UTC/Local: 20:06/13:07
Latitude: 02 26 401 N
Longitude: 128 26. 613 W
Conditions:
0300 Calm seas, 3-6 feet swells, bright moon, cloudy, wind speed about 10, boat speed about 3-4 knots. We are less than 200 miles from the equator, and under 1,000 miles to Hiva Oa. Whoo Hoo! We are 2/3's of the way there.
I'm on late-dawn watch. I got up at 2:00 a.m. Russ had early watch. He was so tired, he could hardly wait for me to get out of bed. He crashed and within seconds was snoring. We thought we would be motoring tonight, but we are enjoying a beautiful sail instead. It is a welcome respite from the frenetic motoring in high seas and pouring rain with little to no winds.
We kept the motor off while we ate dinner and participated in the evening nets. By the time the nets were over around 9:00 p.m., the seas had begun to flatten out a little and the wind pickup a little, so we are sailing....not very fast....not on the exact course we wanted, but everyone needed a good night's rest after the last couple of days. It's very tiring and wearing on the body bracing,bumping,flying through the air while motoring. It is such a different motion than when under sail. Sailboats are engineered to cut through the water and find the rhythm of the wind and sea state. Our bodies have become used to that kind of motion. You can almost anticipate when to step and when to wait. When motoring and powering into the waves, the boat begins to lurch and leap in unexpected ways. Even laying down is an odd sensation. Sometimes the boat drops down so fast that our bodies are airborne and we levitate off the bed. So while we may be in bed "sleeping" we really are not getting much rest in those conditions, and it is catching up with us.
0630 The moon has just set and my view forward is pitch black. There is however a faint light from the eastern sky. I think the sun is thinking about rising this morning.
By 0730, everyone was up. We turned off all the potential noise makers for the radio. Russ served as net control this morning for the Pacific Puddle Jump Net. He did a fine job! Sea Flyer continues to limp along with his motor and delivered fuel for which he is thankful. Thankful too that he ran the fuel through his Baja filter as it wasn't real clean. Russ asked if anyone had made contact with Aquila. No response. We tried several times ourselves with no response. Garyn even asked for a radio check from any vessel who could hear us on VHF 16. Silence. No one is anywhere around us. With the exception of the tanker that delivered fuel to Sea Flyer several days ago, which we think was the same one we saw later in the day, we have had no AIS traffic or seen anything other squalls on our radar. We haven't even seen a sea bird or dolphin that last couple of days....just flying fish. Can't find our pet gecko either.
Speaking of squalls, we got through the entire night with nary a one! Russ turned on Lehman and Ray around 10:00 A.M. and pointed the nose of the boat directly into the wind. Even with full power we are drifting a little west because of a strong equatorial current, but much better than we were doing under sail and winds under 10 knots. We had blueberry pancakes and bacon this morning. Actually, I started it this morning and we wound up eating it just before lunch. Having turned off the refrigerator for a couple of hours each day for the nets, both had started to defrost which was serendipitous because they needed a defrosting. I just hadn't planned on doing that at the same time I was cooking breakfast.
After breakfast, we took showers and did some laundry. The laundry is blowing in the wind off the fan tail. Garyn and Russ are napping. That will be my plan as soon as one of them wakes up and stands watch. We think we will be crossing the equator sometime tomorrow morning. Garyn has been talking about giving Russ a buzz cut on the equator and throwing his hair in the water for Neptune. I'm going to put the champaign on ice tonight. We might be having Mimosas tomorrow at 0 degrees. If the conditions are right, Garyn would like to take a swim. We'll see how that works out. I think I'll just dip my toes in.
This afternoon we are enjoying blue sky with about 50 % cloud cover, blue, blue water cruising and are traveling 5 knots with the wind and swell right on our nose. Russ will serve as Net controller this evening as well. Tuesday will be Worrall Wind's day on the radio until we reach waters too far south to hear or transmit to most of the fleet.
Hope all is going well with all of you. All is well on Worrall Wind.
I love reading your postings! It's almost as good as being there, without the waves, squalls and other things that reality gives you. Thank you for doing this!
ReplyDeleteSusan Martimo