Author: Pete

Location: 08°54.943S 126°16.550W

Date: 11:00 April 13 to 11:00 April 16

Day 15 – 17 at sea.

Another fairly exciting couple of days roll by Tayrona! Yesterday we passed into the triple digits! We celebrated being under 1000 miles, and 2/3 of the trip done with a big pan of brownies! Seems like every other day we have a milestone, but it’s the little victories that keep one going on day 13, 14, and now 15. At a conservative 5 knots, landfall would be another 8 days from here, putting us in Hiva Oa on April 21st. Give it a day for who knows what, and we’ll call it the 22nd. We had a great Thai noodles with a special sauce Miranda cooked up, and even a couple of beers with dinner! Then we sat on the bow at sunset and devoured the entire pan of brownies like the starving sea dogs we AREN’T.

Prepared a message in a bottle for this occasion too. An almost empty rum bottle was all we had aboard, but I thought it fitting. We obligingly emptied it, put in our names, contacts, date, and location, and pitched the old girl overboard. The crew members have a documented, running bet about where it will show up, with some brews on the line.

Wind has been slacking and is predicted to do so for the next day or so. Bob McDavitt, a marine weather forecaster from New Zealand, discussed El Nino indications in the south Pacific, with warming waters bringing lighter trade winds with more southern development. We’re already seeing the effects, yesterday with 14 knots (9 apparent) of wind and now 9 knots (6 apparent). All coming from 135 degrees to port. Still making ~4 knots with the spinnaker up through the night, but may mess up our landfall prediction.  A rocky, but authentic picture of the motion on our boat at night- here’s Venus, as she guides us along just off our starboard bow.

Last night Miranda saw a meteor airburst! It’s a relatively rare meteoroid entry that ends up coming into the atmosphere, heating through ram pressure (extreme pressure differential, not friction with the atmospheric molecules as generally thought) and then exploding in the atmosphere in a brilliant burst. She said the sky lit up in a white, etherial flash, bright enough to cast shadows on the boat, just for a second, then a falling trail of glowing debris, also white. It occurred roughly at 12:30am, early morning April 14th. Our position was 08 degrees 42.700 min S, 122 degrees 20.000 min W, and Miranda saw it around 20 degrees up in the sky SSE of our position.

Cloudless and great stars again tonight. Tranquil seas, and no moon make for fantastic stargazing from the trampoline! All good aboard Tayrona.