Author: Pete

Location: 09°15.981S’ 130°03.656W’

Date: 11:00 April 17 to 11:00 April 18

 

Day 19 at sea.

The wind was low again today, so we motored through the calm. Made for good reading. The last day we motored on this trip was April 1st. This is pretty cool for us since we’ve been under renewable power (solar, wind, towing) and haven’t had to use the engines, or gas generator for over 2 1/2 weeks! Think about not using ANY power for 2 1/2 weeks in your house. Feels good to have a balanced boat, despite our loads, mostly the watermaker, refrigeration, and autohelm, but also electronics, and lights. We’ve had it balanced at anchor, but having the towing generator pumping out ~3-4 extra amps makes all the difference at sea. We could have gone longer too, but we fired up the engines for propulsion. The batteries were getting a little low in the last days since we had low wind, boat speed, and cloudy skies. We didn’t make water in the last 2 days. So we’re happy to have excess energy for a bit, as well as hot water for showering.

 

The wind came back up this evening. I helped Miranda put up the sails at 22:00 when the squalls died down and the wind filled in more consistently. Now we’re reaching at six knots in 13 knots of wind. Happy to be under sail again.

 

We don’t worry too much about the days racking up with slow transit. Although a boat in our fleet, Tallulah Ruby, has done this passage in 16 days, our friend Nadine took 29 days to do it. Another boat we’ve heard of skipped Galapagos and went straight from Panama, taking a whopping 55 days at sea! Yikes.

 

We’ve been finding a couple flying fish on deck most mornings. After one particularly rowdy night, Felix found nine aboard in the trampoline! They flap around and leave fish scales sloughed off on the deck as they try to flop back into the water. You don’t often look at your hull sides when you’re on a passage, but I began to notice that there is fish scale spatter in concentrated patches all over the hulls, even on the inside up under the trampoline. The schools of flying fish get spooked by the boat and try to buzz away to safety, only to slam into our hulls, occasionally ending up on deck too. There must be many of them careening head-long into our boat, because there are 3 or 4 square foot patches of clinging scale all over. They look like shimmering feathers in the sunlight. Eventually it’ll look like Tayrona is molting. Gross.

Luckily for us (unluckily for them, I suppose) at least we can “recycle” the poor buggers at bait fish.

 

Tonight is moody and cloudy, with chop coming in broadside to the boat. Makes for a jerky night. All good aboard.

Author: Pete

Location: 09°04.752S 128°06.807W

Date: 11:00 April 16 to 11:00 April 17

 

Day 18 at sea.

Sailing through lines of squalls today with generally light winds. At some point we were only making 2 knots, so we did some swimming/dragging off the transom, trailing a line to haul ourselves back to the boat. Foolishly, the line we chose to drag was dark blue. Jumping in, I found myself with the rapture of the deep, looking straight down into cerulean blue thousands of feet straight down. Upon surfacing, I realized that the dark blue line blended in nicely with the dark blue water and the boat was moving away. Liza pointed at the line and I swam that way with plenty of time to grab it. Will use white line next time. Also, two knots doesn’t feel like much when you’re on the boat, but trailing behind it on a rope, two knots is pretty fast. Enough to take your drawers off.

 

 

In the afternoon we couldn’t keep the spinnaker inflated as the true wind speed dropped below 4 knots so we doused it and fired up the iron gennies. Motoring is not without its merits. We charged up the batteries and everything else aboard and had hot showers all round!

It’s been fantastic flying the spinnaker for days on end. The boat looks nice and clean with the sails all furled up and the big blue, pink, and purple chute billowing out front, dragging us along downwind. It’s quiet, doesn’t luff or pop much even in very light wind. Not much trimming as long as she’s inflated. Makes for great afternoon shade of the hammock for reading and keeping watch. The following seas roll up under the boat and gush between the two hulls. It is, as they say, smooth sailin’.

 

We did get a fish bite yesterday evening! We all finished dinner with a great sunset and were all busying ourselves downstairs in the boat. We all heard the same zzzzz sound, but thought it was someone winching in a line, until we realized that we were all in the boat! So we ran outside and Felix tried to pull the line in with no avail. Too big to hand line! Couldn’t crank it with the reel either! Some sort of monster. It pulled out our spool for a few minutes, and then inexplicably spit the lure out. Or perhaps we ripped it free. Either way… something BIG was on the end of it. Not sure we could have eaten something that size!

In other exciting news, I saw a boat yesterday! It was a freighter heading almost are reciprocal course. I was at the bow watching the stars spin over the course of my three hour shift. There’s always a few near the horizon that look like boats, but in minutes they dive out of view. This one moved east along the horizon and over the course of a half hour I made out the bow light, then navigational lights. I lit it up with radar, not out of necessity on a clear night, but out of sheer interest. She passed five miles north of us making 13 knots according to our AIS. It didn’t register a name. In all these wide waters, five miles is pretty close. It’s all too easy to get complacent about the insulating, protective isolation. You almost feel indignant when someone sneaks over the horizon and into your little bubble.

But tonight it’s pretty quiet. Motoring through heavy rain. Radar and AIS are blazing away, so we shouldn’t have too many surprises. The wind and sea state are calm, making for an easy ride. More to come.

 

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.