Monthly Archives: March 2013

Pacific crossing D13

06.66.371S / 127.52.248W – 173 miles and 23 hours to Nuku Hiva. We traded emails with the bonding agent in Papeete, and she advises Monday is a holiday and we will have to wait until Tuesday to clear into French Polynesia. The procedure is to anchor and fly the yellow “Q flag” for quarantene, which means we need to stay on the boat. Given our predicted arrival Monday morning, and the possibility of being stuck on the boat, we decided to “do a lap” around Nuku Hiva which is about 50 miles. It also should present an opportunity to restock the frig with some fresh fish – hopefully a tuna or dorado. Our fishing guru did “advise” that there are Blue Marlin in the area which range from 300 pounds for a small one to 1000 pounds. His advice – if we hook one, turn the boat around and chase it. Hard to imagine landing a fish that weighs more than Christine and I together. We’re ready. Just a few perspectives before we arrive. We logged 2500 miles on the trip to Mexico and exploring the Sea of Cortez and this trip will be 2700, 5200 miles in 3 and half months. Distance to Brisbane assuming some deviation and exploring is 5000 miles, meaning we have done roughly half of our total mileage for the trip, and 6 months remaining. The distance across French Polynesia from the Marquesas to Bora Bora is 1000 miles and we plan to spend the next 3 months exploring. We are gearing up for less passagemaking and more hanging out. A few technical details of which we will post in total after our arrival – we expect to run the main engine 350 hours – over 2700 miles for 7.7k average. We have averaged 3.5gph, and have had the benefit of 1k current for 8 of the 13 days. We have used the cruise generator for cooking and have kept the batteries charged with the solar and engine alternator – we have only run the main generator 3 hours since leaving Cabo San Lucas. Next post will include the landfall report.

Pacific crossing D12

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04.45.662S / 135.38.442W 359 miles from Nuku HIva Yesterday’s excitement was visually spotting a cargo ship. Our radar is set on 24 miles range, but with thunderstorms it’s hard to tell boats from rain clouds without a lot of adjustment to the gain setting. Not to mention, when you go 14 days without seeing another vessel, you don’t fiddle much with the radar gain. AIS provides us longer range. At the time we were taking a break on the back deck of the pilothouse and I looked over the horizon – definitely a man-made object sticking up. We verified the Coral Opal on the AIS system – at 8 miles. Christine made the radio call and they acknowledged our position. They passed 6 miles behind us. AIS showed the destination Dailiang China – sure enough if you draw the great-circle route on Google Earth from Southern Chile to Northern China – it passes about 600 miles north of the Marquesas. As we near the end of our passage, we want share a glimpse of our non-boat activities. Except for our responsibilities to run the boat; this is truly a life without schedules, commitments, obligations and demands. The weather has been good and having adapted to the motion of the boat, and thanks to the Kindle we have plenty to read. A good part of our daily conversation revolves around our book d’jour, and with but one companion to discuss our literary enlightenment – imagine the conversations over the respective reading lists: Mark: Herman Melville “Typee”, John Grisham “The Racketeer”, David Hodge “Idiot’s Guide to Guitar”, Joshua Slocum’s “Sailing Alone Around the World”. Christine: Higgins and George “The Neuroscience of Clinical Psychiatry”, Blair, Mitchell and Blair “The Psychopath: Emotion and Brain”, Hal Blumenfeld “Neuroanatomy through Clinical Cases”, Davis Buss “The Evolution of Desire”, Clay Coleman “The Certified Diver’s Handbook”. We’re going to swap books for the remainder of the trip. Reference Material: Warwick Clay “South Pacific Anchorages”, Jimmy Cornell “World Cruising Routes”, Hinz and Howard “Landfalls of Paradise”, Lonely Planet “South Pacific and Micronesia”, Kurt Amsler “The French Polynesia Dive Guide”

Pacific crossing D11

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02.32.466S / 133.24.277W east of Quinto, Equador, south of Sitka, Alaska, 550 miles from Nuku HIva. Conditions are fabulous, periodic rain showers have kept the temperatures cool, there is a slight swell from the southeast. We have had several rainbows from the rain showers. Water temperatures is 87F, air temperature is 80F The current has slowed, so we are back to our regular power setting, running 7.3k and burning 3.5 gph. The fuel calculation this morning shows we have averaged 3.5 gph for the trip and will arrive with 800 gallons of our 2250 gallon capacity. Amazing to think Gray Matter could run another 1600 miles at this power setting (total range of 4000 miles). We could have elected to run faster at 8.5k and 6gph and arrived with 360 gallons – and two days sooner. We elected for the longer passage to time our visa for June 29 exit when we have family visiting (not to mention saving a few $$ on fuel). Maintaining our current speed and conditions, our arrival is still on track for Monday morning April 1.

Pacific crossing D10

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00.22.076S / 131.12.479W southern hemisphere We left the northern hemisphere at 5:30.33am PST, I was hoping for some kind of first-down marker, one of those projected lines you see on TV – no nothing. Just watching the GPS going down to to 00 and switch to S. We had rain on the radar most of the night, and it started just after we crossed the equator. At 8am we grabbed the scrub brushes and did a quick wash down in the drizzle. The rain also brought the temperature down to 78F and we have overcast at the moment. It is kinda ironic that we have the coolest day right at the equator. After the washdown, we shutdown the main engine and fired up the wing engine. I wanted to add a little hydraulic fluid to the Naid stabilizers (normal after 200+ hours), and checked the main engine oil level. We have been running non-stop for over 200 hours, and last time it needed a quart of oil around the 200 hour mark. Sure enough it was down about a quart, so topped up the oil. Also added a little hydraulic fluid to our main hydraulic tank which runs the cruise generator, bow thruster and windlass. It seems to be down a bit also – that may need some investigation. Not so bad spending 20 minutes in the 120F engine room when it’s 78F outside. Yesterday’s boat project: The anchorage in Socorro Islands was very rough, and we had the flopper stoppers out. The previous owner had installed some very wimpy clam cleats on the line holding the flopper stopper. The starboard side clam cleat broke in the Socorro anchorage. We have several stainless padeyes on the foredeck that were installed to hold various deck boxes that we are not using. Yesterday we removed a padeye (six screws), cleaned the area and Christine filled the holes with 5200 sealant. We then drilled new holes at the base of the flopper stopper, and bedded the fitting and screws with 5200. Never a pleasant feeling drilling holes in your boat. I then attached the block and tackle we salvaged from Blue Moon (and used to raise the anchor) – now we have a system that allows us to raise the flopper stopper like a window shade. If it works as designed, we will replace the port side as we have extra padeyes and another block and tackle setup. (For the sailors: the block and tackle gear were used for the running-backs on Blue Moon – so high-end spendy Harken 5 purchase system…. we may have the most expensive flopper stopper retrieval setup in the Nordhavn fleet). PIctures to follow. We’re managing our speed for a Monday April 1 morning arrival, an average of 7.6k should have us arriving just at sunrise.

Pacific crossing D9

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01.53.244N / 128.55.484W – 171 miles north of the equator, last day in the northern hemisphere. Good Morning – sea conditions are calmer than most days in San Francisco Bay, which is welcome relief after the previous 2 days. 85F with 85% humidity, nice and warm – looking forward to some fall weather tomorrow. No boat drama to report on – but of course always a project. Indicative of how well everything else is working, we upgraded the pilothouse stereo system. When provisioning at Costco in Cabo, I picked up some Bose outdoor speakers. While the solar project was running at Cabo, Christine and I ran the wires from the pilothouse stereo system out to the back deck of the pilothouse, and we had the stainless welder put two mounts on our new bimini. These new speakers were a huge improvement to our happy hour times – only caveat is they are powered by our 12v car stereo in the pilothouse which will only play CDs (if you can remember what those are). We have been entertaining ideas that can make these speakers work with the sonos wireless music system we have onboard. Yesterday was the day to tackle this project. we moved the Sonos Connect from the salon system, to the pilothouse – and found the Aux in plug for the 12v stereo – now we can tap our 1TB music library while sitting on the aft pilothouse deck – not to mention the pilothouse sound quality and volume potential with both the 12v system and the Sonos Play3. Volume is key when it’s 3am and you’re cranking Larry Carlton’s “Blues for TJ”. Ships approaching from behind are going to hear the music before they see our lights – safety first. Will update tomorrow at 00.00.00N/S.

Pacific crossing D8

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03.51.164N 126.56.031W (due south of British Columbia, due east of Columbia, 230miles north of the equator), 85F, 83% humidity. The weather subsided around 5pm last night. Jimmy C was absolutely correct as soon as we were south of 5N, the current went away, speed increased and at the moment we are enjoying a nice ride where it’s calm enough to make a normal dinner. Here’s a HUGE vote to the Nordhavn community. If we’ve learned anything on a voyage like this, if you think something is not right – investigate. Unlike your car where just turn the radio up louder – being a long way from help it’s important to diagnose any potential issues. As was the case with Engine Room temperatures. In Cabo, we had the good fortune of having dinner with Ken Williams (Nordhavn guru – kensblog.com). I sent an email to Ken as well as Melt Emms at Raven Marine both have extensive experience on N62s. Ken is also close friends with Steven Argosy on Seabird – N6204 which is almost identical to our boat. We sent the Iridium email at 10am West Coast time – rechecked at 2pm and I had replies from Ken, Steven and Melt. In summary, the temperatures we are seeing are high, and we should be running our engine room blowers 24/7 in these temperatures. The good news I had them all replaced when we did the refit at Raven Marine, however the port side breaker is on the generator circuit. Steven A confirmed this is critical as it provides cross-flow to the engine room. A quick email exchange with Melt – and he reminded me we are a 230v/50hz boat, and there are 3 wires for all the AC appliances. For us 110v guys, that’s a new twist – you can’t just move the positive over to the Inverter circuit – need to move both the “L1 and L2″ wires. You should see the gazillion of wires behind the AC panel. I do have a little extra time on my hands – so we locate the L1 wires and move them a spare breaker on the inverter panel – finding the L2 is a puzzle. 3 Iridium miniutes with Melt confirmed we need to move it – so by process of elimination on the 3rd try we identify the L2 and move it over to the inverter. Engine blowers fully operational. Steven on Seabird says the two blowers port and starboard bring his engine room down 20 degrees. We’ll have the report tomorrow.

Pacific crossing D6

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06.26.905N 125.00.816W (E of Columbia, South of British Columbia) – 400 miles north of the Equator. We crossed the halfway point this morning and are now “only” 1284 miles from Nuka Hiva. With the current conditions (slower) it may be last Monday or Tuesday of next week for our arrival. Conditions are a bit more “exciting”. The trade winds run east to west which normally would be helping us. Last night our speed slowed down to 6.0k, so I pulled out the bible of sailing the world – Jimmy Cornell’s book – sure enough the Equatorial current runs west to east between 08N and 04N – so not only is that slowing us down it’s building some pretty big swell from behind – 9 – 12 feet. From our sailing days – having the boat healed over 20 – 25 degrees was not unusual. Gray Matter likes to be upright – so when we roll 15 degrees and then the stabilizers correct us back upright it’s a bit of a “ride”. The autopilot is usually making a steering correction about the same time. After 10 days at sea, we can read, type email (obviously) without affect, and we have everything stowed so even though it’s a little dramatic – no big deal. Weather report – mid-80s, and we’re getting our fist drizzle of rain. First day I haven’t needed my sunglasses. Looks like more rain ahead. If the sea conditions were better I’d get out there in my bathing suit and scrub brush – I’ll wait for smoother seas. Speaking of heat, I mentioned we monitor temperatures in the engine room. Certainly on some key equipment, but also the overall temperature. Two days ago I noticed the overall temperature has been rising, and was close to 140F. Adds some new challenges to my 4 hour checks; don’t touch anything. We traded emails with one of cruising friends as well as our buddy Melt at Raven Marine – and 135F is not so unusual. Since we didn’t have a lot else going on – we opened the hatch in the salon and the engine room door and at the end of yesterday it was a pleasant 120F. Interestingly our cruise generator ran just fine after getting some fresh air. So we have the hatch and door open this morning after closing it for noise last night. We’re up in the pilothouse all day – so not too bad on noise and heat.

Pacific crossing D6

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08.17N 123.14W (due south of Vancouver BC, due west of Panama) Wind has picked up from directly astern, so we have a bit more swell, and as the stabilizers work harder to keep us comportable we’ve slowed down a bit, we ran 180 n. miles over the last 24 hours, but expecting something like 170-175n. miles in the next 24 hours with these conditions. Still looking to arrive sometime April 1 unless we slow down intentionally. My new hobby on night watch – see where in the world compares to our latitude and longitude. I made many trips to Penang Malaysia and it turns out we’re still 500 miles north of Penang’s position relative to the equator – for my friends in Penang we’re still enjoying the cool weather – high temp of 85F, low temp of 80F. While we worked hard to escape winter, we’re about to go back to winter in another 4 days. Troubleshooting a few things, after saying nice things about our Cruise Generator in the last post it’s now seems to want to “rest” after 15 minutes. Not critical as we can fire up the primary generator, so reading the hydraulics and cruise generator manuals and have a few emails out to our technical friends. Also noticing our engine temperature is pretty “warm” – 130F – plus trying to cool it down with the blowers and have the door open. Until tomorrow.

Pacific crossing D6

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Pacific crossing D5

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10.28.149N 121.04.711W Due south of San Francisco, due west of Costa Rica, 650 miles N of Equator, 1621 miles from Nuka Hiva, on course heading 215 degrees magnetic (great circle route adjusts 1 degree every 2 days). Our seventh day since we left Cabo San Lucas and we’ve been underway except the 24 hours we spent in Socorro Islands. We’re making great time in calm seas, over 180 miles last 24 hours. We are running slower than normal for fuel conservation, but have had favorable currents for the last 3 days adding almost a half knot. Nine days remaining at this speed, should put us into Nuka Hiva April 1 (no fooling). Air temperature is the same day and night – 80F, water temperature is up to 86F and humidity has been 75% – reminds me of weather in Maui. There’s just enough breeze from the boat and a little sea breeze to keep the pilothouse comfortable with the doors open. Fuel used as of this morning was 500 gallons of our 2200 capacity, so we are getting over 2miles / gallon which is phenomenal moving 100 tons. At this rate we will arrive in Nuka Hiva with almost 1000 gallons, which will give us options to fuel or not based on quality and price of fuel. Mechanically we changed a Racor fuel filter, I’m finding we get about 1000 miles on a filter with the current batch of fuel (we have dual filters – so I can switch to the other filter and change without shutting the engine down). The first three days we made 200 gallons of water for the trip – topped the tank up to 300 gallons, so I changed the watermaker filters. Between the solar and the main engine alternator we do not need the generator to keep the batteries up. We’ve been using our hydraulic cruise generator to run the stove when cooking lunch and dinner. This is super fuel efficient – as the hydraulic generator only draws .5 gph, does not need warmed up, or loaded up and we can run it for 20 minutes and shut it down. Our engine room checks every 4-6 hours look for temperatures (hydraulic tank cooling, turbo, prop shaft), hydraulic levels (on the stabilizers) and any other unusual site or sound. Speaking of temperatures – engine room is a toasty 115F – so I’ve discovered using a long sleeved spray guard wetted down is the secret when I have to spend anytime in there changing filters. One other engine room novelty – Christine has discovered 115F is perfect for “baking” yogurt. Speaking of making yogurt – we’ve found making our own drinks (ice tea that we make either with tea bags or instant mix) and coffee means we don’t need to carry bottled drinks significantly reducing our trash management. We have the ice coffee recipe down – so maybe we’ll open a coffee house in Brisbane. We have nearly a terabyte of music indexed by artist, genre, and/or track name, so we’re both enjoying exploring songs / artists we haven’t heard in a long time. Reading lots of books thanks to the Kindle – truly life without internet and cell phones.