Double handed passage

Day 1 (Jan24) - beam reach, great speed (8-9knots). Wind speed not working well. At dusk we lost the outhaul and turned engine on… spent over an hour trying to fix it as the sun was going down, and was able to fetch it out of the boom using a snake and then using stainless steal wire, get it up through the pulley and attached back on the main sail clue.
We decide to just deploy the geneoa as it was a broad reach with not a lot of wind. By 8:30pm, we had to turn the engine on again as we were back winding.
We usually use active captian…. And Brian turned it on, but the main screen started flickering and I think he finally believes me that it is causing problems with the Gramin….so he turned off the iPad, and we will sail/ motor through the night.
Day 2 (Jan 25) - We had a great day of sailing (although motored last night and will motor through the night tonight. Lorena has difficulty on a downwind run and the autopilot doesn’t work well. We only encountered one vessel, a passenger ship, that came within half a mile of us… we hailed them on the radio a few times but they didn’t answer so we adjusted our course untill they passed. All systems are working well!
Day 3 (Jan 26).. the morning started with making coffee while Brian was in the head. Suddenly I heard a ratcheting sound, and within moments realized “fish on,” I quickly stored the coffee (things spill easy when you are sailing), raced up to the deck … but just as I was getting to the reel, and tried to tighten the drag, all the line was out and it snapped off. Brian, who LOVES catching a fish 🎣, had tried to make quick business of his morning ritual and was sad to learn that no fish and the line and lure were gone…. As was the lure on the second fishing line. The poles go out at dawn and come in at dusk. He spent the morning repacking the spool/ reel.
With the wind behind us, the lines were getting tangled often, and at one point, when Brian was trying to clear them, they got tangled in the wind turbine. It has now stopped turning.
At dusk, we decided to drop the sails and point in the direction we wanted to go verses jibbing the entire time. We have been consistently moving at a good speed (6-8knots) — rigging and bottom paint has helped.
Day 4 (Jan 27) — final stretch! My calculation is that we will arrive before dusk, which is a big relief! Usually we both sleep in the helm and watch the iPad (active captain) every hour or so. However, my shoulder and neck has been really sore. I’ve had to take pain relievers but so far nothing has dulled the ache.
Brian is able to sleep in most conditions… however, my body takes a few days to find the rhythm. My nervous system is hyper vigilant and simply won’t allow me to find a restful state, resisting my bodies plea for sleep. I also have an aversion to the auto pilot squeak/moan. It reminds me of the noise of monitors in a hospital room. It is mounted right behind the aft cabin wall, so unless the engine is on, or my ear buds in and music is full blast, I cannot lay in my bed.
Around noon, as we were drawing close to Bonaire and other Venezuelan islands, I noticed that we didn’t have the full detail in the chart plotters map. When we zoomed in… same issue as Trinidad, although I KNOW we had purchased the map. We called Garmin and they were great! Explained how to download the bits of chart we needed. Thank goodness — as even with the charts (with inaccurate depth reading) anchoring was tricky! We tried to anchor, then moor, then back to anchoring again.
I knew the boats left Klein Curacao at 4pm…. So we slowed our approach (as I wanted to stay two nights — without checking in). The island (small reef) is uninhabited except for a caretaker. By 5:30pm we were settled at anchor and had dove in to ensure the anchor was set.
The water is blue /turquoise, full of fish, and a delight to swim in after a long passage!Read more