Pacific Ocean 10 April 2010 01.0836N 125.8408W
SE winds! I have to admit, the kids and I are a little disappointed. Yes the big dark columns of lightning rain, winds and calm worrried me; but I also had visions of lots of time between the clouds, bobbing about in a flat calm sea, diving in from the bow into the 78 degree water, swimming faster than the boat, trailing a toe in the water with barely a ripple, staring down into 2 miles of That Blue; you know the modern day doldrum experience, all along knowing that if it really did get dull you could crank up the engine and head on out. Frank says that’s the version guys present to wives and girlfriends, so the guys can spend 90% of the trip sailing in the trades. Guess I can’t ask for a refund on this voyage. Don’t get me wrong, the tradewind sailing is amazing (especially today), but just one afternoon of flat calm would have given me such great material to write about.
We definitely found the thin spot in the ITCZ (oh captain my captain!). We went from steady NE winds, to a night of steady rain, to yesterday’s beating against steady S/SW winds, working hard to keep a southern course so we could escape this dreaded ITCZ. But so far the only rain was gentle and the only becalming so far was last night during my dog watch; the wind died down to 5 knots, and I motored along for 4 hours. Marc, I did take some time to sit on the bow and watch the fireworks (bright flashes of phosphorescence, as the fish startle at our oncoming bow). Then after my watch the wind picked up from the SE. I woke up because I had slid to the bottom of the bed. Frank had us on a close reach; by 9 am, we were flying along at 9 knots – our TTG (time to goal) read 4.5 days! Our course is currently a straight rum line to Hiva-oa (the island we will check in at in the Marqueses). We eased the sails a bit, for a more comfortable angle inside the boat, so we’re down to 7-8 knots, or 5-6 days TTG (sorry to all you racers out there, but this is after all a house boat, comfort first). There are boats west of us who have been stuck in the ITCZ for a week now. But we have not crossed yet, and the ITCZ is known to be a fickle wind, I may yet get my afternoon off. I have to watch what I wish for, I’ve been wishing so hard for an easy time in the ITCZ, now I have to wish for a little ITCZ-like weather, but I need to be careful to fine tune my wishing, since it seems to be working a little too well. I probably owe some of that success to all of you who having been sending us such strong wishes for fair winds. OK now, don’t everyone at once wish an authentic ITCZ experience for us, but if just a few of you would, we’ll see if we can get it calm enough to jump in the water from the bow and push down the equatorial line so we can sail over sometime tomorrow.
I slept in yesterday and Frank listened in on the radio “net” for me – and volunteered me for the Sat. net controller slot, so now I have to get up early on Saturdays to run the net. Teach me to sleep in! It’s actually fun to watch everyone’s progress, eaves-drop on conversations (kind of like the old telephone party lines) and meet new people, remotely anyway. So I am looking forward to the task. Frank says I need to go easy on the roger-thats though”. Roger that – (probably just jealous, he’d likely prefer that I overuse “Frankly.”) I’m off to do the evening net now.
xoxomo