July 10^th, 2017 Monday 23h20. Jiggling it up with boobies.

Kandu is acting like a Bucking Bronco, but she’s keeping it altogether. With the heavy movement, the crew and captain are lethargic. Tonight, we are still benefitting greatly from a slightly waning moon. It makes a great difference when you can see the surrounding ocean and waves instead of just feeling it by how the boat reacts to the swell. The sea has been so turbulent, we’ve been attracting red-footed booby birds and other marine birds as a resting haven. Last night one landed on our solar panel. It did not want to budge. Finally when forced to fly away, he left a rather large wet present behind. Ugh! Tonight during Trent’s watch, he heard a bit of racket behind the cockpit and thought he saw something fall. It turns out, after he scrabbled for the flashlight, two boobies had boarded. One was laying dead on the stern poop deck with it’s neck broken, the other flapped around nearby startled by the light and lodged itself under the starboard genoa lines. The swell was so that every time the boat heeled over, and that was often, rushing saltwater would run down the starboard deck right into the birds face. Yet the booby refused to leave until Eric eventually pushed it overboard in preparation for a jibe as it would have gotten crushed. It’s funny how the booby bird in every language has a silly name. All consider it a very dumb bird. The next morning, we had to jibe again and called everyone up. Eric asked Trent, “Please get rid of that dead booby bird over the side. Do you want gloves?” Trent replied, “If I’m going to touch a booby, I’m not wearing a glove!”

July 11^th, 2017, Tuesday 23h15. Torres Strait.

Darwin is getting closer but is still far far away. We entered Torres Strait around 19h30 this evening. No boats along the shipping corridor, just a couple off to the side quite a distance away. We sure are loving our AIS (Automated Identification System) transponder right about now! We’re moving fast for Kandu between 6.5 and 7.5. We don’t really know how fast the wind is because our wind gage is broken, but we’re thinking it is blowing about 30-35 miles per hour with a swell of 2 or 3 meters. It’s overcast and stormy, yet Kandu is handling very well. The cockpit is pretty wet. I’m enormously thankful to have our solid dodger instead of a canvas one blocking the saltwater spray, and our newly constructed cockpit canopy built in Raiatea to keep out most of the rain. Our previous canopy had slipped off and fallen overboard while crossing to Tahiti from Fakarava in 2016. Expensive loss that was!

We continue to attract sea birds. Booby birds seemed to have gotten the word that it’s not safe aboard Kandu, but the medium sized black petrels with red webbed feet didn’t get the message. One landed on top of our canopy during sunset. He couldn’t find grip so relocated near the stern BBQ. I haven’t shewed the petrel away mostly because it’s been keeping me company during my watch, hanging on for dear life. Two others that night didn’t make it aboard instead flying into our wind generator. When that happens, the sound it makes is rather chilling. It’s not ideal sailing the Torres Strait at night. However, with our radar, AIS and mapped out waypoints, ‘We Kandu.’

July 12^th, 2017 17h00. Reprieve at Coconut Island.

Shortly after I finished my log notes last night, a large wave struck the boat healing us over 50 degrees or more partially filling the cockpit with water. Immediately after the wave hit, Kandu started to head forcefully downwind into the oncoming swell causing the boat to dangerously heal over again. Our Monitor wind vane had been steering us steadily up until that point, but it wasn’t correcting itself. I grabbed the helm and pulled it to starboard, but alarmingly the helm would not budge. At that point I yelled to Eric for help. I put all my weight on the helm and suddenly something gave. By that time, Eric had flown up into the cockpit and was asking what happened. He took over the helm and while steadying Kandu, realized it was loose.

For the third time since leaving Polynesia, the control line had chaffed. In this case, the frayed section must have gotten hitched on an interior bolt and with my forceful tugging on the helm was shredded in two. Chaffing of the control line has been a problem since using the wind vane continuously while sailing from the Galapagos to the Marquesas. We thought we had the problem fixed in the Marquesas: the Monitor manufacturer replaced the suspect bolt with a shorter one and gave us new lines. Evidently, after three separate incidents of a frayed control line since leaving Polynesia, the problem is not yet solved.

Eric re-rigged the wind vane right away and it continued to work fine after that. But the weather continued to be terrible all morning. Fortunately, we positioned the plexiglass divider between the cockpit and the interior as we took a couple more BIG waves filling the cockpit halfway. Our electric generator stored in the cockpit got completely doused with salt water and then our wind generator failed. Craziness! By 10:00 am, we were all wiped out by the pounding. Eric was stressed and exhausted. After discussing our situation, we decided to see if we could find a place to hide from the heavy swell and winds. Eric contacted the Australian Coast Guard and arranged permission to duck behind Coconut Island, a sliver of an island four hours away, to wait out the bad weather for two days. Anchored in 60 feet with all but 3 feet of our 300 feet of chain out, we collapsed for a much needed nap.