The days blur together and while I thought I’d throw in some photos and hit publish once a week on this passage, I have not. Lately the sea state hasn’t been comfortable unless I’m driving, barely or laying down, neither are conducive to blog posting. Here’s the raw notes from out here, please forgive the lack of editing.
6/15
Midnight shift had distant lightning that lit up the clouds. Wind varied and made it challenging to drive at times. The sky starts getting light at 4am ships time now. By 6am we are bouncing along in a fresh and more consistent breeze. The sun is warm on my starboard side, the breeze cool on my port. mid morning brought a swim by of false killer whales, they surprised me right off our bow as they’re quite large, Griffin says up to 20 feet. About 10 of them swam around our bow for 30 seconds then disappeared off to the west.
6/18
Midnight shift is dark, the sliver of moon set just after my last shift. There aren’t many clouds though and I see Cassiopeia for the first time. Not many clouds out which is a relief, earlier the forecast had possible lightning now. Yesterday evening Griffin caught an almost 7 pound mahi mahi on the hand line. He was so happy! I asked him to write a bit to share on this blog, maybe you readers will get to hear the tale straight from him. I’d already defrosted some bolognese sauce so we had just a bit of the mahi as a side, we’ll have more for dinner tonight and maybe save some to have with our Canadian friends. Ideally, we should be filling the freezer with lots of oceanic fish as we eat up other items, we have some more fishing to do.
I’m super aware of how far out here we are. It’s an amazing feeling to be surrounded by nothing yet everything we need is right here, as long as we can manage to keep it running. Boat systems have been behaving, but we’re babying the jib and only have the main hoisted to the third reef- it’s smaller than the Mara’s mainsail. Right now we only have it and the storm sail up on the bow, a teeny sail plan, but we’re sliding along at 6-8 knots through the water in 10-16 knots of breeze. When the sun rises, which is earlier and earlier each day we’ll unfurl the jib again.
Morning shift, 6am. Wind is up and choppy waves are rolling around. Will try the jib out when Ned gets up in a few hours. Cleo sits on Griffin’s chest in the cockpit and checks out the tiniest flying fish we’ve seen.
Ned’s up, jib’s out, and we’re rolling again. Trying to be as easy on our sails as possible. Sunny with some scattered clouds, breeze around 16 knots with short gusts up to 20kts.
While trying to nap I could smell dead fish and later I solved the problem by throwing 28 small flying fish back in the drink from the deck. We remembered Paul Bieker’s story of finally figuring out a horrible smell was coming from dead fish that had gotten into a durade box. I’ll try to remember to check those later in a more gentle sea state.
Dinner of half the Mahi is delicious and so easy, bring on more fish!
6/19
Midnight watch is hard to wake up for and the boat is blasting along in 15-22kts of breeze with the 3rd reef and storm jib. I put on a long sleeve tech shirt with a hood to help keep flyaway hairs out of my face and to stay warm, weird. A glance off the transom has the last view of the southern stars and their reflections are in the bioluminescence in our wake. I wish a photo would show something other than blurry streaks.
6am-8am wind is still kicking around 20kts. At 7 we caught up to a darker cloud line and the wind clocked +10 degrees. As we reach along the boat rocks, rolls, rises, and falls with the now dark water under the clouds. We have left the latttitude of the boobie! Rain has finally rinsed the boobie poop from the main, or at least the part of the main that’s showing. There are still a few birds around but they don’t come as close and it’s hard to see what they are.
6-8p Wind is gusting to 24kts and pushing our ridiculously small sail plan along at 8kts. Super clear sky for sunset and the distant clouds illuminated on the horizon fade off over the horizon. The southern cross is still visible and we’re at 17 degrees, 30 minutes North.
6/20
12am Today I’m struck with the reality of dreams coming true. Proof for me looks like ripping across the ocean on my dream boat after a year’s adventure with an amazing kid and husband of 17 years as of today. I’m grateful for our life together.
Jib out for a little while until gusts got to be too much for it, we want it to last at least 1000 miles more. In other times we would have just furled some of it in but the sailmaker in Nuku Hiva recommended against that to help it last. Glad we have the spare but don’t want to have to use it yet.
6/21
Happy Father’s Day! Coffee cup cheers to the fathers out there this morning. In the hectic mess before we left I mourned my dad but didn’t have time to miss him in an ordinary way. I wonder how that will play out when we’re home. The father we have on board here will hopefully have a great day, I traded him the helm for his coffee at 6am and there’s a gentle breeze and sun. It was even cool enough for him to put on pants.
Wind steadily clocking to the east and our course is following it so we’re headed due north. Midday today was sunny and almost no swell, so docile that I made corn tortillas for a taco dinner. Right as dinner was ready though, the wind picked up, we healed over more, and accelerated. Bummer that the fresh breeze was back to being more NE.
6/22
It’s getting cooler and yet there are so many more minutes of daylight! Seems counterintuitive.
Each day is the same, only varying in what we eat and slight weather variations. It seems the forecasts have been accurate about half the time. Wind direction and speed are all over the place and we make adjustments to the sails to balance being gentle with them and keeping some speed on.
We keep referencing Groundhog Day, it’s actually a good thing to not have too much excitement.
6/23
Sea temperature is dropping and it was cloudy and windy most of the day today. We only had the jib unfurled for a short period, otherwise it’s been pretty windy and the sea is a big choppy mess with waves that like to mess with our course and speed. If we had more sail area available that would help, alas, that’s not our situation. Teriyaki beef and noodles with some frozen peas and dehydrated vegetables for dinner. Time to put on more clothes for evening watch. Almost to 28 degrees North, sea temp has dropped 3 degrees today to 72.
6/24
See yesterday. Today is same same though I did manage a great nap in the morning.
