Crew Blog

Who’s Counting?

18 March 2008

We are almost in Honolulu. Well, almost if 278.3 miles is close. When the race ended we were over 600 miles from Ala Wai Harbor in Honolulu. That’s 600 miles to do boat chores that normally would take place in port. An idle crew is a skipper’s nightmare so the skipper keeps us busy and we are motivated by the prospect of more free time in port.

In the galley, V starts our post race food and provisions inventory. Sounds easy except we are still consuming food and aren’t sure how long we will be at sea. Our resident math experts instantly compute Honolulu ETA with every change in course and boat speed. At 8 knots we are thrilled to learn we will arrive in 2 days. Moments later at 4 knots it will be 4 days, make that 3 days…

We still spend time raising and lower sails, trimming and helming. We are currently sailing with 2 reefs in the main and a yankee 3; conservative for the conditions as we attempt to take it easy on the rig. It will take roughly 38 hours, 51 minutes and 17 seconds to reach port. But who is counting…

Meanwhile, Nate is chairing the NY Clipper Sewing Circle and Book Review Club. Sara co-chairs these events in the saloon which is headquarters for below decks line whipping, chafe patching and strop making. Book readers occasionally sit in the saloon and find the needles Nate has “temporarily” stuck in or around cushions.

Al developed a sail repair plan. We all knew the main had significant damage and after a day and a half of repair work involving most of the crew we re-hoisted a “like new” main. Well, a new main that has met a few big squalls. What they didn’t teach us in sail repair class was the need for hammers and hacksaws. Mark, Steve and Ken (aka Steve) as new crew learn the tools of the trade. Who would have thought that our main repairs would be slowed because we only had 2 hammers?

In between mainsail repairs and chart organization for the next race I knock off a few routine maintenance items: checking thru hull valves, testing bilge alarms, bilge pumps and gas sensors. Justyn starts computer maintenance and data backup before joining Nate for wrap net mania. Intended to keep our spinnakers out of the rigging, the wrap net is truly the defining test of patience unless you enjoy untangling a ball of twine.

Along with hours doing sail repair, Tony manages to also inventory our medical supplies and life safety equipment.

We all catch up on email and sleep. The latter includes day dreaming about anchoring earlier in this race and sweeping snow off the deck. Was that really this race?  And daydreaming about finally reaching Hawaii. Gee, it’s only 55 hours, 2 minutes and 12 seconds to Ala Wai…oh no, we must have slowed down. At least we have freed up two days in port by getting work done in route. Two extra free days in Hawaii, right skipper?

Gary Purdom