Day 16 - April 22, Friday
We’re meandering along at around 4 knots, or a bit less, in 7 to 9 knots of NE wind. Jimmy Cornell says we should be benefitting from the 1 knot Southern Equatorial current setting to the west. The boat is moving around a bit due to the NE waves hitting our stern port quarter, but not in any really uncomfortable way. So far on this mostly downwind trip we haven’t experienced any particularly bad sea states or boat rolling or rocking, but perhaps what is bad is a personal thing. It does seem hard to call waves generated by no more than 12 to 14 knots of wind, or even the 20 we had for a few days, particularly aggravating, even if you are getting bounced around a bit. After all, this is an ocean passage and you have to expect some motion. It is definitely not the same as being on Puget Sound.
Hopefully, for the benefit of our failing rudder, the sea state will remain as it is for the remainder of our trip. If the winds kick up from a direction that tosses the stern around it may hasten the disintegration of the fiberglass pan that holds the upper end of the rudder post in position. It is the pan itself that has failed, we discovered after getting down in the lazerettes and really inspecting it. The upper rudder bearing assembly bolts onto the pan and is held in place and stable by the pan. Nice reasonable winds from another direction that doesn’t result in wave action tossing the stern would be most welcome, so we’re talking to the wind gods, and I’m talking to Freyja in particular!
I can’t remember which day it was, but at some point Emil patiently traced all the connections and figured out that the connection of the satphone cradle antenna cord to the external antenna was no good right where the cord entered and connected to the external antenna. The installation at Marine Services was bad, they had pinched the cord and the pinch caused the cord to pull out of its termination hardware. Once he got that fixed the satphone cradle worked fine for emailing and weather downloading.
For many days now we’ve been standing our night watches in shorts and t-shirts, or perhaps with a very light long sleeve thing over our t-shirt. It is really nice and warm at night, and the moon is still doing its thing. So far we haven’t had any really great starry nights, before or after the moon, as there has been moisture in the atmosphere and a star obscuring haze around the horizon. We haven’t seen any ships or boats since leaving Mexican waters behind, except for one radar image I saw one night about 20 miles out from us and that was off the screen within about 10 minutes.
Our fresh vegetables and fruit are pretty much gone, except for a bit of lettuce that has been refrigerated all along and some carrots and beets. The harder the vegetable the better they seem to keep. I think potatoes would still be good, but we have eaten all we brought. It turns out that Dominique likes oven baked French fries and enjoys making them for us! We ate the last of the sprouts today. I’m going to get a sprout growing thing going on Freyja, especially for longer passages. They are good and tasty and fresh, and can be grown as you go.
About one or so we decided to fly the asymmetrical. Emil drug it up to the foredeck, got all the lines out, and we started hoisting it up on its halyard. Just as it reached the top of the mast the snap shackle released for some reason and the sail came down, in its ATN snuffer bag, and landed on the deck. The spinnaker halyard was lost at the top of the mast. Emil promptly got out his home made bosun’s chair. We came into the wind and lowered the mainsail, only to find that the main halyard was badly frayed about a foot from the shackle. He cut the end off, tied a bowline to the shackle, attached his bosun’s chair and up the mast he went on the electric winch, clinging to the mast with arms and legs as he went up. However, the boat was pitching and rolling so violently with no sails up that about ¾ of the way up he couldn’t hold on and started getting violently and dangerously slammed and tossed around. We quickly lowered him down, left the spinnaker halyard up at the mast top and decided to forget flying the asymmetrical sail. While all that was going on, I was steering the boat and noticing that the steering was locking up at various angles with the auto pilot in the off mode. The wheel would just freeze solid so I couldn’t turn it at all. We can’t see anything jammed up down in the area of the steering quadrant, but we're wondering if it’s related to the failing rudder perhaps torqueing the steering mechanism and jamming up the autopilot. The steering seems to work with the autopilot on, though, so once again we are headed downwind to the Marquesas. We are on an angle of sail that doesn’t cause snapping of the rudder post, and are motor sailing to pick up a couple of knots. We're going as fast as we can without audible signals from the rudder telling us that we are killing it.
The mainsail halyard chafe was instructive, as was the roller furler chafe. We had no idea it was happening. It might have taken only a few minutes to happen, maybe when reefing or un-reefing, or maybe it took days. It tells me that you have to develop a habit of inspecting your rigging on a daily basis when cruising. When shaking out the reef in the mainsail, drop it all the way and check the halyard. The daily basis thing probably isn’t going to happen, realistically, but then at least frequently. Suppose the main halyard had broken and fallen down inside the mast?
Data entry for day 16, ending the April 22 to April 23, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (764 - 645) = 119
Wind Speed: 11 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.6 knots
Wave Height/State: 3 foot wind waves, 5 foot swell
Sail Plan: 100% main, 70% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Course: 2 magnetic, 231 GPS
Barometer: 1012
Temp: 84 degrees F.
Humidity: 84%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 645
Location: 03.01.635, 130.18.468
Day 17 - April 23, Saturday
Since last night we’ve been sailing along with about 11 knots of NE breeze gradually changing to E, making 5 knots or a little better. We’re heading SE to Hiva Oa, so the winds and seas are behind us at a broad reach or run type of angle. The course has to be tweaked to take pressure off the rudder – a few degrees one way or the other will change the way the stern is taking the waves and increase or decrease the rudder cracking and popping sounds and amount of play visible at the top of the rudder post. The more off course we are, the longer the trip, but the less stressful it is on us.
Too much headsail while going downwind results in it flogging at these wind speeds and with the size of the wind waves and swells. If the wind picks up, the whole 140% sail flies fine, but it is too heavy a weight of cloth for these conditions. The halyard for the asymmetrical is still up at the top of the mast. There is so much swing in the mast as the boat rolls around that it is dangerous to go up there for something that isn’t mission critical. It would be nice to have a couple of spare halyards rigged for whatever eventualities cause you to need one – chaff, accident, whatever. It would be nice to have a spare halyard for the main, too, or at least a messenger string somehow rigged so you could pull a new main halyard up if the need arose.
The amount of wear and tear on the boat in these pretty benign conditions is amazing, and I can only imagine what it would be like if conditions were stronger for a period of days. The twisting, banging, rolling, stretching, etc., 24/7, really tests the quality of construction of the boat and of all the gear on it. Anything that can rub and wear will quickly do so.
The crew is starting to talk about what day we will get to Atuona, the principal city on Hiva Oa, and the place where we will check into the country. With just over 600 miles to go we can start guessing our arrival day. We are guessing that our arrival will be on Thursday or Friday, or maybe Saturday. Apparently, if you get there after 5 pm on Friday you are supposed to stay on your boat in quarantine until Monday morning when customs and immigration open back up, which really isn’t a pleasant prospect. Maybe the other puddle jumpers will have compassion and stop by in their dingys with baguettes and ice cold local beers. And, if we have an after 5 pm Friday arrival, there will be the pressure to get off the boat anyhow, disrespecting the local laws and customs…..and maybe running into Monday morning’s immigration officer at the bar on Saturday night….
We have left the beautiful equatorial clouds behind and sailed into a zone with slightly more mundane clouds. The equatorial clouds were so energetic, so towering, each one trying to outdo the other in terms of height and complexity and sculptured patterns.
The very large stash of beautiful exotic cheeses that we have in the bottom of the refrigerator is slowing emerging. They are so delicious and in perfect shape. I had a nice piece of toasted Orowheat bread with a thick slice of a beautiful blue cheese on it for breakfast, with a few drops of olive oil added to the toast. It was washed down with our beautiful French Pressed dark roasted Nayarit coffee. The cous cous that we bought two large containers of at Costco is a big hit, too, as you can cook a pot full and have it ready to go cold. It works as a filling for burritos, with eggs, with salad, with fresh fish stirred in, it’s a great tasty filler.
I was pulling my handline in last night around 8, just as my watch was starting and, lo, there was a little 5 or 6 pound tuna on the line. He had the most beautiful electric blue colors. He must have been dragging for a while so didn’t fight much as I brought him to hand. We are still standing watch in t-shirts and shorts, unless because of a lot of wind we need a windbreaker. The t-shirt is more to keep the sun off than for warmth. We had a nice salad last night. The lettuce in the refer is still going strong.
Data entry for day 17, ending the April 23 to April 24, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (645 - 505) = 140
Wind Speed: 20 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 7.2 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind waves/swells close together
Sail Plan: 1st reef main, 30% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Course: 223 magnetic, 230 GPS
Barometer: 1014
Temp: 84 degrees F.
Humidity: 87%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 505
Location: 04.24.710, 132.12.042
Day 18 - April 24, Sunday
Twenty knots of wind, Force 5 on the Beaufort scale. Every once in a while a wave sprays into the cockpit. Luckily the temperature is right up there so we are warm even in this wind. We had a lot of new noises from the steering system last night. We think that the torqueing rudder shaft is damaging the autopilot, maybe getting the autopilot ram out of alignment. The whole thing is working really hard. We were prancing along pretty overpowered at 8+ knots last night before we got it together to reef the sails. The first reef doesn’t seem to take much area out of this Catalina stock mainsail.
Data entry for day 18, ending the April 24 to April 25, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (505 - 350) = 155
Wind Speed: 20 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 7.1 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind waves/swells
Sail Plan: Two reefs in main, 30% unfurled
Course: 200 magnetic, 2 GPS
Barometer: 1015
Temp: 88 degrees F.
Humidity: 92%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 350
Location: 05.50.027, 134.23.557
Day 19 - April 25, Monday
We sailed along all night with 20 knots or so of wind, which lasted well into this morning. The moon is still doing its thing, though there is a concave curve to it. There was a lot of discussion about the sea state. We are out in the ocean, there is only twenty knots of wind blowing, there is about 3,000 miles of fetch, the waves are all from the same direction, and we are slightly close hauled. It wasn’t really bad at all compared to what’s possible with the other moods of the ocean. It was a bit more of a rough ride than you find in Puget Sound, I suppose. We are smelling the barn and anxious to get to it.
Data entry for day 19, ending the April 25 to April 26, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (350 - 208) = 142
Wind Speed: 6.0 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 16 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind/swells
Sail Plan: 2nd reef in main, 50% unfurled genoa
Course: 2 magnetic, 230 GPS
Barometer: 1013
Temp: 83 degrees F.
Humidity: 85%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 208
Location: 07.31.480, 136.03.853
Day 20 - April 26, Tuesday
Last night and today we have had multiple autopilot failures of various natures. Sometimes the boat starts spinning around in circles, sometimes it just starts wandering, but either way when you turn the autopilot off the helm is locked up rigidly, and you can’t steer the boat at all, the wheel just won’t move one inch. We have rebooted the autopilot, turned off all power at the breaker panel, and tried other software tricks but it won’t release the helm. So far we have been able to get it working again by turning the autopilot back on. The first time it happened yesterday evening we were stuck heading for Antarctica at 6 knots for an hour or so, which was an odd feeling if you let your paranoid fantasies play out. It is losing its mind more and more frequently, changing from once or twice a day to every 20 minutes to every 10 minutes. Tomorrow afternoon, which is hopefully our last daytime at sea, we will pull the pin connecting the autopilot ram to the rudder post. That should let us steer by hand overnight and the next morning. We expect to make landfall in the middle of the night very early Thursday morning, so will have to have hand steering to tack back and forth off shore and for entering the harbor. The autopilot is a Raymarine ST6002G, the stock, Catalina chosen, unit for this boat.
We called Raymarine technical support this morning. There was about a 10 minute wait on hold on the Satphone, which is a bit expensive. They are suggesting that the clutch is failing and sticking, which in turn prevents the autopilot from letting go of the helm when we go to standby mode or power off mode. Their closest dealer and service facility is in Hawaii.
We have, for the past couple of days, had a nice steady 15 to 20 knot breeze out of the S to SE. The S part is a bit surprising, as the GRIB files all show the wind from the E. Also, our Raymarine C80 shows a 2.5 knot current setting to the SSE, which is counterintuitive to me, given the steady and powerful trades blowing just the opposite direction. If true, though, it might explain the slightly lumpy nature of the seas – wind against current. The cloud cover is a sort of plebian set of small and not very active looking cumulus clouds, sort of low. Sea haze on the horizon at nights, and the stars were at least 50% obscured last night on my watch. We’re seeing lots of 4 to 6 inch long flying fish, but not finding them on deck.
This evening we disconnected the autopilot ram from the rudder post, instead of waiting until tomorrow. The Raymarine ST6002G completely failed us. We were turning in random complete circles, or holding course for the south pole, or basically heading where ever it felt like sending us. The wheel came free as soon as the ram was disconnected and as a side benefit the rudder is much quieter. We’re thinking that manual steering is much softer than autopilot steering, as the helmsman lets the wheel have a bit of natural motion as opposed to the rigid control of the autopilot. The human puts a little extra “give” in the system. This makes me suspect that a windvane steering system would likewise be easier on the rudder assembly, whether it is like my Fleming (which uses lines to the helm to control the ship’s rudder) or a hydrovane type that has its own rudder.
I raised Blue Moon on the VHF today. It was nice to hear another boat after all these days of silence. They were just a few miles from us, and were also heading for Atuona. I miss the SSB/ham connection, and would never want to be at sea again without it. While the satphone is nice to call family and sailing support people (Raymarine, etc.), actually quite invaluable, the radio connects you to the real players in the sailing community - the actual sailors out in the ocean sailing along with you. With the radio you make new friends and keep in touch with old ones, and you are connected to events important to you – weather, check in procedures, other boats in distress that you might help, the upcoming rendezvous at a certain anchorage or island….. The other negative about the satphone is the astounding cost of regular operations. I can’t believe the cost per minute of phone calls and the shockingly large amount of airtime minutes you are charged for downloading weather on top of the basic flat fee charged for each weather chart. The ham radio may cost a bit more initially if you just walk into a retail store and ask for a full package including installation, but after that it is essentially free. There are some good values in used radio gear on craigslist or at QRZ.com. If you are handy you can do a lot of the installation work yourself and save money there too. The satphone is mostly an expensive luxury, but that said it does add a layer of safety and convenience, plus you can call your mom and wish her happy birthday. Very nice to have both! Hands down, no question, get the radio first. If I was in a life raft, I’d want a satphone with me.
Data entry for day 20, ending the April 26 to April 27, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (208 - 78 ) = 130
Wind Speed: 18 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 6.6 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind/swell waves
Sail Plan: 2nd reef main, 80% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Course: 220 magnetic, 234 GPS
Barometer: 1013
Temp: 83 degrees F.
Humidity: 86%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 78
Location: 08.59.714, 137.42.337
Day 21 - April 27, Wednesday
We arrived offshore of Atuona harbor at maybe 3 or 4 am, so we sailed around randomly in light breezes in the dark, waiting for daylight to enter the harbor. There was another sailboat doing the same thing. They had their tricolor on, but it must have been an old one as the colors weren’t visible and it looked more like an anchor light. I couldn’t tell the red side from the green side from the white stern light. The moon had set, and I was steering. It was so dark that all I could see of this boat was its white looking tricolor. For some reason, that very white-ish tricolor gave me no depth perception and I couldn’t tell how far away it was. They finally came on the radio and said that as we were motor sailing (we had our steaming light on) that they had the right of way and I’d better turn as they were really close. Sure enough, they emerged from the gloom just 50 yards away on a collision course. So I turned away. I prefer sidelights and a stern light when close in to shore, as they are easier to see and allow one to better judge the location of the boat displaying them.
We dropped anchor about 7 or 8 this morning. There were 19 other sailboats anchored ahead of us, and the big local interisland freighter/passenger ship, Aranui 3, was also tied up at the pier unloading general cargo. This is a fairly tight little anchorage with 19 boats in it, and with the freighter forcing us all to stay behind a line marked with two yellow Xs. Emil scouted out a nice hole to park in towards the beach and the jetty side, vacated moments before by a departing catamaran. We dropped the bow anchor, and then the stern anchor to match the prevailing anchoring technique at this anchorage. Sometimes at night a wind comes down the valley and really messes with the boats and the stern anchor is used to keep everybody from banging into each other.
We all jumped into the dingy and headed to shore to check in. The dingy dock is rough and abrasive. A lot of the dingys used stern anchors to hold themselves off of the concrete quay. My girlfriend Judy was waiting on the dock. She had flown to the Marquesas to join us on Shanti for the trip to Tahiti. Judy had met Sandra, the check in agent who contracts with our agent Cindy in Tahiti to handle the Marquesas end of the check in, several days before and made friends with her, so Judy and Sandra were waiting with Sandra’s car at the dingy pier to take us to the gendarme to check in. Checking in was easy, nobody came to the boat for a custom’s inspection, nor to any of the other boats as far as I’ve heard. We hung out at Snack Make Make for some Hino Tahitian beers, which were cold and excellent and 5% alcohol. Not having eaten for about 24 hours, I had a delicious but not very fancy omelet, too, which cost 20,000 XPF. The same omelet would have been maybe $6 at home. What a pleasure to sit on land and eat food somebody else made and from ingredients that weren’t on the boat! And, oh, was the icy cold beer ever good……
Judy had taken a room in the beautiful Pearl Hotel, overlooking the harbor, so after the beers and omelet she and I headed straight for it while Emil and Dominique went somewhere, maybe back to the boat or to wherever sailors go who don’t have an awesome hotel suite waiting for them. After being up all night, and after the several very relaxing Hino’s I had, I fell fast asleep on the great big king size bed, with the A/C on a gentle mild not too cold temperature. Well, first I took a beautiful shower in the beautiful open air enormous hardwood and stone shower stall that had an endless supply of soap and water available, and then spent a few minutes more looking out over the sailboats in the harbor and into the jagged dark brooding knife edged mountains of Hiva Oa. Oh, did that big bed feel good as I slipped off to a blissful sleep………… The Pearl is nice. The rooms are actually individual cabins, set in beautiful landscaped grounds….
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Mexico to the Marquesas Days - 11 - 15
Day 11 - April 17, Sunday
Last night we passed through 3 squalls, but rain only, no wind. The very, very, heavy rain lasted maybe 10 to 15 minutes. I was excited to see that the squalls actually do show up really well on the radar, big purple blobs, or yellow, depending on which page of the display is active. It will be interesting to see how big they really get as we get further into the Zone. There hasn’t been enough time to really test the range of the radar, in terms of seeing squalls. So far the farthest away squall that has shown up has been about 10 miles.
It has been interesting to watch the barometer today and yesterday. The GRIB files show the predicted pressure gradients, and our barometer shows the actual gradients as we move through the zones displayed in the GRIBs. We measured a low of 1008 yesterday, just about where the GRIB showed a small 1008 area. Now we are at 1012. We never lost all wind, even in the lowest pressure zones. It was blowing maybe 7 or 8 knots in the 1008 zone, and is blowing about 8 or 9 now in this 1012 zone. So far the GRIBs have, on the average, been generally but not specifically accurate, which is exactly what you would expect for computer generated broad scale predictions. We are at about 7.40 N by 124 W as I write this morning, and are getting ready to gybe to a more directly south course. The winds have been mostly from the NNE, rather than northeasterly or easterly. This has caused us to feel more comfortable on a starboard tack, heading more to the west than to the south west.
We’re fishing again, or rather I am. I’m not sure that Emil wants to take the chance that he will have to kill, bleed, gut, clean and fillet out another fish. We still have plenty of food from our provisioning in Mexico, but are out of unfrozen fresh meat, chicken or fish. Chicken fajitas tonight if we don’t catch today. The softer foods, like tomatoes, avocados, bananas, cauliflower, and even oranges, threatened to or did spoil the quickest, so we ate them as quickly as we could. The fresh tortillas seem to be holding up pretty well, no mold yet, and are a big hit. We have many pounds of exotic cheese - parmesan, jarlsburg, blue, feta, munster, some sort of excellent semi-hard dark yellowish one, and others that we haven’t dug out yet. The fresh roasted Nayarit coffee beans that we bought from the coffee roaster guy with the Huitchal art gallery and restaurant in La Cruz across the street from the British Pub is really good, too, at least as compared to most Mexican coffee. Nice dark roast, very delicious. I still prefer Victor’s French Roast, from Redmond, Washington.
There is a thick cloud layer today. The low clouds are solidly gray, but not angry gray, except under the squalls themselves where they are a seriously dark color. You can see several squalls at a time, off against the horizon, rain sweeping along underneath of them. We’ve had lightening, thunder, heavy rain, no sun, very interesting weather, but no meaningful wind in most of the rain bursts and no lightening within 10 miles or so of the boat. The rain is washing the crusted layers of salt off the boat. The three of us are huddled in the cockpit, soaked to the bone but still warm, enjoying the rain but wishing for sun. The biggest squalls on the radar were maybe 12 miles long and three or four miles wide, visible for up to maybe 10 miles away. There is no chance of missing them on the radar screen, they are very distinctive. You can easily track their direction and speed and calculate your chances of being hit or missed. In one squall we had 20 knots of wind for twenty minutes, but most of them generated no real wind, just lots of heavy rain. In the heavy wind one we were in a white out, between the huge amounts of rain, the low clouds, the wind whipped seas and just a general gray brightness all around us. It was disorienting to the unnamed helmsman (because of my past training I actually typed ‘helmsperson’, but refuse to use that term in polite society or in a complete sentence) and while tacking the boat he/we/she/i/they did a 360 degree turn. I might have accidently said something that confused the helmsman and thus contributed to the confusion that resulted in us doing a 360 during the white out…….
We got through the squall zone in under 60 miles, one degree of latitude. It was a very small ITCZ. It was at about 9 degrees N latitude to 8 N or so, there weren’t any bright yellow lines on the ocean like what they have invented for the first down line on football TV.
Data entry for day 11, ending the April 17 to April 18, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (155 - 42) = 113
Wind Speed: 1 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.8 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 80% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Wave Height/State: 0 foot wind waves, 2 foot swell long period
Course: 199 magnetic, 221 GPS
Barometer: 1014
Temp: 82 degrees F.
Humidity: 88%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 42.02 and 1229
Location: 05.50.592, 125.23.126
Day 12 - April 18, Monday
Since getting through the ITCZ at 9 degrees N down to 8 N, we’ve mostly been motoring (at maybe 70% of normal cruising speed which is where Emil says we get the best fuel economy per mile covered) almost due south at about 5 knots with the goal of hitting the equator at 127 to 128 degrees W longitude. For about an hour yesterday we had SE winds at about 14 knots, so we sailed. Our mantra for this bit of ocean is ‘sail when you can, motor when you have to’. ‘Have to’ seems to occur at around 3.5 to just under 4 knots of boat speed. We want to get through the doldrums, below the equator, and into the SE trades. Oh, yeah. And to become shellbacks! Dominique had never heard the term before and is now really scratching his brain trying to think of the French term for shellback. Given France’s long maritime history, he is confident they will have a comparable term. I’m not so sure. The French might have used our term 'shellback', like they did for French fry, hot dog, hamburger, and entrepreneur. It was, though, a bit impolite for W to complain publicly that the French don’t have their own word for entrepreneur, don’t you think?
We are talking yesterday evening, in the cockpit, while enjoying the warm tropical breezes and admiring the sunset, over glasses of wine and hor d’hourves, about our miles covered and the experience of travelling a long ways over the ocean. It is sort of like driving across a continent in that you go through different climate zones and geographies. As you sail down the degrees of latitude and longitude (now that is a pleasing and exciting concept, eh?) the temperature of the ocean and air changes, the type of clouds changes, the sea state and the direction of the waves and swells changes, the birds change, what you see on the horizon changes, the ocean color changes, the general vibe of the area changes. It is only “just a lot of water” in the same sense that North America is “just a lot of dirt”.
I’m on the dark to dawn watch as I type this in the cockpit, in my shorts and T-shirt. The sky is just beginning to lighten. Hopefully it will just be a beautiful orange sunrise, lighting up the temple of the heavens, and won’t be a red sunrise, as we sailors don’t want to have to “take warning” as the old saying goes. I see the perhaps full moon hasn’t quite set over my left shoulder, as the dawn rises forward of my right shoulder. I just stopped typing for a minute to don my “mighty predator” robes and put my fishing dragline back into the water. My fishing buddy Geoff told me to leave it in all night, but who wants to catch and dispatch a fish while you are sleeping and/or it is dark out?
We’ll see what the day brings. We are well down into the 6 degree N area, running towards 5. Remember, 60 miles per latitude degree (same for longitude degrees this close to the equator), so we have at least 360 miles to the equator. Hopefully those will mostly be sailing miles. We’re counting on picking up the SE trades well north of the equator, but what happens depends on the gods. Especially Freyja. Hopefully she isn’t too pissed at me for leaving her back at the dock…….
Hmmm. I’m getting hungry and the wine I opened a couple of hours ago is almost done getting ready for me to drink. 36 minutes until my dawn watch is over….. (Reporting back hours later, after napping I made fried eggs, toast and bacon instead of our more normal fruit and granola and soy milk breakfast. Dominique, our Frenchman aboard, says that in France it is unheard of to have omelets for breakfast, that they are an afternoon or evening meal. We bought a couple of cases of soy milk at Costco, and it is a huge hit – it stores well in the bilge, tastes great, and is just really nice to have onboard.
As a note, on the sail plan statistic, the %s for the genoa are the amount unfurled. It is a 140% genoa, not a 150% as I’ve said before. We are motor sailing along at 6 knots, with 7 knots of wind. It is very much like Puget Sound, some wind but not enough to really move the boat, flat seas, smallish waves, motor on and sails up. I just noticed that my little personal GPS, a Garmin map76, has an altitude function and that is actually measuring and reporting the difference between the bottom of the swells and the top of them. As the boat sinks to the bottom of a set of swells, it’s showing – 5.6 or so, and at the top of the biggest sets it is showing around +4.0 or so. I’ll have to think about whether or not it is an accurate measure of the height of the swells. They certainly don’t look like 9 feet. The ocean surface is a fractal plain, with waves inside of waves inside of waves, even on the calmest day.
We hit some more squalls yesterday evening. All day we had been sailing through the most majestic clouds, reaching for who knows how many thousands (maybe tens of thousands, they were really tall) of feet into the clear blue sky. Some were big anvil shaped thunder heads and others looked like nuclear mushroom clouds. You could tell that immense, maybe even astounding, amounts of energy were contained in and being released from the 93 degree F ocean water (my actual measurement with digital thermometer) and the tropical sun heated air. The amounts of solar and heat energy at play here near the equator are simply massive compared to up north.
Data entry for day 12, ending the April 18 to April 19, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (1229 - 1098) = 131
Wind Speed: 5 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.5 knots
Wave Height/State: half foot wind waves, 10’ swell long from NE
Course: 185 magnetic, 223 GPS bearing to Hiva Oa
Barometer: 1017
Temp: 79 degrees F.
Humidity: 63%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 1098
Location: 3.40.569, 126.15.164
Day 13 - April 19, Tuesday
It was a pleasant day sailing today. Though I should say motoring, as that is really what we were doing. The sails were up trying to extract some help from the 6 knots of wind that we had most of the day, but it was really all about the engine. The sea was pretty calm so it was easy riding. There were lots of big energetic cumulus clouds with beautiful celestial cloud displays, and a gorgeous sunset. The crew sat in the cockpit for hours just mesmerized by the clouds, or maybe meditating with the clouds as the focus. We had that easy peaceful feeling all day, despite the racket of the engine.
Emil fished and caught nothing, I didn’t bother. This area doesn’t seem very fishy somehow, though there are big schools of little 4 to 6 inch flying fish. I’ll have to ask my ocean fishing buddies if there are catchable fish in the doldrums, or how the population of catchable good eating fish spreads out between Mexico and the Marquesas. No flying fish or squid on deck this morning, either. I think more of them land on the boat when the weather is rougher.
We noticed that the satphone wasn’t always charging when you put it in the cradle. You have to sort of rock and rotate it to get the contacts to line up. We’ll clean the terminals on the phone and charging station and see if that helps. The battery seems to indicate full charge and then be half discharged an hour later. If we have to get in the life raft it would be nice to have it fully charged.
Data entry for day 13, ending the April 19 to April 20, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (1098 - 980) = 118
Wind Speed: 12 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 6.0 knots
Wave Height/State: 1’ to 2’ wind waves, 5 foot SE swell long period
Course: 2 magnetic, 226 GPS
Barometer: 1014
Temp: 82 degrees F. (sensor on arch)
Humidity: 93% (sensor on arch)
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 980
Location: 1.35.016, 126.56.685
Day 14 - April 20, Wednesday
We started sailing again last night at about 2 degrees 30 minutes N or so, and what a relief to turn off the motor. The wind filled in from the NE last night around midnight, then during the night it changed to the E, and now very early this morning from the SE.
It is very tempting to turn towards the Marquises at this point, but we are holding a course to take us across the equator at about 127.5 W. My thinking is that if we cross further west there is a risk of having to sail close hauled all the way to Hiva Oa if the SE trades decide to come more from the S, as they sometimes do. The further to the west you are the steeper the angle at which you have to drop down to Hiva Oa and the more critical the changeable angle of the SE trades. I’d rather keep the weather gauge firmly in hand so that we can have a comfortable sailing angle. The odds are the trades will stay from the SE, but keeping our southerly course now is conservative and a small price to pay for insurance against the risk of 900 miles of close hauled sailing. While it does add a few more miles to the trip, other than the worry about the rudder falling off life is pretty nice out here in the ocean. And the rudder has been quieter as we haven’t had the type of seas that toss the stern around.
The countdown to the equator is exciting - now that we are under two degrees the tension is palpable! I do hope that they have installed one of those bright yellow lines at the equator, like they have for the first down line in TV football. We’re trying to guess when we’ll cross it, and right now it looks like the wee hours of the night. Since nobody seems interested in organizing a ceremony we may each just have a tot or two of rum as we sail across and are instantly turned into shellbacks. I don’t feel like wasting my shaving cream to make a crown on my head.
Looking at my GPS and seeing that Hiva Oa is less than a thousand miles away is also pretty exciting. We are getting to the point in the trip where you discuss the possible number of days left and the odds of arriving on the weekend. The officials are off work at 5 on Friday and technically you have to stay on your boat under the Q flag until Monday morning.
We had a SE breeze this morning and thought we had made it to the SE trades. Yippee. Tonight, however, we are back to a NE breeze of maybe 7 knots so we’re still just plugging along at 4 to 5, but under sail instead of motor. We are at 1 degree 2 minutes……
Tonight Emil and I saw a freakin’ DOUBLE GREEN FLASH!!!!! While Dominique was below cooking we were sitting on the starboard side watching the sunset. The horizon was lined with towering energetic equatorial cumulus clouds, but the air was very clear and we were imagining that we could see through a little hole in the clouds clear to the horizon where the sun was going to sink into the water. Well, sure enough, bam! A very clear perfect bright unequivocal green flash just lit up and, well, flashed for what seemed like a second or two. Then it disappeared and a couple of heartbeats later, wham! another perfect bright very distinct green flash did its green flash thing for another second or two. Some might argue that this was really just one green flash interrupted by a distant rippling of the ocean’s surface, or that Shanti was lifted by a swell, and maybe it was, BUT we, Emil and I, saw two clear distinct and separate green flashes in one sunset, so we are going to make the double green flash YouTube video and show the ol’ Double Rainbow dude a thing or two. (If you haven’t already, look up “Double Rainbow” on YouTube.) I’m not sure what the statistical odds are of seeing a double GF, as seeing a single one is hard enough. Shanti was so close to the 1 degree north line as to not matter, maybe one tenth of a minute or so off, maybe right on, we didn’t check our position for maybe five minutes. I’m saying it was right on the one degree line. Our longitude was 127 degrees and 13 minutes or so. And, just for the record, we kept yelling at Dominique to come up and watch the sunset, but he replied that he could see the sunset through the galley porthole, which he could. However, because of the maybe 6 feet of difference in elevation between his eye level and ours, he completely missed both green flashes. I think he thought we were putting him on about us seeing it.
Data entry for day 14, ending the April 20 to April 21, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (980 - 874) = 106
Wind Speed: 12 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5 knots
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 2 foot swell
Course: 217 magnetic, 228 GPS
Barometer: 1013
Temp: 83 degrees F.
Humidity: 89%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 874
Location: 00.06.287, 127.46.227
Day 15 - April 21, Thursday
Well, we crossed the equator this morning about 9:00 o’clock our boat time, which is Seattle (Pacific) time. It was pretty exciting in a salty dog ancient mariner lure of the south seas romantic sort of way, and in terms of marking the completion of a part of our journey to the Marquesas. We crossed at 127° 40’ with about 12 knots of NE wind and wind waves on our port (NE) quarter. Once across the equator we turned the boat to head more or less directly to Hiva Oa. Our ‘miles to go’ reads about 885.
Dominique made some delicious French crepes for breakfast. We coated them with various combinations of sugar, lime juice, jam and honey, and washed them down with fresh brewed dark roasted coffee from the La Cruz roaster. All in all, it was a memorable “crossing the equator feast”. We toasted both with Dominique's Genepi, a French liquor made with 40 sticks of a mountainous flowering plant of the same name, 40 cubes of sugar and 40 days of brewing, and my tequila. First Neptune got his portion of each, then the boat, then the captain, and finally the patiently waiting crew. No shaving cream crowns or funny sea-weedy costumes were in evidence, just humble appreciation of our personal accomplishment.
This morning we have a nice mild day with a NE wind of 12 knots, clear skies, easy small seas and a reasonable temperature. We are quite comfortable, except for the stress of the rudder snapping and creaking around in its upper bushing area. We hadn’t heard much from it for the last several days, but the combination of these seas, our current direction, whatever, is making it complain again. By 2 pm the following seas were tossing the stern around more and the sounds coming from the rudder indicated an increased level of violence being done to it. I’m anxious for the E or SE trades to get established, so as to change the wave pattern and our angle of sail to those waves, all in the hope of easing the strain on the rudder. Given the right seas and heading the rudder seems to quiet down and be quite happy. If the stern isn’t getting pushed back and forth the rudder is happy. Ditto for the crew, as we feel pretty stressed when the rudder is snapping and cracking….and we sort of forget about it when it quiets down.
Laundry at sea on Shanti is done either on the floor of the shower by stomping on it, or in a bucket in the shower by squeezing it, both with fresh water given our abundance. I prefer the later method. I’ve heard that a toilet plunger used in the bucket is even better, but couldn’t find a fresh unused plunger to experiment with. The laundry dries nicely on the lifelines. Our water maker is a Schenker brand, an Italian make, I think. I’m reading Emil's copy of Moitessier’s book “The Long Way”. He mentions that if clothing or bedding is salted up, if you can sort of get it dried, or just even to the damp stage, and then hang it on the shrouds or lifelines the salt will shake out of it. The salt doesn’t so much grip the cloth as simply get trapped in it, so it is willing to come out with some shaking. The more salt you get out, the drier it gets and thus even more salt will come out.
Emil had his fishing pole going today. After a few hours we saw it twitch a couple of times and then nothing. I grabbed it and started reeling it in, to speed up the lure and make it look like it was desperately escaping. As it got closer to the boat we saw a big brown back chasing it, with his dorsal fin out of the water. A big mahi mahi, perhaps. I jerked the bait a couple of times and it took it with a mighty lung. Then, and remember we were sailing along at 5 knots or so, it started taking line out. It took more and more line until we were getting down to the bottom of the reel. The weight of line on the reel wasn’t enough to hold the fish and the main line finally snapped somewhere above the swivel. The handline is so much better when you’re under way and meat fishing. Once the fish is on, you just pull him in, maybe after waiting for a couple of minutes for it to get tired out. No fuss, no muss, no need to slow the boat down, unless, of course, you have a monster on, but we haven’t had to deal with that yet, thankfully.
Data entry for day 15, ending the April 21 to April 22, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (874 - 764) = 110
Wind Speed: 9 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 3.8 knots
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 5 foot swell
Sail Plan: 100% main, 80% unfurled genoa
Course: 220 magnetic, 230 GPS
Barometer: 1014
Temp: 85 degrees F.
Humidity: 84%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 764
Location: 01.37.019, 128.54.199
Last night we passed through 3 squalls, but rain only, no wind. The very, very, heavy rain lasted maybe 10 to 15 minutes. I was excited to see that the squalls actually do show up really well on the radar, big purple blobs, or yellow, depending on which page of the display is active. It will be interesting to see how big they really get as we get further into the Zone. There hasn’t been enough time to really test the range of the radar, in terms of seeing squalls. So far the farthest away squall that has shown up has been about 10 miles.
It has been interesting to watch the barometer today and yesterday. The GRIB files show the predicted pressure gradients, and our barometer shows the actual gradients as we move through the zones displayed in the GRIBs. We measured a low of 1008 yesterday, just about where the GRIB showed a small 1008 area. Now we are at 1012. We never lost all wind, even in the lowest pressure zones. It was blowing maybe 7 or 8 knots in the 1008 zone, and is blowing about 8 or 9 now in this 1012 zone. So far the GRIBs have, on the average, been generally but not specifically accurate, which is exactly what you would expect for computer generated broad scale predictions. We are at about 7.40 N by 124 W as I write this morning, and are getting ready to gybe to a more directly south course. The winds have been mostly from the NNE, rather than northeasterly or easterly. This has caused us to feel more comfortable on a starboard tack, heading more to the west than to the south west.
We’re fishing again, or rather I am. I’m not sure that Emil wants to take the chance that he will have to kill, bleed, gut, clean and fillet out another fish. We still have plenty of food from our provisioning in Mexico, but are out of unfrozen fresh meat, chicken or fish. Chicken fajitas tonight if we don’t catch today. The softer foods, like tomatoes, avocados, bananas, cauliflower, and even oranges, threatened to or did spoil the quickest, so we ate them as quickly as we could. The fresh tortillas seem to be holding up pretty well, no mold yet, and are a big hit. We have many pounds of exotic cheese - parmesan, jarlsburg, blue, feta, munster, some sort of excellent semi-hard dark yellowish one, and others that we haven’t dug out yet. The fresh roasted Nayarit coffee beans that we bought from the coffee roaster guy with the Huitchal art gallery and restaurant in La Cruz across the street from the British Pub is really good, too, at least as compared to most Mexican coffee. Nice dark roast, very delicious. I still prefer Victor’s French Roast, from Redmond, Washington.
There is a thick cloud layer today. The low clouds are solidly gray, but not angry gray, except under the squalls themselves where they are a seriously dark color. You can see several squalls at a time, off against the horizon, rain sweeping along underneath of them. We’ve had lightening, thunder, heavy rain, no sun, very interesting weather, but no meaningful wind in most of the rain bursts and no lightening within 10 miles or so of the boat. The rain is washing the crusted layers of salt off the boat. The three of us are huddled in the cockpit, soaked to the bone but still warm, enjoying the rain but wishing for sun. The biggest squalls on the radar were maybe 12 miles long and three or four miles wide, visible for up to maybe 10 miles away. There is no chance of missing them on the radar screen, they are very distinctive. You can easily track their direction and speed and calculate your chances of being hit or missed. In one squall we had 20 knots of wind for twenty minutes, but most of them generated no real wind, just lots of heavy rain. In the heavy wind one we were in a white out, between the huge amounts of rain, the low clouds, the wind whipped seas and just a general gray brightness all around us. It was disorienting to the unnamed helmsman (because of my past training I actually typed ‘helmsperson’, but refuse to use that term in polite society or in a complete sentence) and while tacking the boat he/we/she/i/they did a 360 degree turn. I might have accidently said something that confused the helmsman and thus contributed to the confusion that resulted in us doing a 360 during the white out…….
We got through the squall zone in under 60 miles, one degree of latitude. It was a very small ITCZ. It was at about 9 degrees N latitude to 8 N or so, there weren’t any bright yellow lines on the ocean like what they have invented for the first down line on football TV.
Data entry for day 11, ending the April 17 to April 18, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (155 - 42) = 113
Wind Speed: 1 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.8 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 80% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Wave Height/State: 0 foot wind waves, 2 foot swell long period
Course: 199 magnetic, 221 GPS
Barometer: 1014
Temp: 82 degrees F.
Humidity: 88%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 42.02 and 1229
Location: 05.50.592, 125.23.126
Day 12 - April 18, Monday
Since getting through the ITCZ at 9 degrees N down to 8 N, we’ve mostly been motoring (at maybe 70% of normal cruising speed which is where Emil says we get the best fuel economy per mile covered) almost due south at about 5 knots with the goal of hitting the equator at 127 to 128 degrees W longitude. For about an hour yesterday we had SE winds at about 14 knots, so we sailed. Our mantra for this bit of ocean is ‘sail when you can, motor when you have to’. ‘Have to’ seems to occur at around 3.5 to just under 4 knots of boat speed. We want to get through the doldrums, below the equator, and into the SE trades. Oh, yeah. And to become shellbacks! Dominique had never heard the term before and is now really scratching his brain trying to think of the French term for shellback. Given France’s long maritime history, he is confident they will have a comparable term. I’m not so sure. The French might have used our term 'shellback', like they did for French fry, hot dog, hamburger, and entrepreneur. It was, though, a bit impolite for W to complain publicly that the French don’t have their own word for entrepreneur, don’t you think?
We are talking yesterday evening, in the cockpit, while enjoying the warm tropical breezes and admiring the sunset, over glasses of wine and hor d’hourves, about our miles covered and the experience of travelling a long ways over the ocean. It is sort of like driving across a continent in that you go through different climate zones and geographies. As you sail down the degrees of latitude and longitude (now that is a pleasing and exciting concept, eh?) the temperature of the ocean and air changes, the type of clouds changes, the sea state and the direction of the waves and swells changes, the birds change, what you see on the horizon changes, the ocean color changes, the general vibe of the area changes. It is only “just a lot of water” in the same sense that North America is “just a lot of dirt”.
I’m on the dark to dawn watch as I type this in the cockpit, in my shorts and T-shirt. The sky is just beginning to lighten. Hopefully it will just be a beautiful orange sunrise, lighting up the temple of the heavens, and won’t be a red sunrise, as we sailors don’t want to have to “take warning” as the old saying goes. I see the perhaps full moon hasn’t quite set over my left shoulder, as the dawn rises forward of my right shoulder. I just stopped typing for a minute to don my “mighty predator” robes and put my fishing dragline back into the water. My fishing buddy Geoff told me to leave it in all night, but who wants to catch and dispatch a fish while you are sleeping and/or it is dark out?
We’ll see what the day brings. We are well down into the 6 degree N area, running towards 5. Remember, 60 miles per latitude degree (same for longitude degrees this close to the equator), so we have at least 360 miles to the equator. Hopefully those will mostly be sailing miles. We’re counting on picking up the SE trades well north of the equator, but what happens depends on the gods. Especially Freyja. Hopefully she isn’t too pissed at me for leaving her back at the dock…….
Hmmm. I’m getting hungry and the wine I opened a couple of hours ago is almost done getting ready for me to drink. 36 minutes until my dawn watch is over….. (Reporting back hours later, after napping I made fried eggs, toast and bacon instead of our more normal fruit and granola and soy milk breakfast. Dominique, our Frenchman aboard, says that in France it is unheard of to have omelets for breakfast, that they are an afternoon or evening meal. We bought a couple of cases of soy milk at Costco, and it is a huge hit – it stores well in the bilge, tastes great, and is just really nice to have onboard.
As a note, on the sail plan statistic, the %s for the genoa are the amount unfurled. It is a 140% genoa, not a 150% as I’ve said before. We are motor sailing along at 6 knots, with 7 knots of wind. It is very much like Puget Sound, some wind but not enough to really move the boat, flat seas, smallish waves, motor on and sails up. I just noticed that my little personal GPS, a Garmin map76, has an altitude function and that is actually measuring and reporting the difference between the bottom of the swells and the top of them. As the boat sinks to the bottom of a set of swells, it’s showing – 5.6 or so, and at the top of the biggest sets it is showing around +4.0 or so. I’ll have to think about whether or not it is an accurate measure of the height of the swells. They certainly don’t look like 9 feet. The ocean surface is a fractal plain, with waves inside of waves inside of waves, even on the calmest day.
We hit some more squalls yesterday evening. All day we had been sailing through the most majestic clouds, reaching for who knows how many thousands (maybe tens of thousands, they were really tall) of feet into the clear blue sky. Some were big anvil shaped thunder heads and others looked like nuclear mushroom clouds. You could tell that immense, maybe even astounding, amounts of energy were contained in and being released from the 93 degree F ocean water (my actual measurement with digital thermometer) and the tropical sun heated air. The amounts of solar and heat energy at play here near the equator are simply massive compared to up north.
Data entry for day 12, ending the April 18 to April 19, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (1229 - 1098) = 131
Wind Speed: 5 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.5 knots
Wave Height/State: half foot wind waves, 10’ swell long from NE
Course: 185 magnetic, 223 GPS bearing to Hiva Oa
Barometer: 1017
Temp: 79 degrees F.
Humidity: 63%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 1098
Location: 3.40.569, 126.15.164
Day 13 - April 19, Tuesday
It was a pleasant day sailing today. Though I should say motoring, as that is really what we were doing. The sails were up trying to extract some help from the 6 knots of wind that we had most of the day, but it was really all about the engine. The sea was pretty calm so it was easy riding. There were lots of big energetic cumulus clouds with beautiful celestial cloud displays, and a gorgeous sunset. The crew sat in the cockpit for hours just mesmerized by the clouds, or maybe meditating with the clouds as the focus. We had that easy peaceful feeling all day, despite the racket of the engine.
Emil fished and caught nothing, I didn’t bother. This area doesn’t seem very fishy somehow, though there are big schools of little 4 to 6 inch flying fish. I’ll have to ask my ocean fishing buddies if there are catchable fish in the doldrums, or how the population of catchable good eating fish spreads out between Mexico and the Marquesas. No flying fish or squid on deck this morning, either. I think more of them land on the boat when the weather is rougher.
We noticed that the satphone wasn’t always charging when you put it in the cradle. You have to sort of rock and rotate it to get the contacts to line up. We’ll clean the terminals on the phone and charging station and see if that helps. The battery seems to indicate full charge and then be half discharged an hour later. If we have to get in the life raft it would be nice to have it fully charged.
Data entry for day 13, ending the April 19 to April 20, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (1098 - 980) = 118
Wind Speed: 12 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 6.0 knots
Wave Height/State: 1’ to 2’ wind waves, 5 foot SE swell long period
Course: 2 magnetic, 226 GPS
Barometer: 1014
Temp: 82 degrees F. (sensor on arch)
Humidity: 93% (sensor on arch)
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 980
Location: 1.35.016, 126.56.685
Day 14 - April 20, Wednesday
We started sailing again last night at about 2 degrees 30 minutes N or so, and what a relief to turn off the motor. The wind filled in from the NE last night around midnight, then during the night it changed to the E, and now very early this morning from the SE.
It is very tempting to turn towards the Marquises at this point, but we are holding a course to take us across the equator at about 127.5 W. My thinking is that if we cross further west there is a risk of having to sail close hauled all the way to Hiva Oa if the SE trades decide to come more from the S, as they sometimes do. The further to the west you are the steeper the angle at which you have to drop down to Hiva Oa and the more critical the changeable angle of the SE trades. I’d rather keep the weather gauge firmly in hand so that we can have a comfortable sailing angle. The odds are the trades will stay from the SE, but keeping our southerly course now is conservative and a small price to pay for insurance against the risk of 900 miles of close hauled sailing. While it does add a few more miles to the trip, other than the worry about the rudder falling off life is pretty nice out here in the ocean. And the rudder has been quieter as we haven’t had the type of seas that toss the stern around.
The countdown to the equator is exciting - now that we are under two degrees the tension is palpable! I do hope that they have installed one of those bright yellow lines at the equator, like they have for the first down line in TV football. We’re trying to guess when we’ll cross it, and right now it looks like the wee hours of the night. Since nobody seems interested in organizing a ceremony we may each just have a tot or two of rum as we sail across and are instantly turned into shellbacks. I don’t feel like wasting my shaving cream to make a crown on my head.
Looking at my GPS and seeing that Hiva Oa is less than a thousand miles away is also pretty exciting. We are getting to the point in the trip where you discuss the possible number of days left and the odds of arriving on the weekend. The officials are off work at 5 on Friday and technically you have to stay on your boat under the Q flag until Monday morning.
We had a SE breeze this morning and thought we had made it to the SE trades. Yippee. Tonight, however, we are back to a NE breeze of maybe 7 knots so we’re still just plugging along at 4 to 5, but under sail instead of motor. We are at 1 degree 2 minutes……
Tonight Emil and I saw a freakin’ DOUBLE GREEN FLASH!!!!! While Dominique was below cooking we were sitting on the starboard side watching the sunset. The horizon was lined with towering energetic equatorial cumulus clouds, but the air was very clear and we were imagining that we could see through a little hole in the clouds clear to the horizon where the sun was going to sink into the water. Well, sure enough, bam! A very clear perfect bright unequivocal green flash just lit up and, well, flashed for what seemed like a second or two. Then it disappeared and a couple of heartbeats later, wham! another perfect bright very distinct green flash did its green flash thing for another second or two. Some might argue that this was really just one green flash interrupted by a distant rippling of the ocean’s surface, or that Shanti was lifted by a swell, and maybe it was, BUT we, Emil and I, saw two clear distinct and separate green flashes in one sunset, so we are going to make the double green flash YouTube video and show the ol’ Double Rainbow dude a thing or two. (If you haven’t already, look up “Double Rainbow” on YouTube.) I’m not sure what the statistical odds are of seeing a double GF, as seeing a single one is hard enough. Shanti was so close to the 1 degree north line as to not matter, maybe one tenth of a minute or so off, maybe right on, we didn’t check our position for maybe five minutes. I’m saying it was right on the one degree line. Our longitude was 127 degrees and 13 minutes or so. And, just for the record, we kept yelling at Dominique to come up and watch the sunset, but he replied that he could see the sunset through the galley porthole, which he could. However, because of the maybe 6 feet of difference in elevation between his eye level and ours, he completely missed both green flashes. I think he thought we were putting him on about us seeing it.
Data entry for day 14, ending the April 20 to April 21, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (980 - 874) = 106
Wind Speed: 12 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5 knots
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 2 foot swell
Course: 217 magnetic, 228 GPS
Barometer: 1013
Temp: 83 degrees F.
Humidity: 89%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 874
Location: 00.06.287, 127.46.227
Day 15 - April 21, Thursday
Well, we crossed the equator this morning about 9:00 o’clock our boat time, which is Seattle (Pacific) time. It was pretty exciting in a salty dog ancient mariner lure of the south seas romantic sort of way, and in terms of marking the completion of a part of our journey to the Marquesas. We crossed at 127° 40’ with about 12 knots of NE wind and wind waves on our port (NE) quarter. Once across the equator we turned the boat to head more or less directly to Hiva Oa. Our ‘miles to go’ reads about 885.
Dominique made some delicious French crepes for breakfast. We coated them with various combinations of sugar, lime juice, jam and honey, and washed them down with fresh brewed dark roasted coffee from the La Cruz roaster. All in all, it was a memorable “crossing the equator feast”. We toasted both with Dominique's Genepi, a French liquor made with 40 sticks of a mountainous flowering plant of the same name, 40 cubes of sugar and 40 days of brewing, and my tequila. First Neptune got his portion of each, then the boat, then the captain, and finally the patiently waiting crew. No shaving cream crowns or funny sea-weedy costumes were in evidence, just humble appreciation of our personal accomplishment.
This morning we have a nice mild day with a NE wind of 12 knots, clear skies, easy small seas and a reasonable temperature. We are quite comfortable, except for the stress of the rudder snapping and creaking around in its upper bushing area. We hadn’t heard much from it for the last several days, but the combination of these seas, our current direction, whatever, is making it complain again. By 2 pm the following seas were tossing the stern around more and the sounds coming from the rudder indicated an increased level of violence being done to it. I’m anxious for the E or SE trades to get established, so as to change the wave pattern and our angle of sail to those waves, all in the hope of easing the strain on the rudder. Given the right seas and heading the rudder seems to quiet down and be quite happy. If the stern isn’t getting pushed back and forth the rudder is happy. Ditto for the crew, as we feel pretty stressed when the rudder is snapping and cracking….and we sort of forget about it when it quiets down.
Laundry at sea on Shanti is done either on the floor of the shower by stomping on it, or in a bucket in the shower by squeezing it, both with fresh water given our abundance. I prefer the later method. I’ve heard that a toilet plunger used in the bucket is even better, but couldn’t find a fresh unused plunger to experiment with. The laundry dries nicely on the lifelines. Our water maker is a Schenker brand, an Italian make, I think. I’m reading Emil's copy of Moitessier’s book “The Long Way”. He mentions that if clothing or bedding is salted up, if you can sort of get it dried, or just even to the damp stage, and then hang it on the shrouds or lifelines the salt will shake out of it. The salt doesn’t so much grip the cloth as simply get trapped in it, so it is willing to come out with some shaking. The more salt you get out, the drier it gets and thus even more salt will come out.
Emil had his fishing pole going today. After a few hours we saw it twitch a couple of times and then nothing. I grabbed it and started reeling it in, to speed up the lure and make it look like it was desperately escaping. As it got closer to the boat we saw a big brown back chasing it, with his dorsal fin out of the water. A big mahi mahi, perhaps. I jerked the bait a couple of times and it took it with a mighty lung. Then, and remember we were sailing along at 5 knots or so, it started taking line out. It took more and more line until we were getting down to the bottom of the reel. The weight of line on the reel wasn’t enough to hold the fish and the main line finally snapped somewhere above the swivel. The handline is so much better when you’re under way and meat fishing. Once the fish is on, you just pull him in, maybe after waiting for a couple of minutes for it to get tired out. No fuss, no muss, no need to slow the boat down, unless, of course, you have a monster on, but we haven’t had to deal with that yet, thankfully.
Data entry for day 15, ending the April 21 to April 22, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (874 - 764) = 110
Wind Speed: 9 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 3.8 knots
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 5 foot swell
Sail Plan: 100% main, 80% unfurled genoa
Course: 220 magnetic, 230 GPS
Barometer: 1014
Temp: 85 degrees F.
Humidity: 84%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 764
Location: 01.37.019, 128.54.199
Mexico to the Marquesas - Days 6 - 10
Day 6 - April 12, Tuesday
Emil snuck his fishing pole out when I wasn’t looking. I’d been holding back, not fishing because we still have fresh tuna in the refrigerator, but developing a sense of anticipation about putting my lure back in the water. There is nothing like having your lure or bait in the water. Sure enough, he caught a little 5 pound tuna. I made him kill and clean it. He admitted it was the first time that he killed and cleaned a fish. I could see his Buddha nature struggling with it but in the end he did a great job. He didn’t eat any of the choice bits of raw sashimi meat as he cleaned, though. I think he can get into being a hunter/gatherer with a little more practice. I told him the next step will to be to raise, kill, clean and eat fresh organic chickens on his farm. He turned a little green at that idea, which made me feel better and stop thinking about how he beat me to the glory of the morning’s catch.
Shanti ran the engine early this morning as the batteries are running down under the constant loads from the auto pilot, chart plotter and refrigeration. The cloudy days just aren’t putting enough watts into the panels to bring the batteries back up. The AGMs charge up a lot more quickly than my flooded lead acid old fashioned batteries do. Two hours of engine running takes them from 50% to close to 100%, if I’m reading Emil’s gauges correctly. I’d have to run my engine for maybe 6 hours to get from 50 to 100, even with my big Balmar alternator. This is a huge plus for the AGMs. I wonder what the cost of them is, as compared to the costs of the lead acid batteries and running the boat’s charging system for 3 times or more longer.
The wind has been softer for the last 24 hours or so, we’ve slowed down to maybe 5 knots. Our 24 hour mileage figure will be down again today. Minutes after I typed this sentence, down at the nav station, I felt this thrilling little surge in Shanti, and heard the sound of water rushing past her hull. These 140 miles days are no good! Shanti does move pretty nicely in response to wind. I’m impressed with how she can hold 7 knots of speed given a 15 to 20 knot breeze. Because of Shanti’s keel and rudder design, as opposed to Freyja’s keel that runs along ¾ of the boat underwater and her skeg hung rudder the size of a barn door, Shanti feels different to steer, more sporty maybe. I suppose that as long as the autopilot holds up we won’t have to worry about steering her. We haven’t given the autopilot a cute name.
We’ve gotten into a routine of reading, looking at the ocean, napping, cooking, looking at the ocean, reading, ocean looking, snacking, napping, bird watching, ocean looking and maybe doing a bit of laundry or messing around with our stuff. Time flies by, there is no sense of boredom or confinement on the boat. The ocean is so big…… the horizon is infinite.
I had a great time on my 1 am to 4 am watch the other night dancing and jumping around to the tunes on my Zune. I worked a sweat up dancing with myself. However, at the end of my watch, when I went to charge it I realized that the charging cord is on Freyja. Ah Hah! I said when I realized that my trusty Droid X has 16 gigs of music in it and that I have the charging/USB computer cords for it so can change its music around if I feel like I need something different for sailing than what I put on it for life on the farm. My new moderately expensive Magnolia HiFi ear buds are great as they really stay in when moving around and are light, unobtrusive, have a very light small volume control right at the Y, and really have a great sound.
It is nice having Dominique on board. He is a really nice easy going guy who has some good sailing experience in his background. Plus, he is French, so is able to work on language lessons with us. Emil and I are both pulling our old French lessons out of the attic of our minds, and we both are making some progress. If only the French were sensible enough to pronounce their language exactly the way it is written……
Data entry for day 6 (covering data from 1 pm on April 10th to 1 pm on April 11th):
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (771 - 648) = 123 miles
Wind Speed: 131 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 70% genoa
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 3 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, partial sun
Course/Bearing to Waypoint: 175 magnetic, 229 GPS
Barometer: 1015
Temp: 81 degrees F.
Humidity: 73%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 648 and 1833
Location: 12.41.950, 117.50.700 (at 1:15)
Day 7 - April 13, Wednesday
We had fluky wind last night, puffing up and down between not enough to really sail and just enough. Its direction meant that we couldn’t make much SW towards our waypoint and had to sail a lot more to the West. We were under mainsail alone, as the weight of the headsail in the very light winds and following seas made it just flog and snap. Our speed was down to 4 knots last night.
This morning we tacked and are headed mostly south, under 70% headsail and full main, with the wind over our port stern quarter. We’re making 5.5 to 6 knots, heading south now instead of later when we arrive at 126 or 128 degrees west, which lets us keep our weather gauge and options for crossing the Zone and equator. We’ll have the flexibility to cross at a lower degree of longitude, or to continue on up to 128 or 130, depending on the weather and wind. Our tentative plan is to keep going south to maybe between 12 to 10 degrees or so and then before we get too far south and in to the doldrums, turn west again to wherever we decide to cross through the Zone and over the equator.
The top of the rudder post is sort of wobbling side to side and there is fiberglass powder and some fiberglass bits underneath of it. We’ve been hearing loud snapping and grinding noises for days now, especially when the stern gets shoved sideways by following seas. The floor transmits the broken snapping movement of the rudder through your feet, which is disconcerting. We’re hoping that the rudder doesn’t fall off before we get to land, or more realistically that it doesn’t damage the lower rudder bearing assembly and start some leaking or binding problems. The closest land is Puerto Vallarta, but that is over 900 miles upwind through 6 to 8 foot swells. The next closest land is the Marquesas Islands, about 1800 miles away. And the Marquesas don’t have any boat yards or haul out facilities as far as we know. The closest place with modern haul out facilities is Papeete, which is another 700 or 800 miles past the Marquesas, with the low lying current inflicted Tuamotu Archipelago in between.
Data entry for day 7 (covering data from 1 pm on April 13th to 1 pm on April 14th):
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (648 - 525) = 123 miles
Wind Speed: 14 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, no genoa
Wave Height/State: 1 foot wind waves, 6 foot swells, long period
Sky/Clouds: Mostly sunny, scattered puffy clouds
Course/GPS Bearing to Waypoint: 215 magnetic, 231 GPS
Barometer: 1016
Temp: 81 degrees F.
Humidity: 78%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 525 and 1709
Location: 11.03.563, 119.09.510
Day 8 - April 14, Thursday
It was really hard to sleep last night as the boat was being hit with swells and waves from two directions, both mostly from astern but different angles. The result was the stern was getting tossed around and the boat was rolling quite a bit and the rudder was really snapping and grinding, more than it had before. Through the dark night I had to lay on my mattress with my fingers wrapped around the edges holding on, which, combined with the fear of the rudder falling off, makes it quite hard to sleep, eh?
We have changed course and reduced sail to 100% main only, no headsail, to lessen the forces being applied to our rudder. In this configuration we don’t hear the grinding noises, nor feel the twitches transmitted through the floorboards of the cockpit. We’ll see if the grinding picks up again when we unfurl the headsail to increase our speed. It isn’t speed that hurts the damaged rudder as much as the lateral torques inflicted on it when the stern is tossed this way and that.
The odd 15 foot swells roll by under the boat occasionally, quite high above the horizon visible from inside our cockpit. My fishing line disappears back into the swells optimistically, and hopefully. We have one more meal of our fresh caught not frozen tuna before we have to break into the (no doubt still delicious) tuna that we froze right after catching it.
The solar panels are really doing their thing today. I’m very impressed with the AGM batteries as opposed to my boat’s old fashioned lead acid golf cart batteries. In particular, I like how quickly the AGMs charge up. Emil has to run his engine (with its two! alternators) for only two hours to charge them from down around 50%. Mine would take 6 or 8 hours to reach 100%. AGMs may have other pros and cons, but this quick charging resulting in less engine running time to charge is really a big deal for cruisers.
We’re having trouble getting weather data downloads from the satphone. We were successful once, a couple of days ago, but haven’t been able to get the phone and computer to handshake since then. They weren’t ever used together before the voyage, so the whole process and setup was never ironed out. It is tough getting it done underway, even with the ability to call the tech support department at Ocens, which we have done. The speaker for the cradle was never tested before we left and it now turns out that it is almost inaudible. The reception in the main salon isn’t good if the phone is out of its cradle, and since the computer is in the salon you need the phone to work there. The phone plugs into a cradle connected to a good external antenna, but again, the speaker doesn’t work when it’s in the cradle and there is no external speaker and the headset jack is a non-standard possibly proprietary jack. Dominique is the one working on getting the bugs out of the system, as he is more patient than I am – I get cranky when I work on the damn thing. A weakness on my part that I would have to overcome if computer savvy D wasn’t here.
We discovered that the roller furler line has two huge worn frayed places in it from chafe. The longest suitable piece of replacement line on the boat is only 40 feet long, so we cut out the frayed part of the old line and tied a knot in it. The knot is a pain in the butt as it doesn’t fit through the turning blocks on the stanchions and gets caught on the cleat that turns the line towards the winch, and on the winch itself. Every time you get to the knot you have to muscle the line past the obstacle, which means, usually, that roller furling is a two person job.
Data entry for day 8, ending the April 14 to April 15, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (525 - 393) = 132 miles towards waypoint
Wind Speed: 11 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 50% genoa
Wave Height/State: 1 foot wind waves, 5 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: mostly sunny
Course: 2 magnetic, 229 GPS
Barometer: 1012
Temp: 82 degrees F.
Humidity: 86%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 393 and 1580
Location: 9.51.525, 121.03.173
Day 9 - April 15, Friday
We’ve been playing with the satphone data connections for the past day or so, trying to figure out how to configure it so we can get weather data downloads. It looks like the docking station at the boat’s nav station was not installed properly, as we can’t get data to flow between the phone and either computer when it’s in the docking station, but can when the phone and computer are up in the cockpit. The docking station is wired to the big external antenna that would supposedly allow much faster data downloads. The docking station is charging the phone and lights up, but the data handshake isn’t taking place. Maybe a wiring issue, or maybe a driver issue but we have reinstalled all the software Emil has with no joy. Also, we can’t get Emil’s computer to link up with the phone directly, only mine. It’s a nuisance to have to be out on deck holding the phone up to the sky linked to a laptop via a short 4 foot USB cable. The docking station was installed at Marine Service Center in Anacortes, but apparently never tested by them after they installed it. All of the satphone/weather download software installed easily and quickly in my laptop and we are now are able to download weather data using the phone to my computer’s USB direct link, but not using the docking station. I’ve got to take the phone and computer out into the cockpit to get a clear line of sight to the sky for the phone. The phone by itself doesn’t get good reception in the main salon. Now, I’ve got to figure out how to post to my SailBlogs account and send and receive email.
We’ve slowed down in the last couple of days, as the wind is down somewhat, and as we aren’t driving quite as hard because of the cracks in the rudder mounting system. Instead of making an average of 7 or more knots we’re making about 5 to 6. Both our ride and the rudder are more comfortable at slower speeds, and thus our sleeping is better. I’ve read a lot of puddle jump blogs commenting on the fairly active and uncomfortable ride they have experienced going to the Marquesas. Our ride is a bit active too, but, remembering that there is about 1,000 miles of fetch to 125 longitude, it isn’t hard to see that the seas might build a bit even with only 20 knots true blowing for days in a row. When the wind dies down, the wind waves quickly die down and the swells gradually reduce over 5 to 10 hours or so. Then, they build right back up when the wind gets going again. And when the wind changes direction slightly you get some cross seas that add to the bucking horse experience until the seas all get organized to the new wind direction.
Night watches, other than having to be awake at night, are great. Warm, lots of stars, the 16 gigs of music in my Droid X, moonlight (yes, we’ve got the moon for almost the whole trip, what luck!). The stars on the horizon are mostly obscured by clouds on the horizon all around us, but overhead they are nice. The sky isn’t crystal clear because of atmospheric moisture and scattered clouds. All in all, the nights are very pleasant.
Dominique brought a couple of fun novel-like books written by Tom Holt. One is titled “Divine Comedies”. They are fun to read and have a nice twist on reality, the gods, society and human nature without being pompous or judgmental.
An inspection of the bilge storage compartments revealed a bunch of cabbage and cauliflower had started to rot and stink. I washed them in salt water on the stern platform, leaving a trail of rotten vegetable leaves for the boats following us and was able to salvage almost all of the cabbage. The cauliflower didn’t fare as well. We screwed up on our food storage procedures – I think you are supposed to take the plastic bags off before you store the veges in the floor storage compartments, eh? We’ll eat more veges and less tuna for the next couple of days.
We spotted two interesting patches of water today, about two hours apart from each other, but both sporting the same phenomena. It looked like a tide rip, or a place where two currents came together. Each was the approximately three or four football fields in area. The surrounding sea was all well organized, with swell and wind waves going in the same direction, very uniform. The patches, though, were pitching turbulently, with clearly visible waves coming from another direction and the waves meeting and rising up like the water in a Maytag. The waves were three to five feet high and shooting up water as they smashed together. Upwelling? A nuclear sub blowing its ballast?
Data entry for day 9, ending the April 15 to April 16, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (393 - 263) = 130
Wind Speed: 12 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 4.5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 50% genoa, wing and wing
Wave Height/State: 1 foot wind waves, 6 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, thin bright overcast
Course: 227 magnetic, 225 GPS
Barometer: 1011
Temp: 82degrees F.
Humidity: 92%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 263 and 1452
Location: 08.36.913 N., 122.53 077W.
Day 10 - April 16, Saturday
Nothing to report. Another beautiful day in paradise and I don’t mean Paradise Village, either! Last night as I was standing my watch I felt this great sense of contentment, fulfillment, and peace. It was so perfect, with the bright moonlight, the warm trade wind breeze, running downwind at 6 knots, the boat surfing a bit on the small swells, the great beautiful sea all around us in our little boat, the rudder behaving itself. That moment was definitely what sailing to the south seas is all about, or at least one of the things.
The seas are very organized, coming from just one direction, so the back of the boat isn’t being slewed around. The current action on the rudder is very gentle and benign. We don’t hear any of the cracking snapping creaking noises, nor are we seeing the top of the rudder post oscillating side to side. If this keeps up, the rudder should stay on and the boat won’t be sinking at least before we get to Hiva Oa. Nigel Caulder described the construction of boat rudders in his Mechanical and Electrical book. I noticed that he kept repeating the words “catastrophic” and “sinking” when he was discussing the failure of the rudder bearings or support assemblies.
We’ve got the “new” whisker pole up and we’re flying wing and wing, on a mostly furled headsail and full main. A couple of months ago a guy in the lagoon at Barra de Navidad announced on the morning net that he had a whisker pole for coconuts. Emil got it for 50 coconuts. The pole is homemade, with extendable aluminum tubes, and seems to work ok. The same day another guy announced that his wife wasn’t ready to do the puddle jump so he had the Navonics chart chip for the south seas available for coconuts, which Emil also got as he hadn’t bought his chart card yet.
Today the boat’s motion is easy with just an occasional lurch. The ride is pretty comfortable. The GRIB files are showing lessening wind as we approach the ITCZ. We’re aiming for the spot where the higher pressure zones in the northern and southern hemispheres are closest to each other, resulting in the shortest distance over the doldrums. That's right, I said GRIB files. Emil went deep into his trouble shooting mode and after a lot of work found that the terminator on the external antenna to cradle wire had been improperly installed and was defective. He fixed it and now the cradle works and we're getting weather and email!
Today has been a lesson in patience. Very light wind has resulted in boat speeds of 3 to 4 knots. The temptation is to forget that you are in a sailboat and to start the engine. However, on the GRIB files I can see 600 miles of doldrums to cross, and we’ve got only 90 gallons of diesel. Go figure. And, really, what’s the matter with making 4 knots all day long using the free wind to push you along? Is this about the journey or getting to the next anchorage ASAP? By the way, we figure we passed the halfway point today, about noon or so. Exciting, eh?
Data entry for day 10, ending the April 16 to April 17, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (263 - 155) = 108 miles
Wind Speed: 5 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 3.3 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 0% genoa
Wave Height/State: 1 foot wind waves, 6 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, squalls, intermittent showers
Course: 210 magnetic, 215 GPS
Barometer: 1013
Temp: 79 degrees F.
Humidity: 63% (with intermittent heavy rain!)
My Handheld GPS distance to Zone (WPT)/Hiva Oa: 155 and 1344
Location: 07.37.456 N., 124.29.629 W.
Emil snuck his fishing pole out when I wasn’t looking. I’d been holding back, not fishing because we still have fresh tuna in the refrigerator, but developing a sense of anticipation about putting my lure back in the water. There is nothing like having your lure or bait in the water. Sure enough, he caught a little 5 pound tuna. I made him kill and clean it. He admitted it was the first time that he killed and cleaned a fish. I could see his Buddha nature struggling with it but in the end he did a great job. He didn’t eat any of the choice bits of raw sashimi meat as he cleaned, though. I think he can get into being a hunter/gatherer with a little more practice. I told him the next step will to be to raise, kill, clean and eat fresh organic chickens on his farm. He turned a little green at that idea, which made me feel better and stop thinking about how he beat me to the glory of the morning’s catch.
Shanti ran the engine early this morning as the batteries are running down under the constant loads from the auto pilot, chart plotter and refrigeration. The cloudy days just aren’t putting enough watts into the panels to bring the batteries back up. The AGMs charge up a lot more quickly than my flooded lead acid old fashioned batteries do. Two hours of engine running takes them from 50% to close to 100%, if I’m reading Emil’s gauges correctly. I’d have to run my engine for maybe 6 hours to get from 50 to 100, even with my big Balmar alternator. This is a huge plus for the AGMs. I wonder what the cost of them is, as compared to the costs of the lead acid batteries and running the boat’s charging system for 3 times or more longer.
The wind has been softer for the last 24 hours or so, we’ve slowed down to maybe 5 knots. Our 24 hour mileage figure will be down again today. Minutes after I typed this sentence, down at the nav station, I felt this thrilling little surge in Shanti, and heard the sound of water rushing past her hull. These 140 miles days are no good! Shanti does move pretty nicely in response to wind. I’m impressed with how she can hold 7 knots of speed given a 15 to 20 knot breeze. Because of Shanti’s keel and rudder design, as opposed to Freyja’s keel that runs along ¾ of the boat underwater and her skeg hung rudder the size of a barn door, Shanti feels different to steer, more sporty maybe. I suppose that as long as the autopilot holds up we won’t have to worry about steering her. We haven’t given the autopilot a cute name.
We’ve gotten into a routine of reading, looking at the ocean, napping, cooking, looking at the ocean, reading, ocean looking, snacking, napping, bird watching, ocean looking and maybe doing a bit of laundry or messing around with our stuff. Time flies by, there is no sense of boredom or confinement on the boat. The ocean is so big…… the horizon is infinite.
I had a great time on my 1 am to 4 am watch the other night dancing and jumping around to the tunes on my Zune. I worked a sweat up dancing with myself. However, at the end of my watch, when I went to charge it I realized that the charging cord is on Freyja. Ah Hah! I said when I realized that my trusty Droid X has 16 gigs of music in it and that I have the charging/USB computer cords for it so can change its music around if I feel like I need something different for sailing than what I put on it for life on the farm. My new moderately expensive Magnolia HiFi ear buds are great as they really stay in when moving around and are light, unobtrusive, have a very light small volume control right at the Y, and really have a great sound.
It is nice having Dominique on board. He is a really nice easy going guy who has some good sailing experience in his background. Plus, he is French, so is able to work on language lessons with us. Emil and I are both pulling our old French lessons out of the attic of our minds, and we both are making some progress. If only the French were sensible enough to pronounce their language exactly the way it is written……
Data entry for day 6 (covering data from 1 pm on April 10th to 1 pm on April 11th):
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (771 - 648) = 123 miles
Wind Speed: 131 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 70% genoa
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 3 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, partial sun
Course/Bearing to Waypoint: 175 magnetic, 229 GPS
Barometer: 1015
Temp: 81 degrees F.
Humidity: 73%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 648 and 1833
Location: 12.41.950, 117.50.700 (at 1:15)
Day 7 - April 13, Wednesday
We had fluky wind last night, puffing up and down between not enough to really sail and just enough. Its direction meant that we couldn’t make much SW towards our waypoint and had to sail a lot more to the West. We were under mainsail alone, as the weight of the headsail in the very light winds and following seas made it just flog and snap. Our speed was down to 4 knots last night.
This morning we tacked and are headed mostly south, under 70% headsail and full main, with the wind over our port stern quarter. We’re making 5.5 to 6 knots, heading south now instead of later when we arrive at 126 or 128 degrees west, which lets us keep our weather gauge and options for crossing the Zone and equator. We’ll have the flexibility to cross at a lower degree of longitude, or to continue on up to 128 or 130, depending on the weather and wind. Our tentative plan is to keep going south to maybe between 12 to 10 degrees or so and then before we get too far south and in to the doldrums, turn west again to wherever we decide to cross through the Zone and over the equator.
The top of the rudder post is sort of wobbling side to side and there is fiberglass powder and some fiberglass bits underneath of it. We’ve been hearing loud snapping and grinding noises for days now, especially when the stern gets shoved sideways by following seas. The floor transmits the broken snapping movement of the rudder through your feet, which is disconcerting. We’re hoping that the rudder doesn’t fall off before we get to land, or more realistically that it doesn’t damage the lower rudder bearing assembly and start some leaking or binding problems. The closest land is Puerto Vallarta, but that is over 900 miles upwind through 6 to 8 foot swells. The next closest land is the Marquesas Islands, about 1800 miles away. And the Marquesas don’t have any boat yards or haul out facilities as far as we know. The closest place with modern haul out facilities is Papeete, which is another 700 or 800 miles past the Marquesas, with the low lying current inflicted Tuamotu Archipelago in between.
Data entry for day 7 (covering data from 1 pm on April 13th to 1 pm on April 14th):
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (648 - 525) = 123 miles
Wind Speed: 14 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, no genoa
Wave Height/State: 1 foot wind waves, 6 foot swells, long period
Sky/Clouds: Mostly sunny, scattered puffy clouds
Course/GPS Bearing to Waypoint: 215 magnetic, 231 GPS
Barometer: 1016
Temp: 81 degrees F.
Humidity: 78%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 525 and 1709
Location: 11.03.563, 119.09.510
Day 8 - April 14, Thursday
It was really hard to sleep last night as the boat was being hit with swells and waves from two directions, both mostly from astern but different angles. The result was the stern was getting tossed around and the boat was rolling quite a bit and the rudder was really snapping and grinding, more than it had before. Through the dark night I had to lay on my mattress with my fingers wrapped around the edges holding on, which, combined with the fear of the rudder falling off, makes it quite hard to sleep, eh?
We have changed course and reduced sail to 100% main only, no headsail, to lessen the forces being applied to our rudder. In this configuration we don’t hear the grinding noises, nor feel the twitches transmitted through the floorboards of the cockpit. We’ll see if the grinding picks up again when we unfurl the headsail to increase our speed. It isn’t speed that hurts the damaged rudder as much as the lateral torques inflicted on it when the stern is tossed this way and that.
The odd 15 foot swells roll by under the boat occasionally, quite high above the horizon visible from inside our cockpit. My fishing line disappears back into the swells optimistically, and hopefully. We have one more meal of our fresh caught not frozen tuna before we have to break into the (no doubt still delicious) tuna that we froze right after catching it.
The solar panels are really doing their thing today. I’m very impressed with the AGM batteries as opposed to my boat’s old fashioned lead acid golf cart batteries. In particular, I like how quickly the AGMs charge up. Emil has to run his engine (with its two! alternators) for only two hours to charge them from down around 50%. Mine would take 6 or 8 hours to reach 100%. AGMs may have other pros and cons, but this quick charging resulting in less engine running time to charge is really a big deal for cruisers.
We’re having trouble getting weather data downloads from the satphone. We were successful once, a couple of days ago, but haven’t been able to get the phone and computer to handshake since then. They weren’t ever used together before the voyage, so the whole process and setup was never ironed out. It is tough getting it done underway, even with the ability to call the tech support department at Ocens, which we have done. The speaker for the cradle was never tested before we left and it now turns out that it is almost inaudible. The reception in the main salon isn’t good if the phone is out of its cradle, and since the computer is in the salon you need the phone to work there. The phone plugs into a cradle connected to a good external antenna, but again, the speaker doesn’t work when it’s in the cradle and there is no external speaker and the headset jack is a non-standard possibly proprietary jack. Dominique is the one working on getting the bugs out of the system, as he is more patient than I am – I get cranky when I work on the damn thing. A weakness on my part that I would have to overcome if computer savvy D wasn’t here.
We discovered that the roller furler line has two huge worn frayed places in it from chafe. The longest suitable piece of replacement line on the boat is only 40 feet long, so we cut out the frayed part of the old line and tied a knot in it. The knot is a pain in the butt as it doesn’t fit through the turning blocks on the stanchions and gets caught on the cleat that turns the line towards the winch, and on the winch itself. Every time you get to the knot you have to muscle the line past the obstacle, which means, usually, that roller furling is a two person job.
Data entry for day 8, ending the April 14 to April 15, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (525 - 393) = 132 miles towards waypoint
Wind Speed: 11 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 50% genoa
Wave Height/State: 1 foot wind waves, 5 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: mostly sunny
Course: 2 magnetic, 229 GPS
Barometer: 1012
Temp: 82 degrees F.
Humidity: 86%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 393 and 1580
Location: 9.51.525, 121.03.173
Day 9 - April 15, Friday
We’ve been playing with the satphone data connections for the past day or so, trying to figure out how to configure it so we can get weather data downloads. It looks like the docking station at the boat’s nav station was not installed properly, as we can’t get data to flow between the phone and either computer when it’s in the docking station, but can when the phone and computer are up in the cockpit. The docking station is wired to the big external antenna that would supposedly allow much faster data downloads. The docking station is charging the phone and lights up, but the data handshake isn’t taking place. Maybe a wiring issue, or maybe a driver issue but we have reinstalled all the software Emil has with no joy. Also, we can’t get Emil’s computer to link up with the phone directly, only mine. It’s a nuisance to have to be out on deck holding the phone up to the sky linked to a laptop via a short 4 foot USB cable. The docking station was installed at Marine Service Center in Anacortes, but apparently never tested by them after they installed it. All of the satphone/weather download software installed easily and quickly in my laptop and we are now are able to download weather data using the phone to my computer’s USB direct link, but not using the docking station. I’ve got to take the phone and computer out into the cockpit to get a clear line of sight to the sky for the phone. The phone by itself doesn’t get good reception in the main salon. Now, I’ve got to figure out how to post to my SailBlogs account and send and receive email.
We’ve slowed down in the last couple of days, as the wind is down somewhat, and as we aren’t driving quite as hard because of the cracks in the rudder mounting system. Instead of making an average of 7 or more knots we’re making about 5 to 6. Both our ride and the rudder are more comfortable at slower speeds, and thus our sleeping is better. I’ve read a lot of puddle jump blogs commenting on the fairly active and uncomfortable ride they have experienced going to the Marquesas. Our ride is a bit active too, but, remembering that there is about 1,000 miles of fetch to 125 longitude, it isn’t hard to see that the seas might build a bit even with only 20 knots true blowing for days in a row. When the wind dies down, the wind waves quickly die down and the swells gradually reduce over 5 to 10 hours or so. Then, they build right back up when the wind gets going again. And when the wind changes direction slightly you get some cross seas that add to the bucking horse experience until the seas all get organized to the new wind direction.
Night watches, other than having to be awake at night, are great. Warm, lots of stars, the 16 gigs of music in my Droid X, moonlight (yes, we’ve got the moon for almost the whole trip, what luck!). The stars on the horizon are mostly obscured by clouds on the horizon all around us, but overhead they are nice. The sky isn’t crystal clear because of atmospheric moisture and scattered clouds. All in all, the nights are very pleasant.
Dominique brought a couple of fun novel-like books written by Tom Holt. One is titled “Divine Comedies”. They are fun to read and have a nice twist on reality, the gods, society and human nature without being pompous or judgmental.
An inspection of the bilge storage compartments revealed a bunch of cabbage and cauliflower had started to rot and stink. I washed them in salt water on the stern platform, leaving a trail of rotten vegetable leaves for the boats following us and was able to salvage almost all of the cabbage. The cauliflower didn’t fare as well. We screwed up on our food storage procedures – I think you are supposed to take the plastic bags off before you store the veges in the floor storage compartments, eh? We’ll eat more veges and less tuna for the next couple of days.
We spotted two interesting patches of water today, about two hours apart from each other, but both sporting the same phenomena. It looked like a tide rip, or a place where two currents came together. Each was the approximately three or four football fields in area. The surrounding sea was all well organized, with swell and wind waves going in the same direction, very uniform. The patches, though, were pitching turbulently, with clearly visible waves coming from another direction and the waves meeting and rising up like the water in a Maytag. The waves were three to five feet high and shooting up water as they smashed together. Upwelling? A nuclear sub blowing its ballast?
Data entry for day 9, ending the April 15 to April 16, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (393 - 263) = 130
Wind Speed: 12 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 4.5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 50% genoa, wing and wing
Wave Height/State: 1 foot wind waves, 6 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, thin bright overcast
Course: 227 magnetic, 225 GPS
Barometer: 1011
Temp: 82degrees F.
Humidity: 92%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 263 and 1452
Location: 08.36.913 N., 122.53 077W.
Day 10 - April 16, Saturday
Nothing to report. Another beautiful day in paradise and I don’t mean Paradise Village, either! Last night as I was standing my watch I felt this great sense of contentment, fulfillment, and peace. It was so perfect, with the bright moonlight, the warm trade wind breeze, running downwind at 6 knots, the boat surfing a bit on the small swells, the great beautiful sea all around us in our little boat, the rudder behaving itself. That moment was definitely what sailing to the south seas is all about, or at least one of the things.
The seas are very organized, coming from just one direction, so the back of the boat isn’t being slewed around. The current action on the rudder is very gentle and benign. We don’t hear any of the cracking snapping creaking noises, nor are we seeing the top of the rudder post oscillating side to side. If this keeps up, the rudder should stay on and the boat won’t be sinking at least before we get to Hiva Oa. Nigel Caulder described the construction of boat rudders in his Mechanical and Electrical book. I noticed that he kept repeating the words “catastrophic” and “sinking” when he was discussing the failure of the rudder bearings or support assemblies.
We’ve got the “new” whisker pole up and we’re flying wing and wing, on a mostly furled headsail and full main. A couple of months ago a guy in the lagoon at Barra de Navidad announced on the morning net that he had a whisker pole for coconuts. Emil got it for 50 coconuts. The pole is homemade, with extendable aluminum tubes, and seems to work ok. The same day another guy announced that his wife wasn’t ready to do the puddle jump so he had the Navonics chart chip for the south seas available for coconuts, which Emil also got as he hadn’t bought his chart card yet.
Today the boat’s motion is easy with just an occasional lurch. The ride is pretty comfortable. The GRIB files are showing lessening wind as we approach the ITCZ. We’re aiming for the spot where the higher pressure zones in the northern and southern hemispheres are closest to each other, resulting in the shortest distance over the doldrums. That's right, I said GRIB files. Emil went deep into his trouble shooting mode and after a lot of work found that the terminator on the external antenna to cradle wire had been improperly installed and was defective. He fixed it and now the cradle works and we're getting weather and email!
Today has been a lesson in patience. Very light wind has resulted in boat speeds of 3 to 4 knots. The temptation is to forget that you are in a sailboat and to start the engine. However, on the GRIB files I can see 600 miles of doldrums to cross, and we’ve got only 90 gallons of diesel. Go figure. And, really, what’s the matter with making 4 knots all day long using the free wind to push you along? Is this about the journey or getting to the next anchorage ASAP? By the way, we figure we passed the halfway point today, about noon or so. Exciting, eh?
Data entry for day 10, ending the April 16 to April 17, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (263 - 155) = 108 miles
Wind Speed: 5 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 3.3 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 0% genoa
Wave Height/State: 1 foot wind waves, 6 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, squalls, intermittent showers
Course: 210 magnetic, 215 GPS
Barometer: 1013
Temp: 79 degrees F.
Humidity: 63% (with intermittent heavy rain!)
My Handheld GPS distance to Zone (WPT)/Hiva Oa: 155 and 1344
Location: 07.37.456 N., 124.29.629 W.
Mexico to the Marquesas Days 1-5
Day 1 - April 7th, 2011 – We left Marina Nuevo Vallarta today at 1 pm. Because the La Cruz Port Captain doesn’t have the authority to check boats out of the country, we had to do our international check out with the Nuevo Vallarta Port Captain. We had been in a slip at the Nuevo Vallarta Marina for a couple of days to do the check out, wait for weather and to take advantage of the shore side opportunities to eat and drink.
My Passport 40, Freyja, is being left behind in her slip. I’m crewing for my friend Emil on his 2007 Catalina 42, Shanti.
As we left, Shanti was a jumble of gear and groceries below decks. We sailed until around 6pm then, still in the Bay, started motoring as the wind dropped to 3 or 4 knots. After 2 or 3 hours the wind picked up to 14 or so, and we were able to sail on a broad reach in very mild seas.
After scrambled eggs for all, we’re reading, napping, and settling into, or at least trying to invent, our routines. During the night Dominique had to alter course to avoid a ship that appeared to be getting too close. There was a nice waxing moon of the small crescent size, which set maybe around midnight or two am. Fortuitously, our timing is good in relation to the moon, which will be waxing for most of our trip. The stars were shining but some mild haze or sea moisture in the atmosphere turned down the radiance of the display. The satphone weather download and email capabilities are new to the boat, so we need to get to work figuring out how to use them, especially as we don’t have HF radio on board.
We haven’t started fishing, yet, as we’re still getting used to being at sea, getting the boat organized, and maybe most importantly, we haven’t left the cooler green murky waters of the bay and reached the warmer clear blue fishing waters.
While still in cellphone range, I mentioned the movie V for Vendetta, and the speech V makes when he first meets Evey, to Dominique, who downloaded it. Aren’t smart cell phones cool!
The little mileage log wheel thingy says we have made 92 miles in 24 hours, but the GPS says we made 138 miles in our first 24 hours. The log wheel speedometer seems to read maybe 40% lower than the GPS speedometer, around, for instance, 4.5 to 6.5. Note that the Data Entry stuff at the end of each day’s journal is done the next day at 1pm. The daily journal entries stop at midnight, usually.
Data entry after 24 hours, ending the April 7th to April 8th, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour data period:
24 hour Mileage: 138 miles
Wind Speed: 17 knots
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 7 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 100% genoa
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 1 foot swell
Course: 230 magnetic, 235 GPS
Barometer: 995
Temp: 78 degrees F.
Humidity: 82%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint: 1377
Location: 19.28.611, 107.21.082
Day 2 - April 8, Friday
On a dark squid lure I caught a bill fish on the 20 fathom long handline that my friend Geoff in Hawaii sent to me for this trip. It was smallish, maybe 50 pounds, 5 feet long maybe, but way too much meat for us and our tiny refrigerator. We let it go – it was just hooked in the lip and looked frisky as it swam off, and we hope it lives. It was too pretty to kill, not to mention that both the other crew members, one a Buddhist and the other a vegetarian, were staring at me as the decision was made. I think tuna, wahoo, dorado, etc., look more like food than a billfish does. Fishing is a bit indiscriminate in its catching, a problem which plagues the commercial industry, too. You drag your hooks or nets and who knows what you’ll catch.
We had nice sailing the day of the 8th, with a pretty steady 20 knots of true wind on the beam and Shanti galloping along at close to 8 knots for most of the day. The seas were simple, not complex, just well organized wind waves. Our motion was really reasonable. A brand new sun shower bag that Emil had laying on the foredeck was washed overboard by one particularly bold wave that came aboard. There were 4 or 5 boats in PV that didn’t leave when we did, as the weather routers were telling them to wait until the weekend or Monday for the wind to build. So far, we’ve been getting the wind we figured we’d get and are happy about our decision to leave on Thursday. I’m lying in bed blogging, and seeing on my hand held GPS that we are still averaging just over 7 knots.
Something happened today, though, that I have never read about in other sailing blogs. One or more of the beautiful birds soaring around Shanti, didn’t see which one so can’t name it, shit on the headsail and then a little later shit on the mainsail. Each time, as soon as he noticed it, Emil jumped right up with righteous indignation and scrubbed the impact zones with 409 or something and a long handled brush, but there is still a little brownish color left where the poop bombs impacted. I wonder why other bloggers have never reported birds pooping on their boats.
Partway through the day we noticed that the steering system was making some loudish squeaky, sharp snap, crackly noises. Under both the full 150% headsail and the full main the boat was out of balance with some serious weather helm and was thus really working the steering system hard. We threw a reef into the main and sprayed WD40 all over the upper rudder bearing, which is where the noise was coming from. The squeaks went away and after we reefed the helm got a lot lighter. We then read the manual concerning the steering. It turned out that it warned not to use WD40 or oil for lubricating the rudder post bearings, but to just use water.
I made chicken fajitas for dinner. Before we left we purchased 400 nice harina tortillas from the little tortilla maker across the street from Philo’s in La Cruz, and they sure are yummy.
Data entry for Day 2, ending the April 8, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour data period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (1377 - 1215) = 162 miles
Wind Speed: 17 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 7 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 100% genoa
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 6 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Clear, sunny
Course: 247 magnetic, 224 GPS
Barometer: 1000
Temp: 75 degrees F.
Humidity: 88%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 1215 and 2431
Location: 17.59.000, 109.39
Day 3 - April 9, Saturday
Well, day three started off with a snap – the snap of a piece of 10 pound test leader. I had the drag line Geoff made for me in the water, pulling a silver blue pink white metal head squid type of thing, going about 7 knots. The leader is tied to the same deck cleat that the drag line is tied to, and then is tied to the far end of the rubber snubber shock absorber that is an integral part of the line. When the fish hits the snubber stretches and the leader breaks with a very audible snap as a sort of fish on alarm. I pulled in a nice little tuna weighing about 10 pounds, just right for a couple of days of fine fabulous fresh fish feasting. The raw bits of sashimi I ate as I cleaned and dressed it were sweet and fresh. Every time you land a fish on a sailboat you get a bloody mess. The fish is vibrating and shaking and fighting and blood is flipped and sprayed and squirted everywhere. The fastidious ones always get cranky about this time, even with the bounty of the sea at hand….. Another side note – we have lots of bananas on board so have disproved the old superstition about bananas being a jinx on fish catching. The drag line is nice as you don’t have to stop the boat or slow down. You just haul the fish in. With a pole the fish runs, your line goes out, you reel it back in, you hope your line is heavy enough test, you have to slow down as the speed of the boat helps the fish fight the pole and reel. In short, with a pole it is an entire fire drill. The drag line is 200 pound test with 75 pound leader. I do want the leader to break off if I hook a fish bigger than 50 or 60 pounds, rather than trying to bring what is really too much fish to hand.
Traditionally day to day data is collected at each day’s noon, for the old fashioned noon sun sight, but we left the dock at 1 pm and have GPS so are sticking with 1 pm as our 24 hour mark. We’ll have to switch time zones on our ship’s clock a couple of times so that sunrise and sunset occur at reasonable hours as we sail west. For radio schedules and logging data sailboaters have to keep two clocks, one on local time and one on zulu, or else do the correction in their heads, keeping track of the time zones they are passing through.
The wind is varying from just ahead of the beam to just abaft of it. It’s pretty steady, changing from what looks like, based on the wave shapes, around between 14 knots to 20 or so. We can’t tell its speed for sure as the main wind instrument aboard is reading 30 to 40 and the little Radio Shack weather station is apparently and logically reading apparent but a number that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Emil says his instruments have been out of calibration for quite some time. Whatever speed the wind is really blowing, it is moving us along at around 6 to 7 knots very steadily and we are really glad we left PV when we did instead of waiting with the other boats for a weather guru to bless the departure. Our own reading of the weather data on the internet before leaving convinced us that we would have enough wind to make good speed. Making our own decisions based on our own efforts researching and analyzing the raw data paid off. The University of Hawaii has a great weather website, and there are a bunch of other including both government and private ones. Also, we have pictures of the sea state at different Beaufort scale readings, which helps determine the wind speed, too.
It was a little hard to sleep last night, as the boat was bouncing around a little, especially during the time we were making 8 knots……. We’ve got the main reefed once and the 150% headsail completely unfurled. We are doing three hour watches, but a little loosely – sometimes the guy on watch doesn’t wake you up right away for your turn if he is feeling good. 9 to midnight, midnight to 3, 3 to 6 and usually somebody is up by 6 to make coffee and take over.
We haven’t run the engine for a couple of days, as the two 160 watt solar panels kick butt in this clear blue sunny weather. They’ve been feeding the always on and hungry autopilot, refrigeration, and Raymarine C-80 chart plotter, plus supporting our use of the water maker, personal computers, and nav and reading lights. The batteries are still at 100% at sundown.
Data entry for day 3, ending the April 9 to April 10, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (1215 - 1052) = 163 miles
Wind Speed: 15 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 6.5 knots
Sail Plan: one reef in the main, 100% genoa
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 8 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, partial sun
Course: 232 magnetic, 244 GPS
Barometer: 1019 (from Emil’s digital Radio Shack deck unit)
Temp: 78 degrees F.
Humidity: 80%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 1052 and 2231
Location: 16.22.703 N., 111.57.258 W.
Day 4 - April 10th, Sunday
This morning the AGM batteries were down to almost 50%, the bottom allowable limit below which Emil says AGM’s suffer some physical degradation. I don’t know about AGMs as Freyja has traditional golf cart batteries, 8 T-105s. The cloud cover yesterday reduced the solar panels ability to charge the batteries. It is a little brighter today so we’ll see if we can stay charged with the panels or will have to run the engine to get them charged enough to make it through the night. The two panels mounted over the bimini are each 160 watts. Three would be better for these cloudy days. They sure do have big foot prints, though, but you don’t notice their size when they are up out of the way and out of sight over the bimini. I question whether a wind generator would be contributing much on this downwind sail, as the apparent wind is only 8 to 12 knots most of the time. A towed water generator would generate power as long as we were moving along at over whatever it is, 4 or 5 knots, but might interfere with fishing, either by tangling the fishing line when you have a fish on or by acting sort of like those deer whistles superstitious country guys put on their pick up trucks. Maybe a towed generator would be easy enough to pull out of the water when hunting and gathering food, and to throw back in for making electricity. We made 162 miles two days ago, and 163 as of our 1 pm fix today.
Our meal plan went out the window on the first day. We are choosing our next meals based on what is spoiling the fastest, rather than on what we might prefer to eat. The avocados, as hard as rocks when we bought them, really didn’t last and got ripe all at once, so they are a big menu item. The pineapples are also all ripe. I made pan seared blackened sashimi blocks from the tuna we caught yesterday – there’s a very tasty, delicate sweet flavor from the fresh tuna. We are kicking ourselves for not working harder to find wasabi. We have none. The Japanese restaurant upstairs in Paradise Village Mall was willing to order a pound or two of it for us, but we didn’t think to ask them in time to make it work logistically. They receive their orders once or twice a week, so plan ahead.
The boat is surfing on the 8’ swells, which kicks up the speed. They aren’t quite directly behind us enough, though, to avoid the stern getting tossed around a bit, which makes for some corkscrewing and throws us around a bit. The sea state is not at all radical or big, the wind is only blowing maybe 15 to 18 knots, there aren’t any big swells or confused seas coming from somewhere else, but the boat is rocking and rolling enough that you always have to hang on especially during the big dips. This Catalina 42 Mk II I’m on could use a few more handholds and would be difficult for a short person as the reaches between hand holds are far apart and high up. Both the salon and the cockpit are big enough that handholds aren’t always conveniently at hand. We’ve got 8’ long period swells and 2’ wind waves both coming from the same direction. Emil and Dominique have both been suffering off and on from mild queasiness. Sitting at the nav station typing, I’m looking first down in the water right next to the boat and then seconds later well up into the sky through the cabin porthole.
Another thing that sailing bloggers don’t seem to talk about, besides birds pooping on the boat, is dozing off on night watch. The long distance, around the world, single handers usually claim they only sleep for 20 minutes at a time or some such. I notice that during the day we, on Shanti, all sit in the cockpit facing backwards and sometimes go for quite a while without looking forwards. We do have our shields up, though – both radar and AIS guard zones and alarms are set. I wonder how many cruisers do doze off on night watch. I do want to reassure our insurance guy that we certainly don’t doze off, we’ve just talked about it.
We are running the engine now to charge the batteries back up. They only got to 70% by the end of daylight today, as it was another cloudy day, with a few drops of rain! This afternoon we had to roll up some of the headsail as the wind shifted and blew about 25 or so for a while. We’ll keep the headsail partially rolled up tonight. We also had to steer upwind a bit more as the wind clocked on us a bit and with the following seas the boat was wallowing a bit too much and allowing the wind to backfill the headsail. This might be an issue we’ll have to deal with, as we need to make our southing, too, so that we don’t get too far west above the Marquesas and have to beat upwind to get there if the SE trades have more S in them. We want to cross the equator well before 130 degrees west. The sail plan is constantly changing not just because of the wind but to help control the boat in the wind waves and swells. By constantly, I mean a couple or 4 times a day…. maybe 5 or 6.
Data entry for day 4 (covering data from 1 pm on April 10th to 1 pm on April 11th):
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (1052 - 911) = 141 miles
Wind Speed: 14 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 6.5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 100% genoa
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 8 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, partial sun
Course: 235 magnetic (Ship’s Compass)
Barometer: 1018
Temp: 83 degrees F.
Humidity: 75%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 910 and 2,093
Location: 15.09.929, 114.04.285 (at 1:01)
Day 5 - April 11th, Monday
We had a big party at the mast this morning. Emil had to install a bracket on the mast to be used to hold one end of the whisker pole, which holds out the genoa in light downwind air. He drilled four holes and tried to screw in the screws. The mast metal was too hard to turn the sheet metal screws and drive them in. He made the hole bigger. No joy, so bigger still. Each time he started turning the screws, he had to brace himself, and Dominique and I had to grab his body and brace him on the pitching, rocking and rolling deck. Emil would lean into his work, grunting and talking to the screw – oh, yeah, come on baby, oh, yes, yes, oh oh, with me and Dominique wrapped all around him bracing him….. It was pretty damn funny, really. Finally the last screw was in and the bracket secured. Too bad we didn’t have a something to tap threads into the holes or a pop rivet gun.
The wind was down last night to 10 or 12 true, so, of course, the boat slowed down a bit and we had our slowest full 24 hour passage so far on the trip, a mere 141 miles towards our waypoint. It was fluky and kept changing direction, too, so we had to steer more west than was advantageous for hitting our waypoint. We don’t want to hit the Zone (aka the InterTropical Convergence Zone) too far west, past say 128 at the most, as then there is a risk of having to be close hauled to make Hiva Oa. I didn’t sign up for beating upwind on this trip!
Last night was overcast, we couldn’t see much of the moon or stars. It was overcast today, too. Shanti made water today with its Schenker 8 gallon per hour water maker. It sure is nice to have an abundant amount of fresh water available, though it leads to bad habits, like letting the faucet run a bit….. A pod of 5 or 6 dolphins came by this afternoon and played around in the bow wave. Dominique took movies and photos and was pretty excited to have them playing by our boat.
We haven’t been fishing, as we still have some of the tuna we caught a couple of days ago. The wind continues to be lighter and from an awkward direction forcing us too much west. Soon we may tack, and go straight south for 100 miles or so, to get our good angle towards our waypoint back.
The headsail is rolled in because in this light air it flogs too much in the waves and swells. There isn’t enough wind to keep it filled properly. I suppose we should rig the whisker pole but after catching the fish we have had enough excitement for a while. Never having rigged the home made pole before on this boat, there is a certain element of discovery to the upcoming procedure. Also, we wonder whether this homemade pole that Emil bought off another boat in Barra de Navidad is heavy duty enough for Shanti. Note that the Sail Plan in the Data Entry forms is sometimes different than what is said in these paragraphs, as they are written at different times. The Data Entry information is whatever is current at the moment I’m making the entry.
Data entry for day 5 (covering data from 1 pm on April 11th to 1 pm on April 12th):
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (911 - 771) = 140 miles
Wind Speed: 10 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry (SOG): 5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 70% genoa
Wave Height/State: 1 foot wind waves, 5 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, bright
Course/Bearing to Waypoint 6N, 126W) 230 magnetic, 223
Barometer: 1017
Temp: 76 degrees F.
Humidity: 79%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 771 and 1955
Location: 13.49.587, 116.02.936
My Passport 40, Freyja, is being left behind in her slip. I’m crewing for my friend Emil on his 2007 Catalina 42, Shanti.
As we left, Shanti was a jumble of gear and groceries below decks. We sailed until around 6pm then, still in the Bay, started motoring as the wind dropped to 3 or 4 knots. After 2 or 3 hours the wind picked up to 14 or so, and we were able to sail on a broad reach in very mild seas.
After scrambled eggs for all, we’re reading, napping, and settling into, or at least trying to invent, our routines. During the night Dominique had to alter course to avoid a ship that appeared to be getting too close. There was a nice waxing moon of the small crescent size, which set maybe around midnight or two am. Fortuitously, our timing is good in relation to the moon, which will be waxing for most of our trip. The stars were shining but some mild haze or sea moisture in the atmosphere turned down the radiance of the display. The satphone weather download and email capabilities are new to the boat, so we need to get to work figuring out how to use them, especially as we don’t have HF radio on board.
We haven’t started fishing, yet, as we’re still getting used to being at sea, getting the boat organized, and maybe most importantly, we haven’t left the cooler green murky waters of the bay and reached the warmer clear blue fishing waters.
While still in cellphone range, I mentioned the movie V for Vendetta, and the speech V makes when he first meets Evey, to Dominique, who downloaded it. Aren’t smart cell phones cool!
The little mileage log wheel thingy says we have made 92 miles in 24 hours, but the GPS says we made 138 miles in our first 24 hours. The log wheel speedometer seems to read maybe 40% lower than the GPS speedometer, around, for instance, 4.5 to 6.5. Note that the Data Entry stuff at the end of each day’s journal is done the next day at 1pm. The daily journal entries stop at midnight, usually.
Data entry after 24 hours, ending the April 7th to April 8th, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour data period:
24 hour Mileage: 138 miles
Wind Speed: 17 knots
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 7 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 100% genoa
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 1 foot swell
Course: 230 magnetic, 235 GPS
Barometer: 995
Temp: 78 degrees F.
Humidity: 82%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint: 1377
Location: 19.28.611, 107.21.082
Day 2 - April 8, Friday
On a dark squid lure I caught a bill fish on the 20 fathom long handline that my friend Geoff in Hawaii sent to me for this trip. It was smallish, maybe 50 pounds, 5 feet long maybe, but way too much meat for us and our tiny refrigerator. We let it go – it was just hooked in the lip and looked frisky as it swam off, and we hope it lives. It was too pretty to kill, not to mention that both the other crew members, one a Buddhist and the other a vegetarian, were staring at me as the decision was made. I think tuna, wahoo, dorado, etc., look more like food than a billfish does. Fishing is a bit indiscriminate in its catching, a problem which plagues the commercial industry, too. You drag your hooks or nets and who knows what you’ll catch.
We had nice sailing the day of the 8th, with a pretty steady 20 knots of true wind on the beam and Shanti galloping along at close to 8 knots for most of the day. The seas were simple, not complex, just well organized wind waves. Our motion was really reasonable. A brand new sun shower bag that Emil had laying on the foredeck was washed overboard by one particularly bold wave that came aboard. There were 4 or 5 boats in PV that didn’t leave when we did, as the weather routers were telling them to wait until the weekend or Monday for the wind to build. So far, we’ve been getting the wind we figured we’d get and are happy about our decision to leave on Thursday. I’m lying in bed blogging, and seeing on my hand held GPS that we are still averaging just over 7 knots.
Something happened today, though, that I have never read about in other sailing blogs. One or more of the beautiful birds soaring around Shanti, didn’t see which one so can’t name it, shit on the headsail and then a little later shit on the mainsail. Each time, as soon as he noticed it, Emil jumped right up with righteous indignation and scrubbed the impact zones with 409 or something and a long handled brush, but there is still a little brownish color left where the poop bombs impacted. I wonder why other bloggers have never reported birds pooping on their boats.
Partway through the day we noticed that the steering system was making some loudish squeaky, sharp snap, crackly noises. Under both the full 150% headsail and the full main the boat was out of balance with some serious weather helm and was thus really working the steering system hard. We threw a reef into the main and sprayed WD40 all over the upper rudder bearing, which is where the noise was coming from. The squeaks went away and after we reefed the helm got a lot lighter. We then read the manual concerning the steering. It turned out that it warned not to use WD40 or oil for lubricating the rudder post bearings, but to just use water.
I made chicken fajitas for dinner. Before we left we purchased 400 nice harina tortillas from the little tortilla maker across the street from Philo’s in La Cruz, and they sure are yummy.
Data entry for Day 2, ending the April 8, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour data period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (1377 - 1215) = 162 miles
Wind Speed: 17 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 7 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 100% genoa
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 6 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Clear, sunny
Course: 247 magnetic, 224 GPS
Barometer: 1000
Temp: 75 degrees F.
Humidity: 88%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 1215 and 2431
Location: 17.59.000, 109.39
Day 3 - April 9, Saturday
Well, day three started off with a snap – the snap of a piece of 10 pound test leader. I had the drag line Geoff made for me in the water, pulling a silver blue pink white metal head squid type of thing, going about 7 knots. The leader is tied to the same deck cleat that the drag line is tied to, and then is tied to the far end of the rubber snubber shock absorber that is an integral part of the line. When the fish hits the snubber stretches and the leader breaks with a very audible snap as a sort of fish on alarm. I pulled in a nice little tuna weighing about 10 pounds, just right for a couple of days of fine fabulous fresh fish feasting. The raw bits of sashimi I ate as I cleaned and dressed it were sweet and fresh. Every time you land a fish on a sailboat you get a bloody mess. The fish is vibrating and shaking and fighting and blood is flipped and sprayed and squirted everywhere. The fastidious ones always get cranky about this time, even with the bounty of the sea at hand….. Another side note – we have lots of bananas on board so have disproved the old superstition about bananas being a jinx on fish catching. The drag line is nice as you don’t have to stop the boat or slow down. You just haul the fish in. With a pole the fish runs, your line goes out, you reel it back in, you hope your line is heavy enough test, you have to slow down as the speed of the boat helps the fish fight the pole and reel. In short, with a pole it is an entire fire drill. The drag line is 200 pound test with 75 pound leader. I do want the leader to break off if I hook a fish bigger than 50 or 60 pounds, rather than trying to bring what is really too much fish to hand.
Traditionally day to day data is collected at each day’s noon, for the old fashioned noon sun sight, but we left the dock at 1 pm and have GPS so are sticking with 1 pm as our 24 hour mark. We’ll have to switch time zones on our ship’s clock a couple of times so that sunrise and sunset occur at reasonable hours as we sail west. For radio schedules and logging data sailboaters have to keep two clocks, one on local time and one on zulu, or else do the correction in their heads, keeping track of the time zones they are passing through.
The wind is varying from just ahead of the beam to just abaft of it. It’s pretty steady, changing from what looks like, based on the wave shapes, around between 14 knots to 20 or so. We can’t tell its speed for sure as the main wind instrument aboard is reading 30 to 40 and the little Radio Shack weather station is apparently and logically reading apparent but a number that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Emil says his instruments have been out of calibration for quite some time. Whatever speed the wind is really blowing, it is moving us along at around 6 to 7 knots very steadily and we are really glad we left PV when we did instead of waiting with the other boats for a weather guru to bless the departure. Our own reading of the weather data on the internet before leaving convinced us that we would have enough wind to make good speed. Making our own decisions based on our own efforts researching and analyzing the raw data paid off. The University of Hawaii has a great weather website, and there are a bunch of other including both government and private ones. Also, we have pictures of the sea state at different Beaufort scale readings, which helps determine the wind speed, too.
It was a little hard to sleep last night, as the boat was bouncing around a little, especially during the time we were making 8 knots……. We’ve got the main reefed once and the 150% headsail completely unfurled. We are doing three hour watches, but a little loosely – sometimes the guy on watch doesn’t wake you up right away for your turn if he is feeling good. 9 to midnight, midnight to 3, 3 to 6 and usually somebody is up by 6 to make coffee and take over.
We haven’t run the engine for a couple of days, as the two 160 watt solar panels kick butt in this clear blue sunny weather. They’ve been feeding the always on and hungry autopilot, refrigeration, and Raymarine C-80 chart plotter, plus supporting our use of the water maker, personal computers, and nav and reading lights. The batteries are still at 100% at sundown.
Data entry for day 3, ending the April 9 to April 10, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (1215 - 1052) = 163 miles
Wind Speed: 15 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 6.5 knots
Sail Plan: one reef in the main, 100% genoa
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 8 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, partial sun
Course: 232 magnetic, 244 GPS
Barometer: 1019 (from Emil’s digital Radio Shack deck unit)
Temp: 78 degrees F.
Humidity: 80%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 1052 and 2231
Location: 16.22.703 N., 111.57.258 W.
Day 4 - April 10th, Sunday
This morning the AGM batteries were down to almost 50%, the bottom allowable limit below which Emil says AGM’s suffer some physical degradation. I don’t know about AGMs as Freyja has traditional golf cart batteries, 8 T-105s. The cloud cover yesterday reduced the solar panels ability to charge the batteries. It is a little brighter today so we’ll see if we can stay charged with the panels or will have to run the engine to get them charged enough to make it through the night. The two panels mounted over the bimini are each 160 watts. Three would be better for these cloudy days. They sure do have big foot prints, though, but you don’t notice their size when they are up out of the way and out of sight over the bimini. I question whether a wind generator would be contributing much on this downwind sail, as the apparent wind is only 8 to 12 knots most of the time. A towed water generator would generate power as long as we were moving along at over whatever it is, 4 or 5 knots, but might interfere with fishing, either by tangling the fishing line when you have a fish on or by acting sort of like those deer whistles superstitious country guys put on their pick up trucks. Maybe a towed generator would be easy enough to pull out of the water when hunting and gathering food, and to throw back in for making electricity. We made 162 miles two days ago, and 163 as of our 1 pm fix today.
Our meal plan went out the window on the first day. We are choosing our next meals based on what is spoiling the fastest, rather than on what we might prefer to eat. The avocados, as hard as rocks when we bought them, really didn’t last and got ripe all at once, so they are a big menu item. The pineapples are also all ripe. I made pan seared blackened sashimi blocks from the tuna we caught yesterday – there’s a very tasty, delicate sweet flavor from the fresh tuna. We are kicking ourselves for not working harder to find wasabi. We have none. The Japanese restaurant upstairs in Paradise Village Mall was willing to order a pound or two of it for us, but we didn’t think to ask them in time to make it work logistically. They receive their orders once or twice a week, so plan ahead.
The boat is surfing on the 8’ swells, which kicks up the speed. They aren’t quite directly behind us enough, though, to avoid the stern getting tossed around a bit, which makes for some corkscrewing and throws us around a bit. The sea state is not at all radical or big, the wind is only blowing maybe 15 to 18 knots, there aren’t any big swells or confused seas coming from somewhere else, but the boat is rocking and rolling enough that you always have to hang on especially during the big dips. This Catalina 42 Mk II I’m on could use a few more handholds and would be difficult for a short person as the reaches between hand holds are far apart and high up. Both the salon and the cockpit are big enough that handholds aren’t always conveniently at hand. We’ve got 8’ long period swells and 2’ wind waves both coming from the same direction. Emil and Dominique have both been suffering off and on from mild queasiness. Sitting at the nav station typing, I’m looking first down in the water right next to the boat and then seconds later well up into the sky through the cabin porthole.
Another thing that sailing bloggers don’t seem to talk about, besides birds pooping on the boat, is dozing off on night watch. The long distance, around the world, single handers usually claim they only sleep for 20 minutes at a time or some such. I notice that during the day we, on Shanti, all sit in the cockpit facing backwards and sometimes go for quite a while without looking forwards. We do have our shields up, though – both radar and AIS guard zones and alarms are set. I wonder how many cruisers do doze off on night watch. I do want to reassure our insurance guy that we certainly don’t doze off, we’ve just talked about it.
We are running the engine now to charge the batteries back up. They only got to 70% by the end of daylight today, as it was another cloudy day, with a few drops of rain! This afternoon we had to roll up some of the headsail as the wind shifted and blew about 25 or so for a while. We’ll keep the headsail partially rolled up tonight. We also had to steer upwind a bit more as the wind clocked on us a bit and with the following seas the boat was wallowing a bit too much and allowing the wind to backfill the headsail. This might be an issue we’ll have to deal with, as we need to make our southing, too, so that we don’t get too far west above the Marquesas and have to beat upwind to get there if the SE trades have more S in them. We want to cross the equator well before 130 degrees west. The sail plan is constantly changing not just because of the wind but to help control the boat in the wind waves and swells. By constantly, I mean a couple or 4 times a day…. maybe 5 or 6.
Data entry for day 4 (covering data from 1 pm on April 10th to 1 pm on April 11th):
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (1052 - 911) = 141 miles
Wind Speed: 14 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 6.5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 100% genoa
Wave Height/State: 2 foot wind waves, 8 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, partial sun
Course: 235 magnetic (Ship’s Compass)
Barometer: 1018
Temp: 83 degrees F.
Humidity: 75%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 910 and 2,093
Location: 15.09.929, 114.04.285 (at 1:01)
Day 5 - April 11th, Monday
We had a big party at the mast this morning. Emil had to install a bracket on the mast to be used to hold one end of the whisker pole, which holds out the genoa in light downwind air. He drilled four holes and tried to screw in the screws. The mast metal was too hard to turn the sheet metal screws and drive them in. He made the hole bigger. No joy, so bigger still. Each time he started turning the screws, he had to brace himself, and Dominique and I had to grab his body and brace him on the pitching, rocking and rolling deck. Emil would lean into his work, grunting and talking to the screw – oh, yeah, come on baby, oh, yes, yes, oh oh, with me and Dominique wrapped all around him bracing him….. It was pretty damn funny, really. Finally the last screw was in and the bracket secured. Too bad we didn’t have a something to tap threads into the holes or a pop rivet gun.
The wind was down last night to 10 or 12 true, so, of course, the boat slowed down a bit and we had our slowest full 24 hour passage so far on the trip, a mere 141 miles towards our waypoint. It was fluky and kept changing direction, too, so we had to steer more west than was advantageous for hitting our waypoint. We don’t want to hit the Zone (aka the InterTropical Convergence Zone) too far west, past say 128 at the most, as then there is a risk of having to be close hauled to make Hiva Oa. I didn’t sign up for beating upwind on this trip!
Last night was overcast, we couldn’t see much of the moon or stars. It was overcast today, too. Shanti made water today with its Schenker 8 gallon per hour water maker. It sure is nice to have an abundant amount of fresh water available, though it leads to bad habits, like letting the faucet run a bit….. A pod of 5 or 6 dolphins came by this afternoon and played around in the bow wave. Dominique took movies and photos and was pretty excited to have them playing by our boat.
We haven’t been fishing, as we still have some of the tuna we caught a couple of days ago. The wind continues to be lighter and from an awkward direction forcing us too much west. Soon we may tack, and go straight south for 100 miles or so, to get our good angle towards our waypoint back.
The headsail is rolled in because in this light air it flogs too much in the waves and swells. There isn’t enough wind to keep it filled properly. I suppose we should rig the whisker pole but after catching the fish we have had enough excitement for a while. Never having rigged the home made pole before on this boat, there is a certain element of discovery to the upcoming procedure. Also, we wonder whether this homemade pole that Emil bought off another boat in Barra de Navidad is heavy duty enough for Shanti. Note that the Sail Plan in the Data Entry forms is sometimes different than what is said in these paragraphs, as they are written at different times. The Data Entry information is whatever is current at the moment I’m making the entry.
Data entry for day 5 (covering data from 1 pm on April 11th to 1 pm on April 12th):
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (911 - 771) = 140 miles
Wind Speed: 10 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry (SOG): 5 knots
Sail Plan: 100% main, 70% genoa
Wave Height/State: 1 foot wind waves, 5 foot swell long period
Sky/Clouds: Cloudy, bright
Course/Bearing to Waypoint 6N, 126W) 230 magnetic, 223
Barometer: 1017
Temp: 76 degrees F.
Humidity: 79%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 771 and 1955
Location: 13.49.587, 116.02.936
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