So, internet is scarce and pricey in the middle of no where. I'll have to issue a worldwide IOU for the pictures on this post until I can find a solid connection. We've taken on the relaxed Polynesian lifestyle and are truly enjoying the island. Current plans are to head north up to Baie Anaho and, once again, trying to tackle our starter (or outboard) issue before cruising down to another island in the chain for a freshwater fill into our tanks. We're still well-stocked and living large. Lydia has since departed us for another boat that will bring her closer to her destination of Australia. I hope you enjoy this extended, pictureless post.
Pacific Puddle Jump
Total Sea Miles: 2798 nautical miles
Elapsed Time: 28 days 5 hours 28 minutes
Average Speed: 4.13 knots
May 1, 2010
Z00:54
First day of passage! First day of passage! Woo! Well, with that over, let's get down to the narrative business. The ship, the crew, and all miscellaneous items contained withing the two are finally ready to depart the mainland of North America for some of the most isolated rocks in the world: The Marquesas. Mexico had been continually sucking us back in day after day. Many travelers seem to resent that characteristic of the country. Very optimistic plans were to depart about a week ago. We had finally finished up the crucial items on our list just 3 days ago and headed up to our last Mexican port o' call: Chacala. The fruit run was completed and all items battened down when Lydia rowed up with a new local who was house-sitting a villa up the hill. We were invited for dinner and ended up staying the night, each of us with our own bedroom and bathroom. It, most likely, wasn't impressed upon her how wonderful of a gift her hot, freshwater showers were before a month-long voyage. Another may not be found for months. We finally managed to creep out of her beautiful villa and get back on the boat for a noon departure.
We completed a couple of last-minute lashings and preparations, and then set the sails and waved goodbye to the mainland. Or so we thought. Only but a half an hour out a terrible clanging sound was emitted by the hydrovane assembly. Now let me tell you a bit about this new-fangled hydrovane thing. It's a specialized hunk of aluminium and stainless steel mounted on the transom (aft structural face) of Leeway. On top, it presents a panel of wood to the wind (the vane), beneath this lies a factory of gears, levers, and bearings, that transfer the effect of the vane to a secondary rudder mounted in the water beneath. With careful balancing, this creates the rather elegant effect of a wind-operated autopilot. The spectrum of moving parts on the boat, winches, running rigging, and the rudder assembly are brought into a delicate synergy upon the fulcrum of our hyrdovane. It doesn't chomp precious amp hours like our electronic tiller and it produces a much more organic sense to Leeway. The hydrovane does have one flaw that is continually exploited by our offshore winds, diminishing it's abilities in Dan's eyes: it doesn't handle spotty winds well. It needs a constant blow, be it high or low, for the helmsman to fine-tune the balance between it and the vessel. But we're just happy to have wind here, despite its hydrovane diminishing qualities.
Oh by the way it's
May 2, 2010
Z20:20
And we ended up finding an absolutely beautiful anchorage to fix our hydrovane in: Isla la Pena off of Guayabitos Cove. We'd passed by Guayabitos several times at this point, but had never made anchorage within. It was toted by our guide as a marginal fair-weather-only anchorage between Chacala and Puerto Vallarta. We had fair winds and only needed to spend a night. So, after a short discussion with the captain of course, I fell off the wind, sheeted out the sails and set a course for the lee side of Isla la Pena. The island was continually shrouded in birds of all types and had a prehistoric, Jurassic Park feel to its steep, palm-tree-faceted cliffsides leading down to a narrow beach on which pangas continually ferried people to and fro. We anchored only 200 feet off the shore in about 15 feet over sand and broken coral. Two anchors were set for peace of mind and pina coladas finished the night off. But not before a passing panga gave us a free dorado. Spectacular Mexico had kept us for another night. Here's me holding my gifted dorado:
In the morning the crew noticed the clearest water in Mexico, so far. Snorkeling was a necessity and it was a kick to be able to free dive down and inspect the ground tackle. Dan swam to shore in search of a lashing board for our jerry jugs while Lydia and I finished our minimal recreation. I fixed hydrovane by adding a shaved-down thrust washer and we finally set out for good. Dan on his way to Isla la Pena and me snorkeling:
With the coming of a passage as such, come a few changes to our daily lives. While before our lives were loosely associated with the perception of a particular dimension known as “time”, we now almost revolve around it. The boat clock (a newly-purchased, 30 peso bedside clock velcroed above the chart table) has been set to Zulu time (aka GMT or UTC) to eliminate the complications of time zone changes. And on this clock face, 4 hour increments are consecutively plucked out for each of us to stand watch. The responsibilities of the watchkeeper are as normal: keep the boat on course (to our way point outside the ITCZ) and continually prevent it from colliding with bigger boats. Besides the competent completion of these items, the watchee is free to do as he or she pleases. I usually elect to split my time between reading Sometime a Great Notion and staring at the increasingly-deep, blue sea.
We've been peculiarly lucky in our departure from the mainland. Most yachts have reported having to motor for a few days to find the trade winds, but it seems we chose a perfect weather window where the trades came particularly close to Mexico just for our harnessing. We are currently (and have been for several hours) cruising to our way point at our maximum theoretical hull speed and beyond. Cutting an untraceable wake through the unfathomably deep water supporting us.
May 4, 2010
Z01:43
The sun has set on another fine day at sea. The past 24 hours have been uneventful, yet exhilerating. The classic trade winds, caught by seafarers for millenia, have made their presence fully known. The blank, hazy sky has given way to a pancake-dappled one. These fluffy, lumpy platters (much akin to the pancakes I fry up) are one of the characteristics of a trade wind locale. Now that we've caught these, we should be able to depend on them for the next ~15 days until we cross the ITCZ. This is what sailing feels like and what trade wind clouds look like:
The ocean has regained its stark blue hue that was only noticed out of sight of land. The Pacific has also greeted us with kind, rolling seas to sail on top of. It's a magnificent start to our long-awaited journey. A pod of dolphins accompanies Leeway as she sails into the pink sunset. 15 knot winds breathe us towards our destination under the blushing pancakes. Not this particular sunrise, but another out on the high seas:
May 5, 2010
Z00:25
Those, so-dependable, trade winds disappeared early this morning. I watched the sun rise on a new tropical day while trying to harness what was left of the fleeting wind as well as keeping the sails quiet for my sleeping shipmates. I set a course slightly west of rhumbline to our way point and balanced the gears and levers of the hydrovane. By this piece of machinery, I was granted the privilege of being able to take my mind off the sails and focus it on my novel and the rosing-over pancakes above the ice blue sea.
My companions arose late in my watch and we partook in another amazing meal prepared by Lydia's hands. After our fasts were broken, I proposed the idea of hoisting a spinakker, both to silence the sail plan and better harness the light winds. It took us about an hour to get the complicated rig established for our brand new spinakker. And when I went up to hoist it, it instantly seized itself upon our forestay and wrapped and wrapped its billowing nylon body at multiple points. A few futile tugs were all it took to make it apparent that we'd have to take out the big sailor guns to douse this unruly spinakker. We grabbed a jerry jug of diesel and hoisted it up the mast with another line attached to pour the fuel upon the disobedient sail. And by diesel jug I mean Dan sitting in a bosun's chair (a sit-in harness made for safe mast ascension). But the initial idea surely crossed our minds after a second, less successful ascent of the rig, but I'll get to that. So yes, I hoisted Dan up the mast via the jib halyard. The main was left up to stabilize the craft on the swell. Lydia controlled a guy line to keep him from getting banged to bits if his clutch on the rig were to part. He made it to the top and after much fuss and appropriately seaman vocabulary, the spinakker was freed and brought down to the foredeck. We went for a second attempt and after a short while the patriot-themed (no, French!) sail resumed its deathgrip on our forestay. It was now my turn to strap into the bosuns chair and free the unruly slab of nylon.
And up I went with Dan hoisting and Lydia on standby in case I began to oscillate. Only later did I truly grasp the view from atop the mast. I could only describe it as “It was like the openness you see from the cockpit day after day... but more). I marveled at the surrounding blue and the finally removed the spinakker. We resigned to hoisting a flapping genoa to move us along through the imperceptible wind. The French spinakker halfway down:
In our becalmed state, we all did some, much needed, bathing on the port side and took turns at diving into the crystal clear, 3 mile deep water. Other developments have been the addition of a new passenger to Leeway. Early this morning a brown booby was making landing attempts at Leeway. Only when the wind died down was she able to make her landing. She's a cheeky little bugger too: delivering squawks and pecks to anyone attempting to dislodge her from her throne atop the gaff pole. The day is nearing an end, but the sun no longer has any hotcakes to redden in its fall. Hopefully the wind will pick up in the twilight to give us some movement. This is Margareet, aptly named by Lydia:
And this is how you take a shower in the middle of the Pacific:
May 6, 2010
Z01:47
The sixth day at sea is coming to a close. I sit on watch vigilant to any lights that may appear over the horizon and the crew rests their poor, tired souls. While we have spent this much time without touching land (10 days from Long Beach to Ensenada), we were frequently in sight of it. If a nervousness should arise from this solitude, it hasn't shown itself yet. I've felt quite at ease and it seems to grow even more so as we are all washed clean of the stresses of a land-tethered life by salt spray and the warm breeze. There's a common bond that comes out of our cause that, seemingly, nothing could get in between [editor's note: this turned out to be a very incorrect statement].
I arose from bed this morning to relieve Dan from his late night watch. The fingers of dawn were just beginning to tinge the inky sky with a blue fiercer than the water we rode upon. The night had been calm and I was well rested. The past couple of nights have been wonderful for sleep. Before we were beating into 20 knot winds under reduced sail. In those conditions, the boat had a heeled a hard 35 degrees and practically skipped across the water. The high winds also made 2 foot wind waves independent of the swell. These, too steep for her to ride over, are displaced by the hull and resound a sleep-disturbing boom each time. But as of last night, the wind died down to about 10 knots or less. It also has would itself around to the normal trade wind position to give us a downwind run and negligible heel (the angle the boat tips relative to the plane of the horizon). Now the boat steers through the black steered by hydrovane alone. We've struck the navigation lights on account of the low occurrence of other vessels. And we've become an air-tuned vessel tacitly shearing the water, leaving only a fading phosphorescent glow in our wake. It's about as organic as a resin-filled, fiberglass boat can get and it feels pure. Leeway riding downwind in a wing and wing configuration (our most used sail plan above the equator):
The crew and I have managed to make the best of the low-to-dead wind. We look forward to the quiet nights and have a lot of bonding time as no one has to be on watch. Today we celebrated Cinco de Mayo (Mexico City time, not Zulu time) by consuming Latin American papusas (sp?) and playing a domino variation by the name of Mexican Train (Tren Mexicano). We had great fun swearing at eachother unabated. My watch ends fairly soon and I look forward to another quiet night's sleep. Lydia and I shortly after I garnered another massive defeat during Mexican Train. You can tell it troubles me so:
May 9, 2010
Z01:00
Our ninth day on passage is nearing a close. We've once again found some wind that has placed itself firmly upon our starboard quarter at 15 knots. We're riding it sheeted out and downwind so Leeway only pushes about 5.5 knots herself. The ride is pretty smooth though and lacks a hard heel.
The all-day-everyday sail has started to its effects on trusty ol' Leeway and her crew. The constant stresses on the rig have provoked a few broken items. A couple of blocks (the pulleys line runs through) have been lost due to being a bit undersized for the work load. Last night the spinakker pole clip snapped on one end provoking an all-hands-on-deck situation cleverly placed in the deepest stage of my sleep cycle.A line slipped, snapped, or was in someway deflected to allow the distal end of the pole (attached to the sail) to rise up quite high. By the time Lydia had come down to rouse us, it had snapped and the damage was done. The crew of Leeway could then be seen (if you were looking) scrambling around topsides wearing just barely more than our red-tinted headlamps. I headed up into the wind to put the boat in irons and stall it while Dan and Lydia wrastled the unruly pole on the foredeck. The sail was doused and the drama over. We may have some pretty aged equipment, but damned if we aren't good at jury-rigging up fixes. A screwdriver sits zip-tied into the spinakker pole to keep it extended, a wound piece of Dacron thread keeps my life jacket from accidentally deploying, a hatch is opened by a mechanically-advantaged strand of cordage. And the list would lengthen if I were to head in doors. There are no marine parts suppliers out here (and even if there were, we'd probably want to eat rather than spend money we didn't have to), so we have to make due with what we've got. It gives trusty Leeways a spot of character. She's unlike all those other spotless cruising boats. Her sails may have stains, her non-skid may be worn, but we sure can make her look shipshape with a good mainsail flake and pristine line stowage.
The crew has become well-adjusted to the passage life. The respective body clocks have adapted to the, relatively, lackadaisical watch schedule. Hollows below eyes have shallowed and it's not infrequent for a previous watchee to cover an hour of your watch if you're sleeping particularly hard.
We've all found ways to give each other the required space for comfortable living. Gatherings are had at meal times and spontaneous moments during the day, but most of the time we're all content with our noses in our books or our heads nodding to our ipods. The occasional card game is pulled from the depths of a locker or dominos matched upon the dining table. That is until a particularly steep wave sets them off like skiers racing down an icy incline. But like I said, the boat's library is being chewed through by all patrons. I finally completed Sometims a Great Notion. He had me glued to the pages with his dreadfully honest imagery, ever-deepening characters, and mind-wrenching symbolism. I finished it early today and attempted to pick up a new book to make it my next entertainment source. But I couldn't concentrate. My mind kept tacking back to Sometimes a Great Notion: trying to figure out motives, themes, and what in the world Kesey was trying to leave me with. I ended up being so mentally debilitated by this novel that I was pushed to write for a while. Pizza now awaits my consumption. I plan to engage in a post-pizza reading of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey's first novel.
May 10, 2010 10th Day at Sea
Z02:15
Another normal day 700 miles away from anything. I laundered, we ate, we read, and we enjoyed the spectacles of the briny desert we sail upon. Sometime in the last few days Leeway sailed off the continental shelf. The depths dropped almost straight down to 3 miles and the seas became nearly devoid of life. Most life thrives around anomalies like banks, pinnacles, islands, and shore. Fish are simply naturally attracted to them, thus bigger fish are, and so on until an ecosystem is created. Out here, the water offers few nutrients besides the ubiquitous phytoplankton. But some creatures can still thrive off of this basic food. We encounter flying fish that skip and glide above the wide swell, pelagic birds that are always interested in a free ride to Tahiti, and, just today, a very playful pod of dolphins. Laundry on the high seas, rinse cycle and dryer:
I heard a pod approaching by the tell-tale sound of their blowholes. Common courtesy implies you should alert the crew of such cool happenings. Everyone's thirsty for a stimulus in this wide, wet desert. The dolphins initiated into their normal behavior of frolicking at the bow. They, like most animals we see out here, are free-loaders; they enjoy the displaced water our vessel creates and use to to push them to momentarily ease their travels. We were able to lay down by the pulpit and see every detail of them through the glass-clear water. They swiveled and rolled making their passage through the water look completely effortless compared to our boat pounding through waves. Lydia cheered and gasped with glee at their beauty, along with this were efforts to communicate via whistles and speaking English. Well, it seemed to have worked. In the middle of her cheers, the elegant animals exploded out of the water in synchronized bursts, about 4 in all. We hollered, clapped, and cheered some more at these theatrics. Shortly after the show, they departed from Leeway and continued on their way west. The crew of Leeway was touched by their display. We knew these intelligent beings had performed this feat, 700 miles off the coast, just for us. An overhead shot of one of the dolphins breaching the surface taken from the bow:
May 11, 2010
Z19:25
Onto our 11th day at sea. It's a navigator's dream. Besides a few boats, there's been nothing but salty, blue goodness to run into. I take readings only once daily to make sure big currents aren't taking us supremely off course. I take into account a few items and set a new course each morning. It's pretty easy out here. My position will become much more difficult as we near land. The Marquesas shouldn't present much of a problem. With the exception of a couple of islands, they're all high-lying volcanic islands with reefs on the fringes. As we move south, though, through the Tuamotu Archipelago, more navigational hazards are presented. The Tuamotus are almost all low-lying coral atolls with scattered motus (sand mounds) atop the coral. Their proposed origins are that they were once similar to the Marquesas (volcanic islands with fringing reefs), but the land sunk into the ocean floor and left only the coral reefs behind. This makes vast, blue lagoons with the tallest feature usually being a palm tree. The atolls will have to be dodged day and night on our way to the Society Islands. The Societies, hosting famous islands such as Tahiti and Bora Bora, are a sort of geologic mixture of the other two island chains. For the most part, they're volcanic, high-rising islands with barrier reefs surrounding them. This makes navigable lagoons between the island and the reefs with passes into them. These can usually be safely navigated by daylight. But land is still quite a few days in our future.
Recent days upon Leeway have been passing most quickly. Out here we generally get caught in an activity, such as reading or staring at the water, for hours at a time. When lost in such an act, the passage of time is remotely perceived. I, like everyone, have still been doing a lot of reading. I finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest recently. I ended up being a little disappointed, reading it after Sometimes a Great Notion. It still had Kesey's great imagery and memorable characters, but seemingly paled in comparison to his reputed magnum opus. I've since moved onto some light history reading brought on board by Lydia: The History of the World in Six Glasses. It's a moderately interesting read covering six beverages: beer, wine, tea, coffee, spirits, and cola, and their origins and effects on society. But enough about me. How about Leeway? How's she doing? Is she bobbing like a cork across a windless sea? Is she wildly broaching off 50ft waves in hurricane conditions? As you may have guessed, it's somewhere in between.
Shortly after my last log entry, our wing and wing configuration, once again, took a turn for the worse. The wind had imperceptibly built during my watch. We were on a dead downwind run, so a 20 knot wind gets reduced by however fast we've moving (about 8 knots at this point). Thus the apparent wind (the wind felt on the boat, as opposed to surface wind and gradient wind) would be reduced to 12 knots, a light breeze. The wind had built and I didn't even notice until I looked up and saw the spinakker pole getting yanked much too high in the air by the bulging genoa. It didn't look like an incredibly pressing issue, so I went forward and had a chat with Dan through his hatch. Just as we postulated a situation, an especially large gust blew through and popped the pole up to a 45 degree angle. On its gravity-induced fall back toward the deck, the halyard winch revealed that it hadn't been fully tightened after its last hoist. It made this immediately known by dropping the whole of our largest sail directly over the bow pulpit to be quickly sucked under the boat. Another red-lit, scantily-clad, late-night adventure ensued and the issue was resolved.
The next morning I saw what the higher wind was doing to our peaceful Pacific seas. The 25 knot winds built up steep, 10 foot swells for Leeway to ride down. We're going dead downwind and, as a result, the waves and swells come from straight behind. These ten foot swells have, in effect, turned Leeway into a 36 foot surfboard. Under control of the hydrovane, she surfs the gnarly waves like a novice: taking the occasional one square-on and surfing it with a satisfying hiss, but usually loses her cool and yaws violently down the face. It's not too hard to deal with, though, a couple of items took a few more lashings and a few stomach needed fortification. We do happen to be making fantastic time in the right direction, even. In the last 24 hours we made 132 nautical miles, our record so far. The day watches are still lax with whoever feels like getting some vitamin D standing it. The night's can bring fatigue, but are broken up by paranormal activites.
Strange things happen under the midnight sun, in the middle of the deep blue sea. Everyone has noticed random flashes of light on their watches. They happen too infrequently to pinpoint a location, but frequently enough to make all of us notice. We've attributed them to distant electrical activity in the clouds, although we've never heard thunder. A much more curious event happened two nights ago during Lydia's night watch.
I had just come out of the companionway to relieve Lydia of her watch. I found her softly singing along with her iPod, seemingly nothing amiss. Except the nocturnal, radiant-green, phosphorescent wake Leeway normally exudes was reduced to a white sheen by the uncommon presence of a running light. I asked if there was a foreign vessel visible; I received a 'no' to this inquiry and was vividly told a much creepier tale. She was standing up, straddling the two cockpit benches just watching the sea, when a bright light appeared behind the poled-out genoa. (At this point we're 850 miles out at sea and lengthening. We haven't seen another ship for at least two days, since we've passed out of the continental shipping lane. So this light, most likely, wouldn't be man-made). She stared in awe for a moment before the sail gently lifted to show her a perfectly-spherical white light, about the size of an arm's-length quarter, above the horizon. It disappeared a few moments later, but not before dismantling a small portion of her sanity. She had flicked on the running lights to regain some sense of security after she had skillfully dodged an alien abduction. She was relieved to retire to her berth and communicated parting words of “good luck”. Nothing but the trusty flashes of light touched me for the duration of my watch.
We'll be reaching the thousand mile mark sometime this afternoon. Leeway is drunkenly surfing to our way point under a reduced wing and wing configuration. The weather doesn't appear to be deteriorating and we're excited to be swiftly moving past the one-third mark of our passage. Just another sunset:
May 12, 2010
Z19:25
A Wednesday it is, I hear. That realization came to me this morning as I recorded our time, date, and coordinates across our chart. Only one thought was pulled from my mind: “Oh”. We had all placed bets before hand. Dan and I were both disturbingly wrong with our wild guesses, while Lydia manages to continue to grasp on to some perception of time. That will pass.
The rest of yesterday was the same light-medium downwind run. I arrived, barely-rested, on my watch and brewed a pot of cowboy coffee to keep me going. The winds hadn't built and I couldn't assess the seas in the moonless night. The watch passed without a hitch. I retired to my tunes just as the first light was brightening the horizon with a pale blue gradient into the inky firmament. I braced myself in my berth, one leg on one bulkhead the other on, well, the other and fell fast asleep.
My calm, nautical sleep was jerked away from me by a most vicious sound. Repeated whip cracks were being transmitted by some part of Leeway. Dan quickly filled me in by telling me we had ripped a sail. I tossed on my spectacles and headlamp and popped my head out of the companionway to get a gorgeous sunrise painted across my face. I flicked my headlamp to the side and we got down to business. After rapidly strapping on a life jacket, we both jacked in and headed forward. The situation on the foredeck was handled quickly and efficiently: I doused the sail and Dan went to the spinakker pole that was hanging by a thread of Dacron. Once I had wrestled the shredded remains into a bag I took another look at the picturesque scene.
Everything was illuminated by the warm light of dawn. Pastels splattered the sky and deck while the ocean stayed pitch black. In my sleep, I had been thoroughly enjoying the stiffening breeze due to its positive ventilating properties. It managed to make the 90 percent humidity much more bearable. But my mind in reverie just didn't think about the repercussions of a heavier wind. This wind was now at 25 knots. This changed the 10 foot swells into 15 foot swells (a remarkable difference). The dawning light shone through the tips of the pitch black waves and, from this, sprung a resounding turquoise. I enjoyed the stage we were set in until my adrenaline wares were depleted. I then went into the cabin to put on some shorts. We decided not to set another sail until the wind died down.
It kept blowing through breakfast and I took my Z1600 position fix. I double took at the numbers and checked them three times to make sure of our phenomenal speed. Over 24 hours, we had traveled a new record of 189 nautical miles.
May 13, 2010
Z20:20
I was rudely interrupted by a thunderstorm last night. I'll continue from where I left off. So we made 189 nm in just a 24 hour span to put us at an average speed of 7.9 knots. This is remarkable because the maximum theoretical hull speed of this craft is a mere 7.5 knots (the fastest she can travel, derived from equations, on purely flat water). We gained nearly half a knot from just surfing down waves all night! The whole crew was glad to see we're finally making good time.
So last night wasn't a night to be happily recalled. Plenty of things went wrong with both of our sails. Let's start from the beginning. Just as I was last logging, dinner was in its final steps and we were hove-to for stability. Twilight was in full effect and the sky was lit by lightning flashes. I had already battened down the hatches when I first saw the squall clouds surrounding us. We were prepared for a rough night, but little did we know it was going to be rough for reasons completely distinct from a thunderous squall bearing down on us.
We came out of the hove-to position in thickening rain and 20 knot winds. But before we could even get back on course, the win disappeared entirely. We were left to flounder in the hot, electrically-charged air. I dropped the slatting main and we hoped the lull wouldn't last long. After a few minutes of lightning show, the wind picked back up. The main was hoisted and the poled out jib prepped to be set. We took careful precautions on the ice-slick foredeck and raised it in a different fashion than our usual cowboy approach. We executed a controlled jibe to get back on course (I had been shadowing the jib with the main to assist in their work). Just as I jibed the main over, the mainsheet broke loose from the boom (mainsheet is a line that allows the sailor to control the distance of the boom from the centerline of the craft). This put the main hard against the spreaders and shrouds. Also during this jibe, the jib wrapped around the forestay. The, now loose, mainsail was also firmly pressed against the winch that allowed lowering of the jib. Everything was eventually solved, but only after the use of a world-class vocabulary of swear words and a tear near the foot of the mainsail. A jib was hoisted and cookies were had to raise morale. Just another night 1000 miles from anything.
May 15, 2010
Z01:46
I just got off another wet watch. The weather has been anything but normal recently. The clouds are unreadable and wet fronts just work us over between periods of light and variable wind. We handle it by keeping up a minimal amount of sail. We were flying a new jib (the freedom jib) before it got a 2 foot tear on its leech tape this morning. The wind dropped down so low that it wrapped itself on a mast step and cut itself wide open. Yup, that's our third sail casualty and we're only halfway there. Here's to no more.
Z20:35
The weather has marginally cleared up. We're only being hit by rainstorms maybe once every couple of hours now, instead of the constant drizzle of the last few days prior. I know these strange weather patterns exist because of compression of the northern hemisphere's weather systems against the ITCZ. I pulled out our weather reading and forecasting book to try and rationalize what was going on around me. After turning to the tropical weather section, the only answer I got was a basic: “you're on your own”. The Corealis effect has a negligible presence at these latitudes. Thus, predictable weather patterns aren't created. So I was thereby deemed to be left in utter confusion regarding our surrounding and enveloping systems.
It's our 15th day at sea. We lay at 8 N and 125.5 W, our most isolated point on the map. Also the location of our midpoint, obviously. We've traveled about 1700 miles and have just a bit less than that to go. At our current speed, we should be to our ITCZ-crossing way point in just 2 more days.
May 18, 2010
Z2:15
The 18th day at sea. After moseying around the edge of the ITCZ for a bit, we eventually realized we were making no headway. The final straw was a 2.5 knot average over 24 hours. After this fix, we justly kicked on the auxiliary engine. Since then, we've been motorsailing almost constantly. We can't take the aged engine much above an idle, so we're set to a maximum cruising speed of about 3 knots.
Even though we're only on the fringes of the ITCZ [note: in retrospect this was another incorrect statement], my perceived impression of was much different than its real counterpart. First of all, I expected more sun. When I think Doldrums, I think of a flat blue sea with a baking sun overhead sucking the last bits of life out of the becalmed sailor. Instead, we have rain, a drizzle, or just plain 99 percent humidity the entire time with overcast clouds depriving us of our vitamin D. Though, one must admit that we look pretty formidable in our foul-weather gear:
Z16:55
I've awoken to another beautiful morning on the Pacific. The sky is partially overcast with a vast array of cloud types. Big white fluffies ahead promise rain, gray dough flattened at an altitude of 3,000 feet is superimposed across their faces with wispy cirrus capping them in the dark blue, high sky. The humidity has been suppressed by a fine wind that made its appearance just in the nick of time last night.
I was motorsailing, as we did the night before, through one of the numerous calms scattered across the ITCZ. A slight wind was forming off the bow just to give some resistance to our poor auxiliary motor. A piercing screech interrupted my Pink Floyd and the crew's sleep. It was coming from the engine compartment. Everyone scrambled to figure it out. The compartment was popped open for a few minutes of failed troubleshooting before we pulled the fuel choke to kill the engine. But it didn't die. It kept turning over, weakly. We try, in vain to shut off everything it would need to crank: I turn off the fuel line and Dan puts his hand over the air intake to strangle it. Neither of these efforts work. Curious. After a few more minutes of head banging and belly scratching, the lights begin to flicker and we realize its the starter continuing to turn it over! The flick of an industrial-grade, metal switch cuts the power to the malfunctioning starter and stops the racket. We've since diagnosed the problem as a factor of saltwater getting into it and shorting it out. Well, good thing we have a sailboat.
We may have already broken through the dreaded ITCZ, though. A Southwest wind has been blowing strong since the engine exploded last night (exploded is a technical term, yes) and we're cruising towards our destination much more rapidly than when motorsailing. The sun is finally out and I'm going to partake in a salty shower.
Ah, everything is an adventure. With the sun finally distributing its rays, I went to the foredeck with bucket+shampoo-clothes. We're beating pretty hard upwind, so the boat has a pretty hefty heel to challenge me. I opted for the leeside (the side the wind isn't hitting) as I couldn't bucket myself water on the elevated windward side. The water was refreshingly warm and as I was bucked around on my slippery backside, I couldn't shake the thought of how hilarious a nude man overboard procedure would have been. I made it through the wild ride and was, once again, my fresh, briny self.
May 20, 2010
Z01:32
First things first. WOOHOO! We've finally pierced the ITCZ after a long, wet week. We weren't even aware that we were in the throes of the convergence zone despite all the exhibited characteristics. The winds were variable, squalls ever-present, and the rain unrelenting. Still, it was unseasonably high in latitude, so we figured we were just on the fringes. It wasn't until today's magnificent sail confirmed the reconstitution of the trades. We entered at about 8 N and exited at roughly 4 N, to make for 240 miles of Doldrums. We ended up motoring through only 90 miles of it before our starter pooped out. It may have been a minor sailing feat, but it sure took a lot out of us. We're very glad to be drying out after a week of constant dampness.
Minutes after I retired to bed, a strong southeast (normal trades south of the equator) breeze appeared. It has since grown to 20 knots and remained constant. As it rose with the convecting sun, we set into a full on beat to windward. Leeway plunged her starboard rail and pounded through the waves at 7.5 knots. Oddly-spaced waves slapped against the bow causing the whole boat to resonate with a low thud. Half the time, these anomalous waves spray up a couple gallons of water to be splattered across Leeway by the wind. One particular one entranced me and quickly disintegrated my garb's lack of moisture.
I sat on the windward (upwind) side of the cockpit admiring the morning view while bracing myself against the 40 degree heel. All is going well until one of these waves slams against the hull right next to me. I looked over at the thud's location to see water beautifully suspended in spherical globs. They slowly formed and disjointed in the morning's orange light. By this point it was already too late for me. The 20 knots of wind caught the amorphous suspensions and flung them at my, mouth-agape, face.
I finished the rest of my watch staring at the sterling blue sea, much more cognizant of the rogue waves hellbent on soaking me to the bone. The waves attained multitudes of whitehorses (waves cresting due to wind velocity) and flying fish skipped away from Leeway's bow wave. During all this, one particularly ingenious booby caught my eye.
Now we see birds out here, quite often actually. At least 3 a day by my eyes alone. Whether these fowl are tailing us across the Pacific or we happen to pass through different cruising grounds is unsure. I don't express the ornithological prowess of my father and thus cannot repeatedly identify a particular subject of one species. But enough of this digression. This particular booby would circle the boat and hover just above the mast looking down at the water. As soon as our bow wave broke through a school of flying fish, sending them scattering, the booby would fall from the sky like a rock and chase them over the swell contours. Every attempt that I witnessed ended with a crash landing into the face of a wave. The poor booby would pop back out, take flight, and glide back into position. After many attempts, I lost track of it.
Night has fallen and the 25 knot winds haven't batted an eye. Sometime today we will pass the two thirds mark of our journey. We're sailing into the darkness under a double-reefed main and the sunbrella jib. We're getting more than 6 knots of push in the right direction and making great time. I'm guessing if the conditions stay this constant, we'll be making a 160 nm day.
Z22:00
We did better than I optimistically guessed! I turned on the GPS this morning, for a fix, and found us somehow making a 9 knots constant speed. This was only possible with fair-sized current pushing us the right way. I plotted our position at 2 degrees 25 minutes North and 130 degrees 23 minutes West, a mere 145 nautical miles from the equator. Both Lydia and I will soon loose our pollywog status and become shellbacks. I haven't, yet, spotted any hidden buckets of fish guts for the required hazing procedure, so I'm hopeful. But back to my plots. The fix this morning put us 179 nautical miles SW from our previous. This gave us an average speed of 7.5 knots over the course of 24 hours, our second-best run yet. We made a bit too much Westing, so I have us beating into the trades to make sure we land in French Polynesia and not American Samoa. But enough of this navigation nonsense. There's no drama to it. Obviously, all is resolved in order for you to be reading this script. What have we been up to recently?
With 20 days and 850nm to go, we're doing the same thing we've been doing since we first sailed out of Guayabitos Cove. Reading, standing watches, and the occasional sail change. Since completing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I've been inclined to take a less fictional approach to my readings. I read the history of 6 beverages and found it mildly interesting. I then moved onto Steven Hawking's A Brief History of Time for a mind-wracking introduction into theoretical physics. After completion, I turned to the beginning of the book to look at its date of print. I morosely ready 1988. The quickly-advancing field of theoretical physics hadn't even reached the Information Age yet. It wasn't a completely futile read, though. It geared my mind back towards fictional works by shocking it with quite the opposite. A couple of French Polynesia guides are under my belt and now The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendahl lies before my astute eyes. A normal day cruising in the trades:
May 22, 2010
Z16:08
We lost our air for a bit yesterday. I just plotted yesterday's run at a, fairly dismal, 89nm. Half of the previous day's outstanding 179nm, but that's just how she blows. Pilot charts indicate that the southern hemisphere's (which we're in now, but I'll get to the equator crossing momentarily) tradewinds are a bit spottier than those of the northern hemisphere. They blow hard for a few days and then slump down for a, usually, shorter period of time, before rearing up once more. In my navigational tendencies I noticed a pretty pronounced current sweeping us westward. Assessing its set and drift became yesterday afternoon's task.
I plucked Chapman Piloting out of the ship's library and read up on the procedure of solving it via vector diagrams (whoever thought those would end up being applicable?). I needed one more variable that I couldn't attain through our limited instrumentation: the boat's speed over the water. Our GPS can only give our speed over ground (which includes the offending current), so something else had to be done. I took the scientific approach of dropping stale tostados off the bow while Lydia timed their stern crossing with a stopwatch. This time divided into the length of our vessel made for the world's most primitive knotmeter. We took multiple readings for the sake of accuracy and, duly, to please my science teachers of yesteryear. Then I got down to the calculations. I figured we were being affected by a west-setting current garnering a drift of 1.8knots. I compensated by adjusting course and we were right on the rhumbline for this morning's fix, which read in degrees south for the first time ever.
That's correct. The southern hemisphere has seen it fit to allow us into its upside-down domain. After a nautical court hearing, lead by the captain (who represented The Oh Great King Neptune), we were tried for our crimes against the ocean. Davey Jones reconciled that he would forgive our brutal offenses against the sea if we were to each circumnavigate the vessel in an anticlockwise fashion beyond the confines of all lifelines and shrouds. Lydia and I lucked out due to low wind giving us a stable platform to dangle off of. We both shed our pollywog statuses for shellback ones and celebrated with pina coladas and brownies. In finality, we opted out of jumping into the creepy water. Respectively, Dan in his Neptune attire, Lydia and me as pollywogs, and then as shellbacks:
lydpollywog.jpg
Our all-encompassing blue has gained a shade of gray in the last few days. It also became noticeably colder in the process (startlingly revealed by yesterday's bath). And the final, and most telling, characteristic is a black sediment that is left by it when we rid a bucket of the gray water. We've postulated that it's volcanic ash from an undersea upwelling. Or a nuclear holocaust. Either will suffice.
May 23, 2010
Z01:56
I love the trade winds. They've made today an easy-going, quick-passing, speedy venture. I, once again, hopped onto my beloved dawn watch this morning. The interconnected writings of Stendhal entertained me for a while until I my gaze was drawn to the sunrise. I stared in awe at its beauty for about an hour before time came for my position fix.
Yesterday was a solid 120 nm day, average speed of 5 knots. There now lies only one charted obstacle between us and Nuku Hiva: the Shoals of Disappointment (Clark's Bank). It's a shallow area, 9 feet, that lies roughly 100 nm Northwest of our landfall. It's aptly named the Shoals of Disappointment because yachts are inevitably foundered upon it a mere 100 miles from the termination of their 3000 mile passage. I aim no to do this.
May 25, 2010
Z19:07
We just made contact with the first boat we've seen in 2 weeks! Lydia spotted the rusty steamer ship after it had altered course to give us room. After they had returned to course, we hailed them on the VHF. The opposite radio operator responded vividly, but unintelligibly. His dialect was either French, Romanian, or Portuguese (as you can see, each crew member had an equally uneducated guess).
Leeway is only 260 nm from Baie de Taiohae, Nuku Hiva. We're all anxious for the pleasures of land. Lydia aches for a banana split, Dan a fresh cobb salad, and I, a good snorkel. Green is also a sight that will nearly bring tears to my eyes, I'm sure. Here's the lonely sailors upon spotting their first hint of a civilized world in 2 weeks:
May 27, 2010
Z20:32
LAND HO! It only took us 27 days to hit this little island chain across the Pacific. Dan let me sleep in this morning, to compensate for the noisy sails last night, but he couldn't spare me the gorgeous vista that came with first light, so he called for me. I hopped out of bed, put on a pot of coffee, and made entrance into the fresh air abovedecks. The sun was just beginning to show its first tendrils of light on the aft horizon. Directly opposite, the full moon sprinkled the rolling swells with a band of yellow light. But it was soon revealed to me the real reason why I was called up. A faint white light had been glimmering in the distance. Too far off the horizon to be a ship and too immobile to be a star. He had requested my young eyes to spot it with the binoculars. I had no informed opinion to offer for a few minutes. The rising sun showed us exactly what it was: Ua Huka! (Another island in the Marquesas).
Since spotting Ua Huka, I've altered course fro the shores of Nuku Hiva. We lay about 30 nm off a point that we must clear. This should result in a daytime landfall. Our first land, Ua Huka:
May 29, 2010
Local 19:25
As of yesterday, we were kind enough to grace Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva, with the presence of our Rocna anchor dug into it's muddy bottom. But let me tell you a bit about the, too long, story of how we got here. We ghosted into the bay late the night of my last log. But as soon as she got into the bay, she was twirled around by variable winds within. A rock-strewn bay at night was not something Dan wanted to press, so we decided to heave-to until morning. We caught a beautiful mahi mahi on the way in, but it slipped of the gaff hook (the thing that's impaling it in the photo) and snapped off our lure to get away:
The wind and current caused us to drift we a while before I pulled us out of being hove-to about an hour before sunrise. A passing sight gifted me with the notable sight of a moon rainbow in the dead of night. A phenomena I had never seen, let alone heard of before. An arcing gray band projected from the horizon to terminate above Nuku Hiva's silhouette landmass. That soon passed and I was stuck wallowing in 1-2 knot winds.
A bit after sunrise I was finally able to see the island and most importantly, the natural color of chlorophyll. Yes, my friends, plants. It was an absolutely gorgeous thing to see after a month at sea. I beamed a big sailorboy smile until the squall hit.
I had noticed a cloud line advancing on me. I put on my rain jacket in anticipation of rain. What I didn't do was properly estimate the strength of wind it would bring. I was flying as much sail as I could to try and harness the barely-existent winds. I saw rain advancing on the water in front of me, then I saw something much more disturbing: white caps spreading down from the horizon. I just had time to loosen the sheets before the 2 knot yawn turned into a 30 knot sneeze of a blow. Leeway heeled hard with the most wind she'd seen in at least a week and I kept the sails luffing (this takes the power out of the sails). Even with heavily luffing sails, we were heeled 35 degrees. With the thick rain obscuring both the view of the island and the one through my glasses, I tacked back towards my last compass bearing on Baie de Taiohae.
The tack was finely executed except for one small detail. The stopper knot on the starboard jib sheet had loosened, so when I put myself through the wind to a starboard tack, the sheet wrapped around the newly-taught port jib sheet a good 3 dozen times. This would very much hinder a tack back away from the island if it were to come too close (which it was doing at a good 7.5 knots at this point). And with rain the size of quarters smacking me at 20 knots and my free hand pushing the tiller hard to weather, I began to unwind the wrapped sheet. A glance back to the compass startled me with a bright yellow Dan sitting on the opposite cockpit bench. He explained he had come out just to wash his hair in the freshwater rain. But he sympathized with my situation and unwrapped the sheet and ran it back through the block. We would now be able to tack off the lee shore. Crisis averted, now would could steer this baby in. Me riding one of our squalls into Nuku Hiva and my leg as I tried to tighten the leech line on the jib during a squall (awesome photo credit to Lydia):
The squall last a good 15 minutes and we beat hard to windward the entire time. But soon the sky began to clear and we lost the radiating winds of the localized system. And we were once again left to wallow. We repeated this pattern 3 more times, albeit a bit more prepared, on following squalls. This got us right into the mouth of the bay. We were ghosting in, just barely beating out bubbles, when one of the many cruisers motored up to us in his dinghy to offer us a tow in. We thanked him graciously, but refused his offer to try and sail onto the hook. Another 20 minutes passed before the next cruiser zoomed up to offer us a tow. We accepted this time in lieu of our complete lack of wind. We came in beaming wide smiles due to the hospitality of the local cruising community. Our tow:
We were towed to our anchorage where we still lie and I dropped the hook to complete our passage. Here's the chart that guided us most of the way across the Pacific:
And a couple of portraits of Dan and me:
And a pirogue race through Nuku Hiva's Taiohae:
Pacific Puddle Jump
Total Sea Miles: 2798 nautical miles
Elapsed Time: 28 days 5 hours 28 minutes
Average Speed: 4.13 knots
May 1, 2010
Z00:54
First day of passage! First day of passage! Woo! Well, with that over, let's get down to the narrative business. The ship, the crew, and all miscellaneous items contained withing the two are finally ready to depart the mainland of North America for some of the most isolated rocks in the world: The Marquesas. Mexico had been continually sucking us back in day after day. Many travelers seem to resent that characteristic of the country. Very optimistic plans were to depart about a week ago. We had finally finished up the crucial items on our list just 3 days ago and headed up to our last Mexican port o' call: Chacala. The fruit run was completed and all items battened down when Lydia rowed up with a new local who was house-sitting a villa up the hill. We were invited for dinner and ended up staying the night, each of us with our own bedroom and bathroom. It, most likely, wasn't impressed upon her how wonderful of a gift her hot, freshwater showers were before a month-long voyage. Another may not be found for months. We finally managed to creep out of her beautiful villa and get back on the boat for a noon departure.
We completed a couple of last-minute lashings and preparations, and then set the sails and waved goodbye to the mainland. Or so we thought. Only but a half an hour out a terrible clanging sound was emitted by the hydrovane assembly. Now let me tell you a bit about this new-fangled hydrovane thing. It's a specialized hunk of aluminium and stainless steel mounted on the transom (aft structural face) of Leeway. On top, it presents a panel of wood to the wind (the vane), beneath this lies a factory of gears, levers, and bearings, that transfer the effect of the vane to a secondary rudder mounted in the water beneath. With careful balancing, this creates the rather elegant effect of a wind-operated autopilot. The spectrum of moving parts on the boat, winches, running rigging, and the rudder assembly are brought into a delicate synergy upon the fulcrum of our hyrdovane. It doesn't chomp precious amp hours like our electronic tiller and it produces a much more organic sense to Leeway. The hydrovane does have one flaw that is continually exploited by our offshore winds, diminishing it's abilities in Dan's eyes: it doesn't handle spotty winds well. It needs a constant blow, be it high or low, for the helmsman to fine-tune the balance between it and the vessel. But we're just happy to have wind here, despite its hydrovane diminishing qualities.
Oh by the way it's
May 2, 2010
Z20:20
And we ended up finding an absolutely beautiful anchorage to fix our hydrovane in: Isla la Pena off of Guayabitos Cove. We'd passed by Guayabitos several times at this point, but had never made anchorage within. It was toted by our guide as a marginal fair-weather-only anchorage between Chacala and Puerto Vallarta. We had fair winds and only needed to spend a night. So, after a short discussion with the captain of course, I fell off the wind, sheeted out the sails and set a course for the lee side of Isla la Pena. The island was continually shrouded in birds of all types and had a prehistoric, Jurassic Park feel to its steep, palm-tree-faceted cliffsides leading down to a narrow beach on which pangas continually ferried people to and fro. We anchored only 200 feet off the shore in about 15 feet over sand and broken coral. Two anchors were set for peace of mind and pina coladas finished the night off. But not before a passing panga gave us a free dorado. Spectacular Mexico had kept us for another night. Here's me holding my gifted dorado:
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| From The Jump |
In the morning the crew noticed the clearest water in Mexico, so far. Snorkeling was a necessity and it was a kick to be able to free dive down and inspect the ground tackle. Dan swam to shore in search of a lashing board for our jerry jugs while Lydia and I finished our minimal recreation. I fixed hydrovane by adding a shaved-down thrust washer and we finally set out for good. Dan on his way to Isla la Pena and me snorkeling:
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| From The Jump |
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| From The Jump |
With the coming of a passage as such, come a few changes to our daily lives. While before our lives were loosely associated with the perception of a particular dimension known as “time”, we now almost revolve around it. The boat clock (a newly-purchased, 30 peso bedside clock velcroed above the chart table) has been set to Zulu time (aka GMT or UTC) to eliminate the complications of time zone changes. And on this clock face, 4 hour increments are consecutively plucked out for each of us to stand watch. The responsibilities of the watchkeeper are as normal: keep the boat on course (to our way point outside the ITCZ) and continually prevent it from colliding with bigger boats. Besides the competent completion of these items, the watchee is free to do as he or she pleases. I usually elect to split my time between reading Sometime a Great Notion and staring at the increasingly-deep, blue sea.
We've been peculiarly lucky in our departure from the mainland. Most yachts have reported having to motor for a few days to find the trade winds, but it seems we chose a perfect weather window where the trades came particularly close to Mexico just for our harnessing. We are currently (and have been for several hours) cruising to our way point at our maximum theoretical hull speed and beyond. Cutting an untraceable wake through the unfathomably deep water supporting us.
May 4, 2010
Z01:43
The sun has set on another fine day at sea. The past 24 hours have been uneventful, yet exhilerating. The classic trade winds, caught by seafarers for millenia, have made their presence fully known. The blank, hazy sky has given way to a pancake-dappled one. These fluffy, lumpy platters (much akin to the pancakes I fry up) are one of the characteristics of a trade wind locale. Now that we've caught these, we should be able to depend on them for the next ~15 days until we cross the ITCZ. This is what sailing feels like and what trade wind clouds look like:
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| From The Jump |
The ocean has regained its stark blue hue that was only noticed out of sight of land. The Pacific has also greeted us with kind, rolling seas to sail on top of. It's a magnificent start to our long-awaited journey. A pod of dolphins accompanies Leeway as she sails into the pink sunset. 15 knot winds breathe us towards our destination under the blushing pancakes. Not this particular sunrise, but another out on the high seas:
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| From The Jump |
May 5, 2010
Z00:25
Those, so-dependable, trade winds disappeared early this morning. I watched the sun rise on a new tropical day while trying to harness what was left of the fleeting wind as well as keeping the sails quiet for my sleeping shipmates. I set a course slightly west of rhumbline to our way point and balanced the gears and levers of the hydrovane. By this piece of machinery, I was granted the privilege of being able to take my mind off the sails and focus it on my novel and the rosing-over pancakes above the ice blue sea.
My companions arose late in my watch and we partook in another amazing meal prepared by Lydia's hands. After our fasts were broken, I proposed the idea of hoisting a spinakker, both to silence the sail plan and better harness the light winds. It took us about an hour to get the complicated rig established for our brand new spinakker. And when I went up to hoist it, it instantly seized itself upon our forestay and wrapped and wrapped its billowing nylon body at multiple points. A few futile tugs were all it took to make it apparent that we'd have to take out the big sailor guns to douse this unruly spinakker. We grabbed a jerry jug of diesel and hoisted it up the mast with another line attached to pour the fuel upon the disobedient sail. And by diesel jug I mean Dan sitting in a bosun's chair (a sit-in harness made for safe mast ascension). But the initial idea surely crossed our minds after a second, less successful ascent of the rig, but I'll get to that. So yes, I hoisted Dan up the mast via the jib halyard. The main was left up to stabilize the craft on the swell. Lydia controlled a guy line to keep him from getting banged to bits if his clutch on the rig were to part. He made it to the top and after much fuss and appropriately seaman vocabulary, the spinakker was freed and brought down to the foredeck. We went for a second attempt and after a short while the patriot-themed (no, French!) sail resumed its deathgrip on our forestay. It was now my turn to strap into the bosuns chair and free the unruly slab of nylon.
And up I went with Dan hoisting and Lydia on standby in case I began to oscillate. Only later did I truly grasp the view from atop the mast. I could only describe it as “It was like the openness you see from the cockpit day after day... but more). I marveled at the surrounding blue and the finally removed the spinakker. We resigned to hoisting a flapping genoa to move us along through the imperceptible wind. The French spinakker halfway down:
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| From The Jump |
In our becalmed state, we all did some, much needed, bathing on the port side and took turns at diving into the crystal clear, 3 mile deep water. Other developments have been the addition of a new passenger to Leeway. Early this morning a brown booby was making landing attempts at Leeway. Only when the wind died down was she able to make her landing. She's a cheeky little bugger too: delivering squawks and pecks to anyone attempting to dislodge her from her throne atop the gaff pole. The day is nearing an end, but the sun no longer has any hotcakes to redden in its fall. Hopefully the wind will pick up in the twilight to give us some movement. This is Margareet, aptly named by Lydia:
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| From The Jump |
And this is how you take a shower in the middle of the Pacific:
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| From The Jump |
May 6, 2010
Z01:47
The sixth day at sea is coming to a close. I sit on watch vigilant to any lights that may appear over the horizon and the crew rests their poor, tired souls. While we have spent this much time without touching land (10 days from Long Beach to Ensenada), we were frequently in sight of it. If a nervousness should arise from this solitude, it hasn't shown itself yet. I've felt quite at ease and it seems to grow even more so as we are all washed clean of the stresses of a land-tethered life by salt spray and the warm breeze. There's a common bond that comes out of our cause that, seemingly, nothing could get in between [editor's note: this turned out to be a very incorrect statement].
I arose from bed this morning to relieve Dan from his late night watch. The fingers of dawn were just beginning to tinge the inky sky with a blue fiercer than the water we rode upon. The night had been calm and I was well rested. The past couple of nights have been wonderful for sleep. Before we were beating into 20 knot winds under reduced sail. In those conditions, the boat had a heeled a hard 35 degrees and practically skipped across the water. The high winds also made 2 foot wind waves independent of the swell. These, too steep for her to ride over, are displaced by the hull and resound a sleep-disturbing boom each time. But as of last night, the wind died down to about 10 knots or less. It also has would itself around to the normal trade wind position to give us a downwind run and negligible heel (the angle the boat tips relative to the plane of the horizon). Now the boat steers through the black steered by hydrovane alone. We've struck the navigation lights on account of the low occurrence of other vessels. And we've become an air-tuned vessel tacitly shearing the water, leaving only a fading phosphorescent glow in our wake. It's about as organic as a resin-filled, fiberglass boat can get and it feels pure. Leeway riding downwind in a wing and wing configuration (our most used sail plan above the equator):
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| From The Jump |
The crew and I have managed to make the best of the low-to-dead wind. We look forward to the quiet nights and have a lot of bonding time as no one has to be on watch. Today we celebrated Cinco de Mayo (Mexico City time, not Zulu time) by consuming Latin American papusas (sp?) and playing a domino variation by the name of Mexican Train (Tren Mexicano). We had great fun swearing at eachother unabated. My watch ends fairly soon and I look forward to another quiet night's sleep. Lydia and I shortly after I garnered another massive defeat during Mexican Train. You can tell it troubles me so:
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| From The Jump |
May 9, 2010
Z01:00
Our ninth day on passage is nearing a close. We've once again found some wind that has placed itself firmly upon our starboard quarter at 15 knots. We're riding it sheeted out and downwind so Leeway only pushes about 5.5 knots herself. The ride is pretty smooth though and lacks a hard heel.
The all-day-everyday sail has started to its effects on trusty ol' Leeway and her crew. The constant stresses on the rig have provoked a few broken items. A couple of blocks (the pulleys line runs through) have been lost due to being a bit undersized for the work load. Last night the spinakker pole clip snapped on one end provoking an all-hands-on-deck situation cleverly placed in the deepest stage of my sleep cycle.A line slipped, snapped, or was in someway deflected to allow the distal end of the pole (attached to the sail) to rise up quite high. By the time Lydia had come down to rouse us, it had snapped and the damage was done. The crew of Leeway could then be seen (if you were looking) scrambling around topsides wearing just barely more than our red-tinted headlamps. I headed up into the wind to put the boat in irons and stall it while Dan and Lydia wrastled the unruly pole on the foredeck. The sail was doused and the drama over. We may have some pretty aged equipment, but damned if we aren't good at jury-rigging up fixes. A screwdriver sits zip-tied into the spinakker pole to keep it extended, a wound piece of Dacron thread keeps my life jacket from accidentally deploying, a hatch is opened by a mechanically-advantaged strand of cordage. And the list would lengthen if I were to head in doors. There are no marine parts suppliers out here (and even if there were, we'd probably want to eat rather than spend money we didn't have to), so we have to make due with what we've got. It gives trusty Leeways a spot of character. She's unlike all those other spotless cruising boats. Her sails may have stains, her non-skid may be worn, but we sure can make her look shipshape with a good mainsail flake and pristine line stowage.
The crew has become well-adjusted to the passage life. The respective body clocks have adapted to the, relatively, lackadaisical watch schedule. Hollows below eyes have shallowed and it's not infrequent for a previous watchee to cover an hour of your watch if you're sleeping particularly hard.
We've all found ways to give each other the required space for comfortable living. Gatherings are had at meal times and spontaneous moments during the day, but most of the time we're all content with our noses in our books or our heads nodding to our ipods. The occasional card game is pulled from the depths of a locker or dominos matched upon the dining table. That is until a particularly steep wave sets them off like skiers racing down an icy incline. But like I said, the boat's library is being chewed through by all patrons. I finally completed Sometims a Great Notion. He had me glued to the pages with his dreadfully honest imagery, ever-deepening characters, and mind-wrenching symbolism. I finished it early today and attempted to pick up a new book to make it my next entertainment source. But I couldn't concentrate. My mind kept tacking back to Sometimes a Great Notion: trying to figure out motives, themes, and what in the world Kesey was trying to leave me with. I ended up being so mentally debilitated by this novel that I was pushed to write for a while. Pizza now awaits my consumption. I plan to engage in a post-pizza reading of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey's first novel.
May 10, 2010 10th Day at Sea
Z02:15
Another normal day 700 miles away from anything. I laundered, we ate, we read, and we enjoyed the spectacles of the briny desert we sail upon. Sometime in the last few days Leeway sailed off the continental shelf. The depths dropped almost straight down to 3 miles and the seas became nearly devoid of life. Most life thrives around anomalies like banks, pinnacles, islands, and shore. Fish are simply naturally attracted to them, thus bigger fish are, and so on until an ecosystem is created. Out here, the water offers few nutrients besides the ubiquitous phytoplankton. But some creatures can still thrive off of this basic food. We encounter flying fish that skip and glide above the wide swell, pelagic birds that are always interested in a free ride to Tahiti, and, just today, a very playful pod of dolphins. Laundry on the high seas, rinse cycle and dryer:
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| From The Jump |
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| From The Jump |
I heard a pod approaching by the tell-tale sound of their blowholes. Common courtesy implies you should alert the crew of such cool happenings. Everyone's thirsty for a stimulus in this wide, wet desert. The dolphins initiated into their normal behavior of frolicking at the bow. They, like most animals we see out here, are free-loaders; they enjoy the displaced water our vessel creates and use to to push them to momentarily ease their travels. We were able to lay down by the pulpit and see every detail of them through the glass-clear water. They swiveled and rolled making their passage through the water look completely effortless compared to our boat pounding through waves. Lydia cheered and gasped with glee at their beauty, along with this were efforts to communicate via whistles and speaking English. Well, it seemed to have worked. In the middle of her cheers, the elegant animals exploded out of the water in synchronized bursts, about 4 in all. We hollered, clapped, and cheered some more at these theatrics. Shortly after the show, they departed from Leeway and continued on their way west. The crew of Leeway was touched by their display. We knew these intelligent beings had performed this feat, 700 miles off the coast, just for us. An overhead shot of one of the dolphins breaching the surface taken from the bow:
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| From The Jump |
May 11, 2010
Z19:25
Onto our 11th day at sea. It's a navigator's dream. Besides a few boats, there's been nothing but salty, blue goodness to run into. I take readings only once daily to make sure big currents aren't taking us supremely off course. I take into account a few items and set a new course each morning. It's pretty easy out here. My position will become much more difficult as we near land. The Marquesas shouldn't present much of a problem. With the exception of a couple of islands, they're all high-lying volcanic islands with reefs on the fringes. As we move south, though, through the Tuamotu Archipelago, more navigational hazards are presented. The Tuamotus are almost all low-lying coral atolls with scattered motus (sand mounds) atop the coral. Their proposed origins are that they were once similar to the Marquesas (volcanic islands with fringing reefs), but the land sunk into the ocean floor and left only the coral reefs behind. This makes vast, blue lagoons with the tallest feature usually being a palm tree. The atolls will have to be dodged day and night on our way to the Society Islands. The Societies, hosting famous islands such as Tahiti and Bora Bora, are a sort of geologic mixture of the other two island chains. For the most part, they're volcanic, high-rising islands with barrier reefs surrounding them. This makes navigable lagoons between the island and the reefs with passes into them. These can usually be safely navigated by daylight. But land is still quite a few days in our future.
Recent days upon Leeway have been passing most quickly. Out here we generally get caught in an activity, such as reading or staring at the water, for hours at a time. When lost in such an act, the passage of time is remotely perceived. I, like everyone, have still been doing a lot of reading. I finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest recently. I ended up being a little disappointed, reading it after Sometimes a Great Notion. It still had Kesey's great imagery and memorable characters, but seemingly paled in comparison to his reputed magnum opus. I've since moved onto some light history reading brought on board by Lydia: The History of the World in Six Glasses. It's a moderately interesting read covering six beverages: beer, wine, tea, coffee, spirits, and cola, and their origins and effects on society. But enough about me. How about Leeway? How's she doing? Is she bobbing like a cork across a windless sea? Is she wildly broaching off 50ft waves in hurricane conditions? As you may have guessed, it's somewhere in between.
Shortly after my last log entry, our wing and wing configuration, once again, took a turn for the worse. The wind had imperceptibly built during my watch. We were on a dead downwind run, so a 20 knot wind gets reduced by however fast we've moving (about 8 knots at this point). Thus the apparent wind (the wind felt on the boat, as opposed to surface wind and gradient wind) would be reduced to 12 knots, a light breeze. The wind had built and I didn't even notice until I looked up and saw the spinakker pole getting yanked much too high in the air by the bulging genoa. It didn't look like an incredibly pressing issue, so I went forward and had a chat with Dan through his hatch. Just as we postulated a situation, an especially large gust blew through and popped the pole up to a 45 degree angle. On its gravity-induced fall back toward the deck, the halyard winch revealed that it hadn't been fully tightened after its last hoist. It made this immediately known by dropping the whole of our largest sail directly over the bow pulpit to be quickly sucked under the boat. Another red-lit, scantily-clad, late-night adventure ensued and the issue was resolved.
The next morning I saw what the higher wind was doing to our peaceful Pacific seas. The 25 knot winds built up steep, 10 foot swells for Leeway to ride down. We're going dead downwind and, as a result, the waves and swells come from straight behind. These ten foot swells have, in effect, turned Leeway into a 36 foot surfboard. Under control of the hydrovane, she surfs the gnarly waves like a novice: taking the occasional one square-on and surfing it with a satisfying hiss, but usually loses her cool and yaws violently down the face. It's not too hard to deal with, though, a couple of items took a few more lashings and a few stomach needed fortification. We do happen to be making fantastic time in the right direction, even. In the last 24 hours we made 132 nautical miles, our record so far. The day watches are still lax with whoever feels like getting some vitamin D standing it. The night's can bring fatigue, but are broken up by paranormal activites.
Strange things happen under the midnight sun, in the middle of the deep blue sea. Everyone has noticed random flashes of light on their watches. They happen too infrequently to pinpoint a location, but frequently enough to make all of us notice. We've attributed them to distant electrical activity in the clouds, although we've never heard thunder. A much more curious event happened two nights ago during Lydia's night watch.
I had just come out of the companionway to relieve Lydia of her watch. I found her softly singing along with her iPod, seemingly nothing amiss. Except the nocturnal, radiant-green, phosphorescent wake Leeway normally exudes was reduced to a white sheen by the uncommon presence of a running light. I asked if there was a foreign vessel visible; I received a 'no' to this inquiry and was vividly told a much creepier tale. She was standing up, straddling the two cockpit benches just watching the sea, when a bright light appeared behind the poled-out genoa. (At this point we're 850 miles out at sea and lengthening. We haven't seen another ship for at least two days, since we've passed out of the continental shipping lane. So this light, most likely, wouldn't be man-made). She stared in awe for a moment before the sail gently lifted to show her a perfectly-spherical white light, about the size of an arm's-length quarter, above the horizon. It disappeared a few moments later, but not before dismantling a small portion of her sanity. She had flicked on the running lights to regain some sense of security after she had skillfully dodged an alien abduction. She was relieved to retire to her berth and communicated parting words of “good luck”. Nothing but the trusty flashes of light touched me for the duration of my watch.
We'll be reaching the thousand mile mark sometime this afternoon. Leeway is drunkenly surfing to our way point under a reduced wing and wing configuration. The weather doesn't appear to be deteriorating and we're excited to be swiftly moving past the one-third mark of our passage. Just another sunset:
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| From The Jump |
May 12, 2010
Z19:25
A Wednesday it is, I hear. That realization came to me this morning as I recorded our time, date, and coordinates across our chart. Only one thought was pulled from my mind: “Oh”. We had all placed bets before hand. Dan and I were both disturbingly wrong with our wild guesses, while Lydia manages to continue to grasp on to some perception of time. That will pass.
The rest of yesterday was the same light-medium downwind run. I arrived, barely-rested, on my watch and brewed a pot of cowboy coffee to keep me going. The winds hadn't built and I couldn't assess the seas in the moonless night. The watch passed without a hitch. I retired to my tunes just as the first light was brightening the horizon with a pale blue gradient into the inky firmament. I braced myself in my berth, one leg on one bulkhead the other on, well, the other and fell fast asleep.
My calm, nautical sleep was jerked away from me by a most vicious sound. Repeated whip cracks were being transmitted by some part of Leeway. Dan quickly filled me in by telling me we had ripped a sail. I tossed on my spectacles and headlamp and popped my head out of the companionway to get a gorgeous sunrise painted across my face. I flicked my headlamp to the side and we got down to business. After rapidly strapping on a life jacket, we both jacked in and headed forward. The situation on the foredeck was handled quickly and efficiently: I doused the sail and Dan went to the spinakker pole that was hanging by a thread of Dacron. Once I had wrestled the shredded remains into a bag I took another look at the picturesque scene.
Everything was illuminated by the warm light of dawn. Pastels splattered the sky and deck while the ocean stayed pitch black. In my sleep, I had been thoroughly enjoying the stiffening breeze due to its positive ventilating properties. It managed to make the 90 percent humidity much more bearable. But my mind in reverie just didn't think about the repercussions of a heavier wind. This wind was now at 25 knots. This changed the 10 foot swells into 15 foot swells (a remarkable difference). The dawning light shone through the tips of the pitch black waves and, from this, sprung a resounding turquoise. I enjoyed the stage we were set in until my adrenaline wares were depleted. I then went into the cabin to put on some shorts. We decided not to set another sail until the wind died down.
It kept blowing through breakfast and I took my Z1600 position fix. I double took at the numbers and checked them three times to make sure of our phenomenal speed. Over 24 hours, we had traveled a new record of 189 nautical miles.
May 13, 2010
Z20:20
I was rudely interrupted by a thunderstorm last night. I'll continue from where I left off. So we made 189 nm in just a 24 hour span to put us at an average speed of 7.9 knots. This is remarkable because the maximum theoretical hull speed of this craft is a mere 7.5 knots (the fastest she can travel, derived from equations, on purely flat water). We gained nearly half a knot from just surfing down waves all night! The whole crew was glad to see we're finally making good time.
So last night wasn't a night to be happily recalled. Plenty of things went wrong with both of our sails. Let's start from the beginning. Just as I was last logging, dinner was in its final steps and we were hove-to for stability. Twilight was in full effect and the sky was lit by lightning flashes. I had already battened down the hatches when I first saw the squall clouds surrounding us. We were prepared for a rough night, but little did we know it was going to be rough for reasons completely distinct from a thunderous squall bearing down on us.
We came out of the hove-to position in thickening rain and 20 knot winds. But before we could even get back on course, the win disappeared entirely. We were left to flounder in the hot, electrically-charged air. I dropped the slatting main and we hoped the lull wouldn't last long. After a few minutes of lightning show, the wind picked back up. The main was hoisted and the poled out jib prepped to be set. We took careful precautions on the ice-slick foredeck and raised it in a different fashion than our usual cowboy approach. We executed a controlled jibe to get back on course (I had been shadowing the jib with the main to assist in their work). Just as I jibed the main over, the mainsheet broke loose from the boom (mainsheet is a line that allows the sailor to control the distance of the boom from the centerline of the craft). This put the main hard against the spreaders and shrouds. Also during this jibe, the jib wrapped around the forestay. The, now loose, mainsail was also firmly pressed against the winch that allowed lowering of the jib. Everything was eventually solved, but only after the use of a world-class vocabulary of swear words and a tear near the foot of the mainsail. A jib was hoisted and cookies were had to raise morale. Just another night 1000 miles from anything.
May 15, 2010
Z01:46
I just got off another wet watch. The weather has been anything but normal recently. The clouds are unreadable and wet fronts just work us over between periods of light and variable wind. We handle it by keeping up a minimal amount of sail. We were flying a new jib (the freedom jib) before it got a 2 foot tear on its leech tape this morning. The wind dropped down so low that it wrapped itself on a mast step and cut itself wide open. Yup, that's our third sail casualty and we're only halfway there. Here's to no more.
Z20:35
The weather has marginally cleared up. We're only being hit by rainstorms maybe once every couple of hours now, instead of the constant drizzle of the last few days prior. I know these strange weather patterns exist because of compression of the northern hemisphere's weather systems against the ITCZ. I pulled out our weather reading and forecasting book to try and rationalize what was going on around me. After turning to the tropical weather section, the only answer I got was a basic: “you're on your own”. The Corealis effect has a negligible presence at these latitudes. Thus, predictable weather patterns aren't created. So I was thereby deemed to be left in utter confusion regarding our surrounding and enveloping systems.
It's our 15th day at sea. We lay at 8 N and 125.5 W, our most isolated point on the map. Also the location of our midpoint, obviously. We've traveled about 1700 miles and have just a bit less than that to go. At our current speed, we should be to our ITCZ-crossing way point in just 2 more days.
May 18, 2010
Z2:15
The 18th day at sea. After moseying around the edge of the ITCZ for a bit, we eventually realized we were making no headway. The final straw was a 2.5 knot average over 24 hours. After this fix, we justly kicked on the auxiliary engine. Since then, we've been motorsailing almost constantly. We can't take the aged engine much above an idle, so we're set to a maximum cruising speed of about 3 knots.
Even though we're only on the fringes of the ITCZ [note: in retrospect this was another incorrect statement], my perceived impression of was much different than its real counterpart. First of all, I expected more sun. When I think Doldrums, I think of a flat blue sea with a baking sun overhead sucking the last bits of life out of the becalmed sailor. Instead, we have rain, a drizzle, or just plain 99 percent humidity the entire time with overcast clouds depriving us of our vitamin D. Though, one must admit that we look pretty formidable in our foul-weather gear:
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| From The Jump |
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| From The Jump |
Z16:55
I've awoken to another beautiful morning on the Pacific. The sky is partially overcast with a vast array of cloud types. Big white fluffies ahead promise rain, gray dough flattened at an altitude of 3,000 feet is superimposed across their faces with wispy cirrus capping them in the dark blue, high sky. The humidity has been suppressed by a fine wind that made its appearance just in the nick of time last night.
I was motorsailing, as we did the night before, through one of the numerous calms scattered across the ITCZ. A slight wind was forming off the bow just to give some resistance to our poor auxiliary motor. A piercing screech interrupted my Pink Floyd and the crew's sleep. It was coming from the engine compartment. Everyone scrambled to figure it out. The compartment was popped open for a few minutes of failed troubleshooting before we pulled the fuel choke to kill the engine. But it didn't die. It kept turning over, weakly. We try, in vain to shut off everything it would need to crank: I turn off the fuel line and Dan puts his hand over the air intake to strangle it. Neither of these efforts work. Curious. After a few more minutes of head banging and belly scratching, the lights begin to flicker and we realize its the starter continuing to turn it over! The flick of an industrial-grade, metal switch cuts the power to the malfunctioning starter and stops the racket. We've since diagnosed the problem as a factor of saltwater getting into it and shorting it out. Well, good thing we have a sailboat.
We may have already broken through the dreaded ITCZ, though. A Southwest wind has been blowing strong since the engine exploded last night (exploded is a technical term, yes) and we're cruising towards our destination much more rapidly than when motorsailing. The sun is finally out and I'm going to partake in a salty shower.
Ah, everything is an adventure. With the sun finally distributing its rays, I went to the foredeck with bucket+shampoo-clothes. We're beating pretty hard upwind, so the boat has a pretty hefty heel to challenge me. I opted for the leeside (the side the wind isn't hitting) as I couldn't bucket myself water on the elevated windward side. The water was refreshingly warm and as I was bucked around on my slippery backside, I couldn't shake the thought of how hilarious a nude man overboard procedure would have been. I made it through the wild ride and was, once again, my fresh, briny self.
May 20, 2010
Z01:32
First things first. WOOHOO! We've finally pierced the ITCZ after a long, wet week. We weren't even aware that we were in the throes of the convergence zone despite all the exhibited characteristics. The winds were variable, squalls ever-present, and the rain unrelenting. Still, it was unseasonably high in latitude, so we figured we were just on the fringes. It wasn't until today's magnificent sail confirmed the reconstitution of the trades. We entered at about 8 N and exited at roughly 4 N, to make for 240 miles of Doldrums. We ended up motoring through only 90 miles of it before our starter pooped out. It may have been a minor sailing feat, but it sure took a lot out of us. We're very glad to be drying out after a week of constant dampness.
Minutes after I retired to bed, a strong southeast (normal trades south of the equator) breeze appeared. It has since grown to 20 knots and remained constant. As it rose with the convecting sun, we set into a full on beat to windward. Leeway plunged her starboard rail and pounded through the waves at 7.5 knots. Oddly-spaced waves slapped against the bow causing the whole boat to resonate with a low thud. Half the time, these anomalous waves spray up a couple gallons of water to be splattered across Leeway by the wind. One particular one entranced me and quickly disintegrated my garb's lack of moisture.
I sat on the windward (upwind) side of the cockpit admiring the morning view while bracing myself against the 40 degree heel. All is going well until one of these waves slams against the hull right next to me. I looked over at the thud's location to see water beautifully suspended in spherical globs. They slowly formed and disjointed in the morning's orange light. By this point it was already too late for me. The 20 knots of wind caught the amorphous suspensions and flung them at my, mouth-agape, face.
I finished the rest of my watch staring at the sterling blue sea, much more cognizant of the rogue waves hellbent on soaking me to the bone. The waves attained multitudes of whitehorses (waves cresting due to wind velocity) and flying fish skipped away from Leeway's bow wave. During all this, one particularly ingenious booby caught my eye.
Now we see birds out here, quite often actually. At least 3 a day by my eyes alone. Whether these fowl are tailing us across the Pacific or we happen to pass through different cruising grounds is unsure. I don't express the ornithological prowess of my father and thus cannot repeatedly identify a particular subject of one species. But enough of this digression. This particular booby would circle the boat and hover just above the mast looking down at the water. As soon as our bow wave broke through a school of flying fish, sending them scattering, the booby would fall from the sky like a rock and chase them over the swell contours. Every attempt that I witnessed ended with a crash landing into the face of a wave. The poor booby would pop back out, take flight, and glide back into position. After many attempts, I lost track of it.
Night has fallen and the 25 knot winds haven't batted an eye. Sometime today we will pass the two thirds mark of our journey. We're sailing into the darkness under a double-reefed main and the sunbrella jib. We're getting more than 6 knots of push in the right direction and making great time. I'm guessing if the conditions stay this constant, we'll be making a 160 nm day.
Z22:00
We did better than I optimistically guessed! I turned on the GPS this morning, for a fix, and found us somehow making a 9 knots constant speed. This was only possible with fair-sized current pushing us the right way. I plotted our position at 2 degrees 25 minutes North and 130 degrees 23 minutes West, a mere 145 nautical miles from the equator. Both Lydia and I will soon loose our pollywog status and become shellbacks. I haven't, yet, spotted any hidden buckets of fish guts for the required hazing procedure, so I'm hopeful. But back to my plots. The fix this morning put us 179 nautical miles SW from our previous. This gave us an average speed of 7.5 knots over the course of 24 hours, our second-best run yet. We made a bit too much Westing, so I have us beating into the trades to make sure we land in French Polynesia and not American Samoa. But enough of this navigation nonsense. There's no drama to it. Obviously, all is resolved in order for you to be reading this script. What have we been up to recently?
With 20 days and 850nm to go, we're doing the same thing we've been doing since we first sailed out of Guayabitos Cove. Reading, standing watches, and the occasional sail change. Since completing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I've been inclined to take a less fictional approach to my readings. I read the history of 6 beverages and found it mildly interesting. I then moved onto Steven Hawking's A Brief History of Time for a mind-wracking introduction into theoretical physics. After completion, I turned to the beginning of the book to look at its date of print. I morosely ready 1988. The quickly-advancing field of theoretical physics hadn't even reached the Information Age yet. It wasn't a completely futile read, though. It geared my mind back towards fictional works by shocking it with quite the opposite. A couple of French Polynesia guides are under my belt and now The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendahl lies before my astute eyes. A normal day cruising in the trades:
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| From The Jump |
May 22, 2010
Z16:08
We lost our air for a bit yesterday. I just plotted yesterday's run at a, fairly dismal, 89nm. Half of the previous day's outstanding 179nm, but that's just how she blows. Pilot charts indicate that the southern hemisphere's (which we're in now, but I'll get to the equator crossing momentarily) tradewinds are a bit spottier than those of the northern hemisphere. They blow hard for a few days and then slump down for a, usually, shorter period of time, before rearing up once more. In my navigational tendencies I noticed a pretty pronounced current sweeping us westward. Assessing its set and drift became yesterday afternoon's task.
I plucked Chapman Piloting out of the ship's library and read up on the procedure of solving it via vector diagrams (whoever thought those would end up being applicable?). I needed one more variable that I couldn't attain through our limited instrumentation: the boat's speed over the water. Our GPS can only give our speed over ground (which includes the offending current), so something else had to be done. I took the scientific approach of dropping stale tostados off the bow while Lydia timed their stern crossing with a stopwatch. This time divided into the length of our vessel made for the world's most primitive knotmeter. We took multiple readings for the sake of accuracy and, duly, to please my science teachers of yesteryear. Then I got down to the calculations. I figured we were being affected by a west-setting current garnering a drift of 1.8knots. I compensated by adjusting course and we were right on the rhumbline for this morning's fix, which read in degrees south for the first time ever.
That's correct. The southern hemisphere has seen it fit to allow us into its upside-down domain. After a nautical court hearing, lead by the captain (who represented The Oh Great King Neptune), we were tried for our crimes against the ocean. Davey Jones reconciled that he would forgive our brutal offenses against the sea if we were to each circumnavigate the vessel in an anticlockwise fashion beyond the confines of all lifelines and shrouds. Lydia and I lucked out due to low wind giving us a stable platform to dangle off of. We both shed our pollywog statuses for shellback ones and celebrated with pina coladas and brownies. In finality, we opted out of jumping into the creepy water. Respectively, Dan in his Neptune attire, Lydia and me as pollywogs, and then as shellbacks:
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| From The Jump |
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Our all-encompassing blue has gained a shade of gray in the last few days. It also became noticeably colder in the process (startlingly revealed by yesterday's bath). And the final, and most telling, characteristic is a black sediment that is left by it when we rid a bucket of the gray water. We've postulated that it's volcanic ash from an undersea upwelling. Or a nuclear holocaust. Either will suffice.
May 23, 2010
Z01:56
I love the trade winds. They've made today an easy-going, quick-passing, speedy venture. I, once again, hopped onto my beloved dawn watch this morning. The interconnected writings of Stendhal entertained me for a while until I my gaze was drawn to the sunrise. I stared in awe at its beauty for about an hour before time came for my position fix.
Yesterday was a solid 120 nm day, average speed of 5 knots. There now lies only one charted obstacle between us and Nuku Hiva: the Shoals of Disappointment (Clark's Bank). It's a shallow area, 9 feet, that lies roughly 100 nm Northwest of our landfall. It's aptly named the Shoals of Disappointment because yachts are inevitably foundered upon it a mere 100 miles from the termination of their 3000 mile passage. I aim no to do this.
May 25, 2010
Z19:07
We just made contact with the first boat we've seen in 2 weeks! Lydia spotted the rusty steamer ship after it had altered course to give us room. After they had returned to course, we hailed them on the VHF. The opposite radio operator responded vividly, but unintelligibly. His dialect was either French, Romanian, or Portuguese (as you can see, each crew member had an equally uneducated guess).
Leeway is only 260 nm from Baie de Taiohae, Nuku Hiva. We're all anxious for the pleasures of land. Lydia aches for a banana split, Dan a fresh cobb salad, and I, a good snorkel. Green is also a sight that will nearly bring tears to my eyes, I'm sure. Here's the lonely sailors upon spotting their first hint of a civilized world in 2 weeks:
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| From The Jump |
May 27, 2010
Z20:32
LAND HO! It only took us 27 days to hit this little island chain across the Pacific. Dan let me sleep in this morning, to compensate for the noisy sails last night, but he couldn't spare me the gorgeous vista that came with first light, so he called for me. I hopped out of bed, put on a pot of coffee, and made entrance into the fresh air abovedecks. The sun was just beginning to show its first tendrils of light on the aft horizon. Directly opposite, the full moon sprinkled the rolling swells with a band of yellow light. But it was soon revealed to me the real reason why I was called up. A faint white light had been glimmering in the distance. Too far off the horizon to be a ship and too immobile to be a star. He had requested my young eyes to spot it with the binoculars. I had no informed opinion to offer for a few minutes. The rising sun showed us exactly what it was: Ua Huka! (Another island in the Marquesas).
Since spotting Ua Huka, I've altered course fro the shores of Nuku Hiva. We lay about 30 nm off a point that we must clear. This should result in a daytime landfall. Our first land, Ua Huka:
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| From The Jump |
May 29, 2010
Local 19:25
As of yesterday, we were kind enough to grace Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva, with the presence of our Rocna anchor dug into it's muddy bottom. But let me tell you a bit about the, too long, story of how we got here. We ghosted into the bay late the night of my last log. But as soon as she got into the bay, she was twirled around by variable winds within. A rock-strewn bay at night was not something Dan wanted to press, so we decided to heave-to until morning. We caught a beautiful mahi mahi on the way in, but it slipped of the gaff hook (the thing that's impaling it in the photo) and snapped off our lure to get away:
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| From The Jump |
The wind and current caused us to drift we a while before I pulled us out of being hove-to about an hour before sunrise. A passing sight gifted me with the notable sight of a moon rainbow in the dead of night. A phenomena I had never seen, let alone heard of before. An arcing gray band projected from the horizon to terminate above Nuku Hiva's silhouette landmass. That soon passed and I was stuck wallowing in 1-2 knot winds.
A bit after sunrise I was finally able to see the island and most importantly, the natural color of chlorophyll. Yes, my friends, plants. It was an absolutely gorgeous thing to see after a month at sea. I beamed a big sailorboy smile until the squall hit.
I had noticed a cloud line advancing on me. I put on my rain jacket in anticipation of rain. What I didn't do was properly estimate the strength of wind it would bring. I was flying as much sail as I could to try and harness the barely-existent winds. I saw rain advancing on the water in front of me, then I saw something much more disturbing: white caps spreading down from the horizon. I just had time to loosen the sheets before the 2 knot yawn turned into a 30 knot sneeze of a blow. Leeway heeled hard with the most wind she'd seen in at least a week and I kept the sails luffing (this takes the power out of the sails). Even with heavily luffing sails, we were heeled 35 degrees. With the thick rain obscuring both the view of the island and the one through my glasses, I tacked back towards my last compass bearing on Baie de Taiohae.
The tack was finely executed except for one small detail. The stopper knot on the starboard jib sheet had loosened, so when I put myself through the wind to a starboard tack, the sheet wrapped around the newly-taught port jib sheet a good 3 dozen times. This would very much hinder a tack back away from the island if it were to come too close (which it was doing at a good 7.5 knots at this point). And with rain the size of quarters smacking me at 20 knots and my free hand pushing the tiller hard to weather, I began to unwind the wrapped sheet. A glance back to the compass startled me with a bright yellow Dan sitting on the opposite cockpit bench. He explained he had come out just to wash his hair in the freshwater rain. But he sympathized with my situation and unwrapped the sheet and ran it back through the block. We would now be able to tack off the lee shore. Crisis averted, now would could steer this baby in. Me riding one of our squalls into Nuku Hiva and my leg as I tried to tighten the leech line on the jib during a squall (awesome photo credit to Lydia):
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The squall last a good 15 minutes and we beat hard to windward the entire time. But soon the sky began to clear and we lost the radiating winds of the localized system. And we were once again left to wallow. We repeated this pattern 3 more times, albeit a bit more prepared, on following squalls. This got us right into the mouth of the bay. We were ghosting in, just barely beating out bubbles, when one of the many cruisers motored up to us in his dinghy to offer us a tow in. We thanked him graciously, but refused his offer to try and sail onto the hook. Another 20 minutes passed before the next cruiser zoomed up to offer us a tow. We accepted this time in lieu of our complete lack of wind. We came in beaming wide smiles due to the hospitality of the local cruising community. Our tow:
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| From The Jump |
We were towed to our anchorage where we still lie and I dropped the hook to complete our passage. Here's the chart that guided us most of the way across the Pacific:
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| From The Jump |
And a couple of portraits of Dan and me:
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| From The Jump |
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| From The Jump |
And a pirogue race through Nuku Hiva's Taiohae:
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| From The Jump |
What an awesome account of events! Sounds like quite the adventure, can't wait to see the pics! It was such a relief to hear that you were still well stocked with supplies and living the good life! Hopefully you will be able to find a few more riders to help with the expenses of living the dream! Tahiti sounds heavenly! aloha jax
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing adventure.
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy that you are sharing your experience with us. I've really enjoyed following your voyage. Can't wait for the pictures.
Ann
That pic of the two of us, Danny, is from the night we crossed the Equator. That was a damn fine night.
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