage in rough water! The two slides that are sewn onto the headboard had broken off sometime in the last 24 hours. Perhaps it occurred during the unexpected jibe! I then turn back on course, which put me heading down wind and I pulled out just a little of the dual jib. Even without the
whisker poles, it did a fairly respectable job of staying filled with wind - and that was in spite of some fairly spectacular rolling that the boat was experiencing. I then hauled down the staysail and tied it on deck. Afterward I rigged the whisker poles and drew the dual jib sheets in snug. Next I re-rigged the mechanical Monitor Wind Steering Vane and passed steering control from the autopilot to the wind vane. And finally, I streamed the spinner, which turns at the end of an 80' torque line to drive a rail-mounted generator. The generator does not keep up with the demand for electric power but it does substantially slow the drain on the battery. In between these tasks I climbed over the slide boards into the cabin occasionally to warm my hands and think out the next move.
1300 The boat is sailing before the wind at close to hull-speed under a mere handkerchief of a sail while the winds are gusting to 32 kts. She is handling it well. The use of the dual jib on whisker poles seems to have done a rather good job of minimizing the severe yawing problem that I had previously experienced in rough offshore water (when about the only choice of sails was the mainsail).
1344 At some point in the last hour or so I entered the Gulf Stream. The temperature of the water at my current location (36-25N 073-22W) is 77 degrees. The air temperature, on the other hand is quite cold - below freezing I would guess, since there have been periods of snow flurries. The strong wind makes the air feel bitter cold. The cold air over top of such warm water creates sea smoke, a form of fog. Blowing in the wind the sea smoke takes on an eerie appearance. The sky is overcast and dreary but there have been occasional peeks of the sun that tend to buoy the spirit. Although the water here is rough it is not as bad as I had feared I might experience. This, may be due to the fact that the wind at this location is currently blowing out of the West (across the direction of the stream
). The Gulf Stream has a reputation when the wind is against the current of being quite nasty. The strength of the crossing current here is readily apparent with the help of GPS. I am holding a heading between 20 and 30 degrees to the right (south) of my course line; yet I am still being set to the north by the current. The wind is quite strong between 20 and 30 kts with one peak observed gust of
37 kts.
1500 switched to the heavy weather vane for the Monitor.
END OF LORD'S PRAYER LOG, Part 02


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