Author: Pete

Location: 06°23.190S’ 101°33.436W’

Date: 11:00 March 4 to 11:00 March 5

 

Day 6 at sea.

Our fastest sail on record Saturday! 155 miles in the last 24 hours, averaging 6.5 knots. Doesn’t sound blazing fast, but that’s an average. In the morning when the winds were strongest we saw one 12 knot ride down a wave. It’s like a 32-ton skateboard. Very exciting. Good winds scoot us along, but choppy seas also.

 

We’re pushing plantains! Get ’em while they’re yellow and not brown! Yesterday was plantain bread, today was plantain pancakes, hot off the griddle with butter and syrup. Couldn’t tell them from bananacakes.

 

My night’s sleep is broken up into two pieces, 9pm-2am, and 5am-10am. I sat up awake in the middle of my second ‘sleep’ of the night and realized the towing generator wasn’t wired with a fuse. All the wiring is conveniently tucked under Liza and Felix’s bunk, so I was up fretting about that until they were up and I could do some wiring under deck on a bucking boat.

Our fleet is doing well. we’re holding pace with the pack for the most part, although the two 60 footers are screaming faster than us mere mortals. One back stay and another’s reefing lines damaged in the past days’ squalls. They cruise on though. It’s odd to have some 10 boats now all cutting the waves, all between 20 and 150 miles away, fairly close in the 3000 mile crossing we’re on, but we can neither see them, sense them on radar, nor hear them on VHF. Alone in our snow globe. That’s the way I like it, I suppose.

 

The two nights that we could see a masthead light on the horizon it became the focal point. Are they gaining on us? What’s their heading? Should we be bearing more south to take advantage of the conditions there? Bah! Who cares! It’s nice to have the quiet support of safety in numbers without being encumbered someone sailing right next to you.

Author: Pete

Location: 04°10.162S 94°40.047W

Date: 11:00 April 1 to 11:00 April 2

 

Day 3 at sea.

Good wind and great weather today. Lots of sun but not too hot. Last night mid-watch the wind kicked decidedly to port and stiffened to a blustery 11 knots apparent. It was enough for me to pull out sail and kick off the motors just to see if there was enough to sail with. It’s hard to know. Going at 6 knots under motor in 11 knots of apparent wind almost straight on the nose gives roughly 5 knots of true wind once you kill the engines, hardly enough to sail upwind. The angle change in important as was the increase and we had enough to move us at 3.5 – 4 knots upwind. It’s so quiet with the motors down! Sounds like real sailing! We were happy to be under the power of the wind again even if we had to divert course some 20 degrees to the west to do so.

 

We’re practicing French aboard Tayrona! We’re on to the waters of French Polynesia, and our Spanish and German aboard won’t cut it! We’re having French Hour every day to get ourselves ready! Bonne nuit! Miranda is spearheading the operation, having had the most French exposure in school. Tre bien! We’re so used to slinging Spanish functionally and getting along with relaying our needs and thoughts. I’m out of practice in charades and gesticulation… but not out of practice of looking foolish I suppose.

Made contact again today with our flotilla of boats. A couple more have joined us, so we’re six going across. We’re spread out over a good distance, the closest at 16 miles and the farthest 150 miles away. There are still a few in port at Isabela who will be following us in a few days. Let the invasion of the Marquesas begin!

Something fishy aboard Tayrona tonight! A bright blue flying fish 10″ long on the trampoline just before bed flopping around. We sent him flying back into the sea!

 

All good aboard with just our wind generator chugging along cheerfully and the moon lighting up the sea.

Author: Pete

Location: 03°17.889S 93°04.842W

Date: 11:00 March 31 to 11:00 April 1

 

Day 2 at sea.

A giant marine iguana, some 150 feet long has been chasing us since Galapagos. It’s spitting fire, wrestling with other massive creatures, and plowing over audio-dubbed Japanese folks. It appears that we’re being followed by Godzilla!

Kidding, kidding. It’s April 1st. Couldn’t help but throw in an April Fool’s joke. All fact from here on out.

Today we got some wind, despite a rainy, cloudy day. We had several hours during the day of 15-18 knots of wind. We put out all our sails and cooked along at 6 or 7 knots. It’s always difficult to get used to the odd habit of waking up for a few hours in the middle of the night for watch, so we all had a nice, rainy afternoon nap at some point in the day. Although the seas are similar to yesterday, just big rollers, everyone is feeling better and getting accustomed again to the motion of the ocean. It’s disheartening that your sea legs come so slowly and go away without notice once you’re ashore for a while.

 

Got the towing generator up and running when we were sailing. We were getting 0.5 amps from the solar when it was really overcast and cloudy, and the wind generator was shadowed by the mainsail, so we were discharging 2.5A – 4A. Threw the towing generator’s 3kg ‘fish’ in the water, and plugged it into the power inlet I installed in Panama City. Viola! Power! Okay, not that much moving at 4 knots, some 0.5A, but when the wind kicked up and we started making 5.5-6 knots the generator put out 2.5-3.5 amps, even saw some ‘charge’ on our battery monitor. I almost threw the thing overboard earlier on the trip since it takes up a lot of space and we don’t use it going upwind when the wind gen really shines. Now doing some downwind when the wind gen isn’t putting out much I predict it will be more useful than it has been as extra ballast in the starboard bilge.

Ate more of the tuna we caught for lunch. And also for dinner. We even have some broth we made from the extra parts. Liza threw in some onion and fresh herbs. Time to get creative!

We have a bright, nearly full moon tonight, no clouds, no rain, no waves. It’s gorgeous! The bright silver ribbon of moonlight waving from the horizon up to our boat stretches off to the west.

If we only had some wind! Connected with our buddy boats out here; they’re having similar conditions. Sounds like that’s the general operation, motor southwest from Galapagos three days until you find the trade winds. If you get some wind along the way, great! We even saw one of them tonight, a single tricolor light on the horizon. Couldn’t tell who it was, but definitely a solitary sailboat like us.

All good on Tayrona this night.