Update on the jib.

First, a correction from yesterday, or whenever (it all runs together): By the way, Donna mentioned that she SAW some spinner dolphins on her watch this morning.

Today's trash report: a white cooler lid.

OK, here's the jib situation: several days ago, we reported that our jib furling line had chafed through and that we had locked the furling drum down to prevent a runaway jib. Well, after installing a new furling line, (and removing the lock-down!), Bill determined that the forward-most fairlead block was chafing the line, so he added a big snatch block to the system to straighten the lead. This was successful except that he then noticed that the line could rub on the drum flanges. Obviously, this is not a problem when the jib is fully deployed in light winds, or when it's fully furled in heavy winds. But we have been using it partially deployed in intermediate winds and the sail tends to "breath" as the pressure on it varies, causing the drum to oscillate, and the line to chafe if it touches the top or bottom flange. So here's the final solution. After each sail adjustment, Bill goes forward to inspect the position of the line coming off the drum. If it's OK, we're done. But if it's touching the drum, Bill yells back to the cockpit to ease the furling line and he feeds it onto the drum in the correct position. This has served us extremely well so far. We spent an entire night blasting along with a 25% jib, and another night with a 50% setup. Every few hours, Bill or Lindsey would conduct a "chafe patrol" to ensure that nothing had shifted.

However, today we are fully jibbed, so no chafe patrol required.

Bill said something memorable to me a few days ago. I was on watch and was thinking that I wanted to adjust the jib from 25% to something more aggressive. So I called Bill and said something about how I know it's a pain to adjust the jib with the current furling situation, but what did he think. He came on deck immediately and said, "We are sailors. Adjusting the sails is our "raison d'etre". Exactly!

Also, I think I still owe you an update on the autopilot remote. Needless to say, the oven treatment did not fix it, but we plugged it back in anyway because the auto/standby buttons were still working apparently. However, a few hours later, the autopilot alarm went again, the system went to standby (hand-steering), and this time the message on the below-decks display was "STLK FAIL". We had no idea what the problem was, thinking it was an autopilot overheat lockup. But when we unplugged the remote, everything returned to sweetness and light. Bill later read the manual and determined that STLK means SeaTalk, the Raymarine word for the NMEA 0183 network. So the dead remote is in the chart table and we are confined to adjusting the course from below. Good for us we have a "below"; otherwise, no Otto to drive for us. However, switching to or from hand-steering requires coordination between the on-deck helmsman and the below-decks button-pusher.

Speaking of the course, we are now "on-course" to Long Beach. We came upon a bright orange buoy this morning and immediately turned right.

Current position and course at 2:10 pm HST:
34N56 145W13 085 T @ 7.0 kts
Winds: NNW @ 8 kts

Fair winds . . .
Chris