Passage from La Cruz, Mexico to Hiva Oa, Marquesas
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Day 1 - Wednesday - April 7, 2010
UTC/GMT: 0000 UTC, 12:00 a.m.
Latitude: 20 33.60 N
Longitude: 105 45.63 W
Conditions:
We awoke this morning to a clear sky and a sense of high anticipation. During morning coffee, we busied ourselves with breakfast, listening to the Banderas Bay Cruiser's net and saying our goodbyes, closing hatches, checking weather, taking down and washing all of the mosquito nets from ports and hatches, drying and stowing them away until we reach land again. Our sail rigger arrived around 10:30 to show us how to reef the cutter into a storm sail and how to rig and fly the gennaker.
We cast off from our slip around 11:30 and headed over to the fuel dock where we topped off our fuel tanks with 84 gallons of diesel. In case you're interested, the cost of diesel fuel today was 37.70 pesos per gallon (about $3.02 per gallon).
Our tank holds enough for us to motor 1/3 of the way to Tahiti if we need to.
Our hope of course is to sail most of the way. We cast off from land at 12:12 p.m., motored out of the harbor steering a course of 240 into calm seas and a a very light breeze. We pulled up and stowed all of the bumpers off the stern of the boat and ate lunch waiting for a breeze before raising the sails. By 1:30 the wind had picked up to about 11 knots. We cut the motor, hoisted the main, the mizzen, the jib, and the cutter. The breeze was coming primarily from 35 degrees north, north west and was inconsistent, rising from 11 to 4 knots. Russ and Garyn adjusted the Hydrovane so that the auto helm could free us to attend to other things.
I made soda water with our new soda stream machine and enjoyed an ice cold glass of sparkling water with lime. This was the machine that Garyn brought down by plane, Don from Freezing Rain drove the CO2 cartridges down from Washington to Mexico because they cannot come by air. We wanted soda, but not the bottles or cans so this is an ideal solution for us. However, we thought after all the strategic transportation of the various components, we were to be defeated when we realized there had been no bottle caps shipped with the machine. Fortunately, I was able to secure 1 bottle cap (these are custom designed 1 ¼" and deep), from a fellow cruiser who heard my plea over the cruisers' net. He promised to leave me one of his cap at the La Cruz Harbor Master's office. He was packing up and leaving Mexico for the states in just a few hours. He said it was no trivial matter, but an emergency not to have a cap for our fizzy bottle. He's my hero!
Garyn practiced his guitar, Russ worked on navigation and practicing with his sextant. We worked on attaching knives, lights, and whistles to our flotation devices while keeping watch and adjusting sails and course to the variable winds. The sea swells are about 2-3 feet at a comfortable interval. My plan is to try and post a blog about the same time every day just before sunset. We are coming up now on 5:30 and it's time for me to cook some dinner. Garyn and Russ are going to toss over the water generator and we will see how much it slows us down and how many amps it produces.
I'm holding first watch tonight from 9:00-2:00 a.m. Russ says he will probably stay up with me as he won't be able to sleep the first night. Garyn will come on at 1:00 until 7:00. Each day we will rotate the watches. Every third night, one person will get a full night's rest (this should be Russ's full night of rest). Six hour watches seem a little long to me, but this is what we are going to try and start with.
All is well on Worrall Wind.
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Day 2 - Thursday - April 8, 2010
UTC/GMT: 0714 Friday (4/8) 1:14 a.m.
Latitude: 19 44.631 N
Longitude: 107 06 283 W
Conditions:
It's very dark. Stars twinkle between broken clouds. The wind is shifting around from 60 to 180 degrees off our starboard side, north west to north east at only 3-5 knots. It is inconsistent, but at least we have some. Earlier today we had no winds to speak of. The sea was glassy except for an 8-9 foot swell every 10-11 seconds. Worrall Wind gently rose and fell in the most beautiful clear cobalt blue seas going nowhere fast.
Although we have traveled (tacked over 200 miles, we are only 110 miles out from Mexico, generally heading west, southwest. We are trying to "west" as much as possible hoping to pick up the 1016 barometric pressure gradient as it makes its way south. This pressure gradient will give us a better sail with fewer clouds and percipitation. Our barometric pressure right now is 1010 and rising.
We had a cloudy sunrise this morning after a gentle night at sea. Neither my watch nor Garyn's was remarkable other than we saw a cruise ship on my watch, heading out of Puerto Vallarta and turning north towards Cabo San Lucas and a large tanker that crossed behind me about 7 miles also heading north. On Garyn's watch he picked up the mast lights of another sailboat. Later in the morning we made contact with the boat. It is Mike, single handed, on Aquila, making the jump. At one point our boats were only 50 feet from one another and Mike caught a breeze and pulled ahead as we were virtually drifting in circles trying to catch some breeze.
Garyn and Russ raised the gennaker (an asymetricalcruising spinnaker) today for the first time. It's a bright red star pattern on a white background and is extremely light weight. It is intended to work well in light winds. Our course this morning was too close to the little wind that we had and we had beam swells and the wind spilled out of the sail as we rolled with the swell.
It was like watching a big lung exhale and inhale…quite mesmerizing, but we were too close to the wind with no more speed than we were getting with our jib, so we took it down and decided to turn on the motor a bit, run the water maker and recharge our batteries after the morning net and sail mail transmission on our single side band gobbled up the amps.
We left Mike behind us, but I am sure he will catch up with us as his boat is lighter weight and not the heavy slug we are. (Our water line that we raised 4 inches last summer is slightly under the water now.) I hope that once we are more comfortable flying the gennaker we can take better advantage of the light winds and actually make good forward progress when we get into the trades and the wind is off our beam and stern quarter.
We saw lots of sea life today. Early in the morning, we saw a pod of dolphins. Mola mola, a small ray, and a frolicking seal. Later we noticed what looked like marine helmets shining on top of the water. We sailed by a half dozen sea turtles gentle floating on top of the waves seemingly confident that we would dodge around them…and we did.
When we scraped our plates overboard, boobies appeared from nowhere within minutes. Fortunately, none have tried to roost and poop on the boat. Just as the sun went down, there was a little sparrow sitting on our porta bote, happy to have a dry place to land so far out from land. With our motor on and some forward movement, flying fish scattered out from our bow like starbursts in front of us. I saw a couple of big splashes, but not sure what made them.
We enjoyed salami and cheese on the last of the French bread from Puerto Vallarta. For dinner I fixed tomato and avocado stuffed with tuna salad. Russ and I shared the glass of chilled white wine so that we could get the bottle out of the fridge. We are trying to drink a lot of liquid every day. Garyn drinks primarily water. Russ likes lemonade and berry drinks. I love the sparkling water and of course the morning coffee.
Tonight Garyn gets the full night rest. Russ had the 9:00-1:00 a.m. watch, and I have the 2:00 to dawn watch. It is currently 4:00 a.m. in the morning and time for me to make some notations in the log. We are currently getting a nice steady breeze of about 8 knots so we are making some progress.
All is well on Worrall Wind.
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Day 3 - Friday - April 9, 2010
UTC/GMT: 0430 4/9/20 7\30 p.m.
Latitude: 19 51.463 N
Longitude: 107 33.376 W
Conditions:
It is late in the day and the sun is making its descent as we motor directly into it. The winds have been extremely low and we have made paltry forward progress since 12:00 a.m. this morning.of only 45 nautical miles (averaging less than 2 knots an hour). The sea turtles were swimming faster. The current was actually pushing us backwards. It's been overcast so our solar panels and water generator were not producing enough amps, so at 6:00 this evening we turned on the motor to charge the batteries and to make a little forward progress before the sun goes down. The wind sometimes comes up at night and sometimes it doesn't. We have gentle swells, hardly any wind, and at this report the westward sky is cloudy (should make a terrific sunset) and the northern sky is clear of clouds.
I was on watch from 1:30 to 8:00 a.m. this morning. As we go further west, the sun didn't rise until almost 8:00. It was pitch black at 7:00 a.m. Around 7:00 a.m. I noticed on our navigation screen that a huge tanker was comingin our direction traveling at 12 knots and would pass behind us as close as 1 mile within 1 hour and 45 minutes. I couldn't see the tanker in the dark. The wind had shifted around from the South east running us north. I needed to gybe the boat to go south, but that would have put me in the path of the tanker if the wind picked up. I just decided to let us drift back in the direction we came until I got a visual on the tanker. By the time Russ and Garyn got up, we made the decision to gybe and parallel the tanker's course. It passed along our side within 2 miles. On the San Francisco Bay 2 miles is nothing, but in this huge ocean, 2 miles seems right in your face!
Another tanker, the Hanjin of San Francisco passed us on the starboard side. We decided we must be in the north bound shipping lane - of course nothing is marked on our charts. Due to the morning excitement and a pot of watch coffee, I was still wide awake, so I decided to make breakfast for everyone. We had an oven omelet stuffed with bacon, cheese, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms and zucchini.
Garyn and I worked in the galley airing out fruits and vegetables. The air temp has been in the mid 70's. The water temperature is 80 degrees. Consequently the hold is not a good place for the vegetables, too warm and moist. We dried out the moist veggies and hung everything in net bags all through the lower saloon on the hand rails and opened the ports. Fruit and veggies are much happier.
Wild life today has been limited to leaping dolphins, swooping boobies, and a stow away gecko that is living on the nav desk in the fuse panel. We're worried he won't find any no-seeums or mosquitoes to eat since we have left land. Hopefully he survives the trip. Maybe we can train him to eat salami and hot dogs.
We spent the day reading, listening to music and hand steering in the light wind trying to capture every little puff of wind. We are listening to the Fountain Head by Ayn Rand. The sea and wind was calm enough this evening to pull out the bar-b-que and grill some hamburgers and chilies stuffed with swiss cheese. There's got to be an upside to the lazy sail. Our grib files indicate that we are in a no wind zone and that in a day or two we should have a more consistent wind. We are looking forward to swifter forward progress.
Garyn and I just photographed the setting sun. Beautiful, but no green flash tonight. Our days are book ended by sunrises and sunsets.
All is well on Worrall Wind.
