We are in, or almost in, Jimmy Cornell's dreaded 'box'. This is an area that Jimmy Cornell, in World Cruising Routes, says that many sailors have reported bad weather and uncomfortable conditions. In the edition of his book that we have, the 'box' is 3°S-8°S, 90°W-95°W. However, in the latest edition of World Cruising Routes, the 'box' has been repositioned to 3°S-8°S and 95°-105°W.
We are currently at almost exactly 5°S 95°W. After a reasonable night last night, early this morning we sailed out of a nice moonlit sky into a 100% overcast, and the seas have just gotten awful. Not big so much as confused and steep. The wind is only a little higher--and pretty much the same direction--as we've had for the past two days, but the seas are something else. It's like being in a washing machine.
We have one wave train coming directly from the side--about an 8' swell with a 4-5 second period... tall steep seas. We have another wave train, coming right on our nose--4' and not so steep. The wind is about 15-18 kts, and we are down to a double-reefed main and just the staysail. We took a second reef in the mainsail yesterday evening, after our friends ahead of us reported 20-25 kts. It never got that high during the night for us, but we were still glad we'd reefed down.
About mid morning, we rolled in the scrap of genoa that we'd left out all night, mainly because the heel from the sails, combined with the steep waves coming from the side, were really rolling us around.
So we spent a few hours wallowing along pleasantly, 20° off our desired course, only making about 5 knots. However, with the 100% overcast, we needed to run the engine to charge the batteries anyway, so we cranked up Mr. Perkins at 1pm and have been motorsailing for the last 2 hours. With the engine on, we've been able to turn up just a little, so we're now going along our desired course (about 211°), and going slightly into the big steep swell, so we're not rolling so much. As long as we don't get going too fast, it's not too uncomfortable. We are hoping to just get ourselves further south as soon as possible.
We think that around 8°S, we'll be almost out of the 'box' and start seeing the wind go further east, which should let us ease our sheets a little. Unfortunately, we have a day or two before we reach that point. :P
In contrast, our friends on Visions of Johanna (vofj.blogspot.com) have reached an area of calm just north of Easter. They expect to have to motor pretty much all day today and tomorrow and arrive at Easter Island Saturday morning.
We are getting 10 day forecast GRIB files, covering the area down to 40°S and out to 160°W, and don't see any terrible weather brewing up between us and Easter Island. (Though anyone who trusts a forecast more than 2-3 days out, especially on this uninhabited patch of ocean, is foolish). But we're keeping our fingers crossed.
Our noon-to-noon run ending at noon today was 138 miles, averaging 5.75 knots. At that speed, we have 11.36 days to go. So we'll probably make Easter sometime 15-17 March. If the wind veers more East, we should pick up speed and may shorten that by a day or so.
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At 3/4/2010 9:29 PM (utc) our position was 05°00.15'S 094°47.43'W
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