Day 39/12

We are definitely not in the doldrums we have been sailing in a nice strong breeze since yesterday afternoon.

It was a tough night. Very dark, with no moon and heavy cloud cover. Plenty of rain before midnight, not too much after. The seas were very confused and not tiny. The wind was 17-22+. We stood 2-person watches and it was good to have a buddy. Nobody left the cockpit and everyone was harnessed & tethered all night. And we were happy to see the dawn.

It was cool to see how much sail trim we can do by feel. The boat performed well.

We sailed the main on the first reef (shortened a bit at the foot) and the staysail (the smaller of the triangle sails on the bow). I suspect we averaged 8 knots through the water on our preferred course toward Hawaii Island.

Now, at almost mid-day, and over 11° North latitude, the skies have cleared significantly, the waves are trying to find a more consistent pattern and we are all getting accustomed to the new rhythm.


Love & Light,
~e.

Day 38/11 Sailing Again!

Ok!
I think it's real...
I think we are out of the ITCZ & the doldrums. (What a depressing word.)

We've had steady wind speed and direction for an hour and a half.

And it's pretty favorable.
We can sail at about 1/2 the windspeed on our preferred course! Hot Damn!
We are back in the saddle, baby!

Thanks for all those good vibes! Keep 'em coming!!
Love, light, & fair winds,
~e.

Day 38/11

Still stuck in the zone.

Luckily, the engines are running well. (Thanks to all the blood sweat & tears.)

We are getting down to half of the fuel stores. It computes. 

We are running sails and engines in a southerly, light wind scenario. Hoping to just sail soon. 

Jeff is getting itchy. 

Itchy to get going. 

He talks to the air. 

(We are all doing FINE. Just Fine.)

Jeff is also getting hives when he goes in the engine room from all the petroleum products.  We are all taking turns. 

Love,

~e.

Stuck in the Zone - midnight musings

We have been running the engines in a low-to-no-wind situation for over 12 hours; since noon yesterday.

Now at 3am, we may have finally hooked up with a breeze.

Fingers crossed.

((And a picture of one of yesterday's flying fish casualties))

Love and light,
Fair winds!
~e.

Navigation Instrument Display

Here is a picture of the main navigation display from earlier today.

Those scary red blobs, aren't actually scary. They are rain clouds; if they are pretty dense (precipitation-laden), they return a radar signature. They've been blossoming (as Torsten put it) all day. (Insert heavy eye-roll, emphasis mine.) The concentric circles around the boat icon are 2 mile increments (changable: you can zoom in or out while the radar is sweeping.)

The dialog box at the top is showing our direction and distance to our next waypoint, the SW side of Hawai'i, the Big Island. 326.8° on the compass and 864 miles. (It also shows a constant recalculation of the estimate travel time & arrival... I NEVER look at that.) 

The thin blue line diagonal from bottom middle/right to upper left is the track from one waypoint to the next.. in this case, 002WPT to 003WPT... our goal is to stay a bit to the right of the line if we can. ( To give ourselves a cushion, like choosing a more comfortable ride in a swell.)

The boxes in the bottom left are:

Trip Log: 1529 miles

Heading: 342.0°

GPS position:

Latitude: 6° 15.5' N

Longitude: 148° 36.3' W

COG (course over ground) 351.5°

SOG (speed over ground) 7.6 knots

Trip Log was zero'ed at the marina; that's the number we check everyday at 5pm.

We are more than half way!!! 

Why isn't the Course and the Heading the same? Excellent question! 

Idk. But I can tell you that heading is a magnetic compass reading. COG is a GPS calculation. 

We also have separate gauges for wind angle/speed. And customizable readings. Plus the autopilot screen (which also has a bunch of info... some of it the same)

There's a quiz tomorrow. (Jk)

Love & Light,

~e. 

In the Zone

It's a gray, flat light day. Good size mixed swell. Variable winds, lots of rain clouds. This is the part of the Convergence Zone that they call "the doldrums." Lovely name.

We've reluctantly come to terms with the fact that we did not get obscenely luck and get to skip this part. (Not an easy pill to swallow, after all the models looked SO GOOD! Sigh)
Weirdness abounds in the ITCZ just like everyone said. Rain pops up out of nowhere, and vanishes just as quickly. We'll catch a lively breeze out of the West?? Which makes no sense.
More than once I've been at the helm, looking around at the sea and the sky, looking at the instruments, remembering the models, and just dumbfounded. I just don't know what to do, to make the most of the nonsense.

We've all decided that when in doubt, just head toward Hawaii, even if we motor.
We do have to monitor our fuel consumption, and regularly check on the engines.
For example, Jeff replaced a belt on the port engine, this morning. We pulled water out of the fuel separators on both engines yesterday. It's part of the deal.

Love and light,
Fair winds!!
~e.

Midnight watch, again

This ITCZ is fickle. We thought we had a great setup for crossing; but as we are coming to understand, things change in the zone.

Where we want to be is just north of where we are. And that sweet spot is moving away. We have wind out of due South. But we simply can not sail north in that. We don't have fuel to just motor for endless hours. The fuel is to use, but it's also good not to use it all, too early.

So in a nut shell, we don't love our available choices. Easr OR West?

We chose to gybe to the west. The course that at least is closest to heading toward Hawaii.

We have a current which seems to actually be pushing us a little north. So that's good... we will run this for a while, (6-8 hours?) and then probably gybe back over in the opposite direction depending on what kind of weather we are experiencing and seeing on the weather models.

As we were setting up for this bit of sailing, we changed sails, (to run the new jib!) then noticed more batten pocket flap repairs were required.

So we did that for a while. Then finally we're ready to bring the main back up.

Meanwhile, some other things got a little funky with some lines, and we had an episode with one of the engines. Alao, our working heading caused a lot of motion and some stuff fell & spilled around the cabin and cockpit... Things got a little hectic!

But 3 educated, clever, capable, teammembers overcame this set of obstacles, with plenty of cursing (Ok, that was mostly just me), diligent effort, clever ideas, careful execution and a few jokes.

We missed dinner, but are staying hydrated, and everyone needs a nap, (which is what 2 out of 3 sailors are doing.)

This is one heck of an adventure.

Love hard, pray harder
(Maybe that's it?)

Love and light
Fair winds,
~e.