One Girl's Ocean Challenge Update

by Tim Hill on 1 Mar 2011 Toronto's Diane Reid is making great progress on her 1000-mile solo qualifier for the upcoming 2013 Mini Transat race.

Here's her story from the past few days.


View 1,000 Mile Qualifying Run - February 2011 in a larger map

Passed Waypoint 2 – Heading South on Leg 3
Thursday Evening, February 24, 2011

Shore crew extraordinaire Paul reports: Just off the phone with Diane. At 5:42pm she was 7 miles from Waypoint '2?, the turn to head south. Diane is sooooo glad that she’s done heading east. Once she makes the turn it’s kite up and hold on! This will be fun.

Presently she is footing in 11kts of breeze and doing about 6kts while hand steering. There has been cloud cover all day. Two reasons for hand steering. First is to conserve battery power. One battery is 50% and the other is full up. Second reason is that there has been lots of swells today and light breeze so it’s been a little hard with the auto pilot.

The plan is to hand steer through the night and keep the kite up until the breeze becomes to much to handle. She is predicting that the wind will pickup to around 20kts tonight.

Today was a nice day and fairly uneventful. Only two freighters were seen today and they were so far off there was no need to deploy the motor. What she did see was all kinds of trash. Tons of it, from bags and containers to plastic chairs and tables. What a shame.

TIm interjects: at 12:43pm Diane left me sentence before he satellites went over the horizon: Awesome night sail last night in the dark, lots of starts and phosphorescence and the boat just screaming along like a rocket-ship doing a nice 10kts.

Paul continues: Diane’s spirits are still high and maybe more so when she makes her turn. She sends a big hi out to all hers friends and fans and hopes you are enjoying her adventure. Speaking of friends Diane would like send the last tack & an upcoming jibe out to Brian and Tristan of UK Halsey who set her up with a sail repair backpack. All the right supplies, that came in handy on the becalmed day when she needed to fix a couple of small tears in the sail inventory.

Thats all for now. Diane needs to get a meal in before the turn and get everything ready for the spinnaker to go up.

Chutes, Batteries & Waves
Friday February 25, 2011

Today’s update came in 3 installments between 10:30am and 2pm.

First call: Diane was reefed in really nasty chop. Multiple wave trains with no backs on them. She was debating shaking out reef as wind was easing and needed power. Lost connection before the chance to fully discuss her being reefed in the first place.

Second call: full main and going through the chop much better due to the extra power. Main battery flat. Didn’t take a charge yesterday at all. Hand steering for now, trying to charge in lots of sunshine.

Third call (much later). Ran full diagnostics on battery and electrical system including phyisycally moving batteries around. Each battery and charging source is on it’s own dedicated controller. It looks like the main solar panel on stern, that got the nickname The spoiler on the Bermuda race last summer, may be dead. Not to worry as Diane has reconfigured with the other panels. She’s running on second battery now and monitoring to see if the first battery is charging.

She is very excited now as that problem seems to be solved for now at least. AND! Diane saw and gammed with her first sail boat since the run began. The skipper was taking her south, he didn’t consider their current location south. He had no destination in mind other than south. They chatted for quite a while on the VHF. Diane gets so excited by these things.

At about 2pm, conditions were wind E 12kts true, steering 200, lots of sunshine, 1019.6mb. The forecast will see Diane in mostly 15’s all the way down to Inagua with the odd bit above and below that.

There was a debated whether she should go east or west of Plana Cays. She was currently sailing to pass to the west of it, which is faster, but sailing higher will give her a faster angle after she passes it, though at the cost of short term speed.

Waves are much better since passing Samana Cays. We about the chop and the likelihood of it being a combination of reflected waves and the bottom coming up really fast. Diane said the whole trip has been pretty much like sailing in a washing machine. There as so many banks and shoals that the rollers coming from deep ocean get all piled up around the islands. Diane almost puked on the first night through the northwest passage.

Tim again. Funny how some details take a few days to get passed along. As always, there is Spot Trackerfor Diane’s latest location. I’ve updated the chart with her location at 3:30pm, just more than half way down the leg, about 104nm from Great Iguana Island Lighthouse.

Oh What A Night
Saturday February 26, 2011

The 10am update: Diane deployed her drogue last night due to very depleted batteries and being too tired to hand steer. She had just enough battery to run the autohelm while she deployed. She picked the spot as it provided a lot of sea room while she slept and he hadn’t seen any traffic in a long while. She didn’t know if she would have such condition when she got closer to Inagua.

Everything is fine. The batteries indicate fully charged (she thinks they’re lying because when a load is on them, they show less of a charge). She’s fully charged and ready to go again. And yes, she had all her alarms on while she slept.

Friday evening Paul reported & Tim is finally blogging: Diane checked in at 5:43pm and didn’t really have much to add other than that she is getting really tired of sailing into the wind and is hoping to use the kite for all of the next leg. 15hrs and 90 nm is the distance to the next turn. The battery issues seems to be resolved for now and they are charging.

Rather then get splashed from another wave it’s time to put her jacket back on which is tricky while hand steering and talking on the sat-phone. She’s says goodbye for now and may check in later. She need’s to make dinner and stow gear before it gets dark.

Saturday afternoon, Spot Tracker is showing a last update from 11am this morning. Expect either it wants to be fed some fresh batteries (it is not connected to the ship’s batteries), or as it automatically turns off after 24 hours, Diane may need to re-turn it on.

The tracker shows her turning at Inagua and heading north west about 3:22pm Saturday.

25 Knots Into The Night
Evening Sunday February 27, 2011

Paul advises: Diane checked in at 5:15pm and reports that it is blowing 25kts from the east. She is averaging 10kts of speed right now and has seen 18kts surfing down waves. The thought of putting up the kite early today did cross her mind but she realized that it wasn’t worth the work and the risk.

Last night was a lot of work and once again the the drogue was deployed so that Diane could get some much needed rest. The batteries are full up and the autopilot has been doing a great job in the big seas and heavy breeze.

Her 5:15pm position is 67 miles from what she is calling the narrow part. Diane has plugged in way points to help keep her in the middle because she is saying that this section is only 15 miles wide. There will be lots of hand steering through the night in order to conserve power.

It has been very hard getting any sat signal today and she has been very busy with two reefs in the sails and a winch that had to be tightened up from all the use that it has had.

This pretty much ends the broad cast for today. Diane still sounds fine but is definitely tired.

White-sail Reaching Through The Trench
11:30am Monday February 28, 2011

Just got off the phone with Diane. She has about 65nm to go to get through the trench. She is very tired due to the confined sailing and lots of shipping traffic. She hailed a freighter last night and chatted with them for, what sounds like, a loooooong time. She now has a freighter full of fans.

She is taking it easy and white sail reaching as she isn’t racing and needs to preserve the gear and sails. It’s blowing 20kts and the waves are pretty steep. This is probably due to a whole lot of the Atlantic trying to squeeze between the Bahama Bank and Cuba helped along by a winter trade wind.

Speaking of, the weather update is that the wind will ease off and lift (vear) as she heads north after the ditch. She had her second cockpit shower today. But somehow she’s looking forward to a real shower in Miami.

TIm again: looking at Spot Tracker for the latest position report showing some boat maneuvers to avoid freighters, cruise ships and shallows of the Bahama Bank & Cuba. Diane’s back into SailFlow’s forecast area. And the 'chart' updated at 10:54am showing Diane 24nm from Cay Lobos.