Bill
Here's a bit of a journal, not too much was written about the journey of 12 days and 3 hours covering 1284 GPS nautical miles. Generally the first 6 days were light winds and calms, generally in my favour and the last 6 days were heavy winds and waves, but also in my direction. I would have had a much better average mileage but for the 36 hours of calms at the beginning.
I have a favour to ask of you in the way of shopping. I need another underwater digital camera and I hope you can get one for me from London Drugs and send it to me. I have an excellent address here in Tonga and there is just a 15% tax on imported goods. I did a bit of internet research and found that London Drugs has a suitable underwater digital camera available and that is where I bought my Pentax, that I lost underwater. Another thing that you might be able to get for me is a floatation device that can keep my camera on the surface if I drop it, rather than on the bottom. Could you possibly, or perhaps your son could possibly, phone London Drugs and ask about underwater digital camera availability. I would like to spend about 300$ CDN. If one is suitable and available, perhaps you could mail it to me, I'll get that address for you not too long from now.
Here I am mid Pacific ocean, I got time on my hands. For the past 48 hours the sailing has been great, light winds from excellent directions, but today it looks like I got another be-calming on my hands. I was be-calmed off Bora Bora for part of a day and part of a night, this is part of a day be-calmed again for sure, maybe this will stretch into a full day of be-calm.
This is a particularly trying be-calming because the waves are still high and with two separate swell patterns. So Prism rocks and rolls in the waves like crazy. This causes the wind pressure to alternatively build and evacuate on the sides of the sail. This causes the sail to slam back and forth. So the main sail has to come down to stop that expensive flogging. I do leave the genoa up, so I am creeping towards Tonga at 3 knots.
It is a wonder to me, when the wind is blowing free (that is in the right direction at the right speed) I sing happy songs about being in Tonga in just 6 days. But when the wind is nought, I wonder if the wind will ever come back again. It's one of those mysteries of the emotions, feeling positive in positive times and negative in negative times. I read that liferaft survivors survive more when they can sail their raft, as opposed to those who are only able to drift. I will never know, I have a 406 Khz EPIRB with built in GPS, I will be rescued in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, I won't be able to write the huge survival at sea auto-biography, but I will suffer that inconvenience.
Then the next 6 days, I have to complete this email in Tonga because the winds came up:::::
what a wild ride the last 6 days were. Here in this part of the SouthWestern Pacific the weather is dominated by the South Pacific Convergence Zone, the SPCZ, which from my reading is somewhat analogous to the Eastern Pacific Doldrums. The SPCZ is heavily influenced by the various weather systems around, namely the permanent high pressure over central Australia and the monsoons in the Indian Ocean and the monsoons on the coast of China. It can be benign or very dangerous, and changes in an instant. The other weather phenomena here is that the intense low pressures from the Antarctic winter send their cold fronts up towards the equator and these cold fronts occlude, or get mixed with the warm front. Then this occluded front seems to stall around 20 degrees south and simply straightens out and covers many miles at 20 degrees.
When I left Bora Bora, I knew that there was a big, long front at 20 degrees south and I knew that the SPCZ was north of my track and for the first 6 days I had typical tradewinds for this time of year, light and variable but generally East. The last 6 days of the trip, the front and the SPCZ came together right on my path. The winds were from the South, excellent winds for me, and I took full advantage of them, laying down some big miles in great conditions. But the winds just kept strengthening. I knew I had some heavy weather in front of me and so I had to get busy and rig Prism for the winds to come. That's not too hard, I just have to re-install the inner forestay so that I can put up my small storm staysail on the front of the mast and put the storm trysail on its tracks. For light tropical tradewinds and coastal sailing, those two sails are below to make it easier to sail with the larger light wind sails. Not too long after that was done, the wind shifted around to the Southeast and came on strong. Apparently the strong frontal winds will combine with the SPCZ and shift into very strong tradewinds, and that's what happened. Before too long I was in 25 to 30 knots of breeze and the waves were building fast.
But with that small sail on the front of the mast, and the wind behind me, I had no real problems going where I wanted to go, and laying down some big miles as well. I did learn though that I can get Prism going too fast. When that happens a large wave will spin Prism slightly into the wind, the small sail will aerodynamically spin Prism into the wind as well, and the wave will pass beneath leaving the rudder and the Cap Horn steering rudder in air or foam. In sailing terms, this is a broach, in practical terms Prism suddenly rolls to leeward and yaws up into the wind.
The proper solution of course is to slow the boat down, and that was easy to do, so I did that and weathered the storm. What a great ship this Prism is, she handled all the wind and waves, and my learning curve, never took in a drop of ocean. That's my cure for all adrenaline rushes, pump the bilge, and she always comes up dry and I always thank the lord and my dad and settle down to ask, Now what did you learn from that, Jim?
So I'm here in Tonga, safe and sound, with a couple of little items of repair to do. I've found the drydock, it can handle Prism, the rates are very reasonable, so I will consider getting some repairs done here by the Tongan's. the bars are really friendly, and the place is just starting to fill up with tourists. I'm going to like it here, it's cheap and looks like a lot of fun. The whales have been sighted and so they have arrived with a lot more to come. the fishing looks great, I saw a lot of tuna about 2 hours back of the harbour on my way in. Tonga has a lot of Islands close together so the sailing is widely reported to be terrific, the tradewinds blow but the swell can't get past the outer reef to windward. It looks exactly like the gulf Islands, except covered in coconut trees. A lot of these little anchorages have a restaurant and a hotel catering to Kiwi's and Aussie's looking for cheap holidays in the tropics during the Austral Winter. It is my opinion right now, that you will be able to find me in Tonga for the next few months, maybe even until November 1 when an organized rally leaves Tonga on course New Zealand. this place seems more suited to me than french Polynesia which I found to be too French, too European, too expensive. to me a south Pacific paradise is cheap, warm, safe anchorages and friendly natives. It seems Tonga is that, as well as good fishing, swim with the humpback whales and cheap boat repairs.
I hope that you aren't getting too tired of getting emails from me, seeing that almost each email is a request for services. I'm only counting on the fact that you were amply rewarded in advance with all that gold that I left behind. If you still haven't found the gold, I did give your son very simple and explicit directions, and you should check with him because I'm sure he has it by now.
Yours Jimsh
