trip logs

The wind dropped to around 8 knots yesterday evening, about the same time that some lumpy swells joined us from a number of different directions. This is the perfect recipe for slatting, popping, banging sails. All. Night. Long. All to keep us moving at around 2 or 3 knots. During Matt’s watch, around 3 am, Michael got up and together they hoisted the spinnaker. We’d been reluctant to do that, since there were dark squall clouds on the horizon all around us. But since none of them had yet gotten close they put our lightest sail up in the hope that it would pull us along quietly and smoothly.

Thirty minutes later Matt hollers down: “Michael, there’s a dark squall real close, think it’s going to get us. Can you help me take the spinnaker down?” Before Michael could answer the wind came shooting down at the boat like a rocket and we heeled over sharply, our poor spinnaker heavily overloaded. One of the guys blew the sheet to let the air out of the sail. It was flogging wildly and took the both of them to get the sock down over the sail and lower it safely into its bag. By the time Michael was tying the top of the spinnaker bag shut the wind squall was over and a light rain was falling in it’s wake. We rolled out the genoa again and the wallowing continued. Phew, that was close.

The spinnaker is back up today, with the horizon now clear of squalls. We had to put nylon tape over a small tear that appeared from the chaos early this morning but are thankful our workhorse sail — at least for this trip where we’ve been plagued by light winds — is still pulling us along.

The weather forecast is for well under 10 knots of breeze for the next few days. Think wind for us, please?

Total miles at noon: 2078
Miles since yesterday: 95
Miles to Hiva Oa: 610
Eggs that have failed the good-eggs-sink test: 4

Some days are just grumpy days. Today is one of those. There is no particular reason. The sailing is spectacular today; we are flying the genoa, main and mizzen in about 12 knots of wind right on the beam, making a steady 5.5 knots. We just all seemed to wake up tired, hot, sweaty and grumpy. The girls have been bickering since they first opened their eyes. I don’t feel like cooking and served granola bars for breakfast.

We are just so ready to be there. We are craving juicy, fresh fruit, ice-cream, cold beer (other than our Special Equator Beers we are a dry boat underway). I want an ice-cold crisp green salad as big as my head. We all want to walk on land again.

So, I did what any sea-going mother would do: I got out the nutella and ritz crackers, opened a can of Trader Joes pineapple hiding in the stores and we had ourselves a feast of a snack.

Total miles at noon: 1983
Miles since yesterday: 97
Miles to Hiva Oa: 680
“A Series of Unfortunate Events” books read aloud so far: 4
Cans of warm Pacifico taunting us in the shower storage: 72

Last night was the kind of night I’m going to think about long into the future, when we’re back in a regular workaday life. I’m going to close my eyes and try to remember each detail, and long for every one.

I was up for my watch at 0400. Matt, finishing up his 12-4 watch and ready to hit his bunk, noted that everything had been stable outside for hours and we’d been picking up speed a bit even at times. I put on a kettle of water for my cup of black tea, made some notes in the log. When the water was ready I grabbed my hot mug and the ipod and headed up to the cockpit to settle in for some sailing and stargazing.

When I popped my head out I was awestruck. The nearly-full moon was still up in the west, about 45 degrees above the horizon and focusing a brilliant beacon of light on the water. It was so bright that it while it tried to dim the gazillion stars it was unsuccessful and the sky was still lit up with tiny sparkles. Our spinnaker was pulling us south, toward the southern cross, at 4.5 knots with the light warm breeze blowing from the east. The huge full sail was highlighted by the bright moon behind it and instead of its daytime rainbow it sported shades of glowing silver.

I settled into the cockpit cushions with my favorite ladies: Erin, Imogen, Jolie, Sia, Deb, Ani and together we glided through the magical night. With the seas only a long, wide swell, the motion was almost imperceptible except for forward.

People have told us how lucky we are, to get to sail far away. My first response is to say luck has little to do with it, that we’ve worked so freaking hard, made many difficult decisions and given up so much for so many years to get to this place on the earth. But on nights like this, I see how very lucky we truly are to be here together.

Total miles at noon: 1886
Miles since yesterday: 78
Miles to Hiva Oa: 780
Number of poblano peppers left after finding them in a gooey mess in their bag in the fridge: 0
Cabbages remaining: 3
Cool, clean girls after a saltwater washdown on the back deck today: 2

There are five brand-new shellbacks aboard Wondertime today! At 3pm local time we crossed over the equator and are now in the South Pacific Ocean.

The girls and I worked on making turtle hats for everyone to wear today for the crossing. I can’t wait to show you the pictures. The adults celebrated with our Special Equator Beers (tasty brews from the UK we’d found in a specialty beer shop in La Paz and have been saving for this day). We also inhaled half a Costco-sized bag of Kettle chips. The girls enjoyed pineapple popsicles from our tiny frosty freezer, some special candy treats and another viewing of Finding Nemo afterwards.

It was just exhilarating, watching those numbers count down to 0, then switch from north latitude to south latitude. All five of us sat in the cockpit with our eyes on the GPS numbers counting down. It was like the most exciting New Year’s Eve ever, except the sun was directly overhead, blinding white and the sea a color of turquoise I’ve never seen before all around us.

We are on the last leg now, although still waiting for wind that will carry us faster than 2 knots. But we’re moving, so we’ll wait. The last three nights we motored through seas so glassy the stars were reflecting on the water. We didn’t have any more wind today so kept on motoring until we were a few miles north of the line, then put up the main, mizzen & genoa. Amazingly the wind came up a bit at the same time and we drifted across the equator at a blazing 2.5 knots. No matter, it gave us plenty of time to savor the moment and our new status as shellbacks.

Total miles at noon: 1808
Miles since yesterday: 98
Current latitude: 0 3′ S
Finding Nemo viewings aboard, including today’s: 174 give or take

99 miles
from the equator, becalmed
spinnaker hangs limp

Total miles at noon: 1710
Miles since yesterday: 85
Miles sailed since we turned off the motor eight hours ago: 15
Miles to Hiva Oa: 958

According to the skies and our weather charts, we’re officially south of the ITCZ. But apparently the weather is playing an April Fools’ joke on us: over the next few days it is supposed to be moving south, to around 6 degrees S. What that means is if it doesn’t move again by the time we get down there then we’ll have to go through that dreadful zone TWICE. Good grief.

Still, that’s a long way from where we are, especially at our current pace (and the ITCZ is a very shifty thing and could likely move north again by the time we get that far south). We motored for a few hours yesterday afternoon, then were able to sail again until around the time for our radio check-ins. As night fell the wind did also and we found ourselves bobbing around in a windless sea. We just sat there for a while, enjoying the peace and the stillness. The sea around us was lit up by the glowing half moon at the top of the sky and the western horizon still had the slight orangey glow of sunset. It was lovely, and tempting to just put on the anchor light and call it a night. We haven’t seen another ship since our first nights off of Mexico.

We didn’t though as our desire to bring this trip to a close sometime in the next two weeks is just too overwhelming, if you can imagine. The engine was fired up and we motored through the glassy, still night.

At sunrise, happily, a light NE wind came up, only about five knots, but with our spinnaker and mizzen up we’ve been able to keep sailing at about 2.5 knots all day. The next few days are scheduled to bring more light winds, then pick up on Wednesday to a rip-roaring 10 knots. In the meantime though, it’s not so bad strolling through the doldrums. We’ve got our fans humming, buckets of clean and pure turquoise salt water to throw over ourselves, our cockpit shade cooling our outdoor room and the most amazing view on the planet.

Total miles at noon: 1625
Miles since yesterday: 90
Temperature inside the boat: 90F
Dorado fish caught and devoured!: 1

We are surrounded by dark clouds, many in the distance are steel grey right down to the water indicating a downpouring of rain. Above us, strangely, is a patch of blue sky, just for us. If it was night, you could see flashes of lightening illuminating the towering clouds that look like volcanoes erupting up into the sky. The sun, when the black clouds pass to let it through, is blindingly white. After a nice rain shower this morning the last puff of wind blew out and it’s been glassy calm all afternoon. Unless we get too close to the black clouds. Then the wind, and often rain, just seems to pour straight down out of them for a few minutes.

This place is eerie; we have no desire to linger and have run the engine for the first time in nearly two weeks in order to reach the other side, and the southeast trades, more quickly in these glassy conditions. Sometimes a squall will last long enough that we can take advantage of the wind to gain more peaceful miles under sail, as we are doing now.

We’re passing through the ITCZ, or the Intertropical Convergence Zone. This is the narrow band of light- or non-existent wind, rain squalls, and thunderheads that mark the change between the northeast trade winds and southeast winds that lie on the other side. Our daily weather fax shows it between 3 and 4 degrees north; we just passed under 4 degrees so hopefully 60 miles or so and we’ll be back in the trades.

Total miles at noon: 1535
Miles since yesterday: 93
Apples remaining: 8*

*There are Puddle Jump provisioning articles on the internet galore so I won’t add to the pile of them except to say that the fruit that has tasted the best and lasted the longest (the remaining ones taste as fresh as when I loaded them on the boat 2.5 weeks ago) are good old Washington apples! I wish I had packed on at least twice as many as I did, especially the green Granny Smiths (which are excellent with Nutella by the way) but who would think they’d be so happy in the equatorial heat?

It’s been a long hard week, what with all the confused seas and bouncy, windy conditions. But today we were given a reprieve with 15 knots of wind from the east, almost on our beam, and much more comfortable seas. It is just beautiful out here: the sun is directly above us during the day, the sea still a brilliant blue and every cloud shape you can imagine is scattered across the sky. We look at the chart and see how very far we are from the nearest land and for some reason it doesn’t spark a fit of internal panic any longer. We’ve grown comfortable out here with our rolling blue backyard. We love listening to our nightly radio nets; even though our fellow puddle jumpers are hundreds of miles away it feels like they are right next door for the time we listen to all the check-ins. There is actually another boat very near to us, Cheers is about 62 miles to the east. We’ve been able to talk on the VHF and it thrilled us both to be so close in this vast body of water.

We were all able to get nice long naps in which has made a world of difference in our energy today. The girls and I made “boiled cookies” (basically butter, sugar, oats, peanut butter and cocoa that you cook up then cool spoonfuls on waxed paper). There’s no way the oven is going on for a while!

It’s looking like Monday for crossing the equator and we are getting very, very excited.

Total miles at noon: 1442
Miles since yesterday: 119
Minutes it took me to comb out the snarls in Holly’s curly hair: 45
Minutes it took me to comb out Leah’s straight hair: 2
Number of squid found on deck this morning: 2

Yahooie! We are officially half way there!

My, but this is a big, huge, rolly ocean.

We are at 6 degrees north. It is hot and steamy and you just wouldn’t believe the smell that is growing by the day inside the boat; it oozes and swirls around in the air from our bodies, the dinette cushions, our beds, the garbage, the head, dirty dishes in the sink. We had a little wind squall last night that brought a sprinkle of rain and are definitely hoping to collect enough rain soon to give us all a badly needed freshwater rinse (we are saving the water in our tanks just for drinking and we don’t have a watermaker). The smells and heat — and nonstop rolling — gave all the adult crew another bout of sea-nausea these past few days but we seem to be better today. I managed to not only bake a loaf of sourdough bread this morning (Del Viento, your travelling starter is happy as can be back out here!). I also got an entire pot of last-of-the-zucchini soup going in the pressure cooker just a few minutes ago without having to run outside and put my face in the wind like a puppy dog every few minutes.

The girls are handling the trip amazingly well so far. As I suspected, Leah is thoroughly enjoying the extra time playing games, reading and just talking with her parents. She is very proud that she’s sailing across this ocean and loves to find our position on our various maps and globes. I can tell Holly is pretty much done with all this based on the increasing frequency of temper tantrums, but then maybe she’s just being 3 1/2. We did sit in the cockpit yesterday afternoon and reenacted the entire “Gato con Botas” movie which she was thrilled about and I probably wouldn’t have found time to do except for being out here. Holly tells me she’s looking forward to a playground, ice-cream, and sleeping in her own bed when we arrive at the islands. For what we are asking both girls to cope with, it’s pretty amazing to see how, mostly, happy they are out here.

The NE trades continue to blow steadily at 15-20 knots and we are rocking and rolling, night and day, south.

Total miles at noon: 1323
Miles since yesterday: 129
Number of times we’ve had to fix broken reef hardware on the boom: 2
Gallons of fresh water used to mist ourselves in the cockpit (well worth every drop!): 0.15

The wind came up last night just as we were tucking the girls into bed. It increased from 15 to 25 in what seemed like a matter of minutes. We reduced sail lickity split to just the staysail and were comfortably moving along at 5 knots with only that little sail up. We were hoping that it was just a wind squall and would pass but it wasn’t, the wind whistled in the rigging all night long. Sleep was hard to come by what with all the commotion and rocking back and forth as the waves slid under our port quarter. When it was time for my watch at 4 am the warm damp wind was still gusty but starting to moderate a bit. I curled up in a corner of the cockpit with my ipod and immediately closed my eyes and fell asleep. My eyes snapped open minutes later and I spent the next three hours desperately trying to keep them open, where I’d been trying desperately to sleep just a few hours before. By the time Michael was up at 0800 the wind had dropped enough for us to unfurl the genoa and hoist the reefed main back up. We’re now cruising steadily towards the ITCZ — squallville — and tonight we have just under 600 miles to go to the equator. Getting so close!

Total miles at noon: 1194
Miles since yesterday: 114
Flying fish, deceased, found in the furled mainsail: 1
Cabbages remaining: 5.5