Sunday 20th October 2013
Day 8
16°21'S. 166°38'W
261nm to go
11am
Well the day is not much better than yesterday still nothing is working, and we have been up since 4am, I have tried again to get things working and it's not meant to be, and to top it off the AIS has decided to join their party and stop working, this we can not understand as they are completely different systems.
I can tell you there is a lot of nav systems here that are about to join Davy Jones's locker.
The only good thing is the ocean is not quite so rough at the moment, but man the rolling is still shocking.
We only had the mizzen sail out so decided the Yankee might help as well,
Good idea Captain, but the ropes for it are all tangled at the front of the boat. From the other night with the gale force winds.
We take a look at it and decided its too rough to go out there, I was thinking about it.
Then I looked out again and I have two fishing rods tied up the front that had come loose, well that had me strapping my harness on and getting out there, I was not going to lose my rods.
Man it was hard going, with one fall with me landing on my arse tangled in the stay sail, but managed to get the rods tied back into place.
Then decided I'm out here anyway I might as well have a look at the mess the ropes were in.
Man what a mess, one rope that had no business being there at all, ( it should of been tied up near the cockpit) well it was all tangled around a spare anchor tied to the bow sprit, so with me sitting up there doing the roller coaster ride, I managed to untangle it all thread it back to the cockpit. Only to discover it was still tangled so bring it all back to the front untangle the last bit and try again.
Than get it all wrapped around the winch, to pull out the sail, and it worked even if I did smash my hand a bit into the winch, but the sail is out and the boat has settled down a bit.
Well it's 6pm, we have had the Autopilot switched off all day and decided to give it one more go, we are still a day and a half away from American Samoa, so I go down fingers and toes crossed and switch it back on, and yes yes yes, we have all systems up and running, so I race up and switch it to Auto put in the degree and off we are to Fiji once again.
The Captain can finally let go of the wheel, it will be his first time today in 13 hours other than a quick pee break where I tried to steer, and not too bad I must say.
Now I can also stop running the whole boat as well, I can tell you it's a huge relief, man I cried again we are both so totally exhausted but at least we are kinda back to normal, even though we have shocking big seas.
Oh but of coarse it can't just be all fun and games, it took me ages to get the AIS back up and running, and it looks like we have lost our fuel tank for the dinghy overboard this must of happened when we had the really bad winds, and yes it was tied down.
Well tomorrow is another day, I hope a much better one.