by Judy Handley | Apr 28, 2006 | Passage To French Polynesia - Marquesas, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 193, Year 1: Easy Ride–Day 7
Date: Friday, April 28, 2006; New Time Zone EDT
Weather: Clear Skies with Cumulus Clouds on Horizon (Cloudier Morning)
Water Surface Temperature: 79 degrees F
Air Temperature: Nighttime 79 degrees F; Daytime 82 degrees F
Latitude: 05 degrees 44 minutes S
Longitude: 104 degrees 31 minutes W
Location: Passage from Galapagos to the Marquesas, Day 7
Miles to Go: 2057 (~146 miles last 24 hours)
Miles to Date: ~879
Things are going well out here. The wind is still with us and because it is behind us, we are having an easy ride. This is why they call this the Coconut Milk Run. When things are working as normal, this is a great passage. The days are absolutely gorgeous with clear blue skies and just a few puffy clouds around the horizon. There is a swell but it is gentle and the winds are consistently 15 to 20. Each day the temperature is rising just a tad, but it really feels cool in the breeze. The forecast is for more of this for the next five days except the seas are supposed to build. I’ll have to wait and see how that affects the ride, but right now it is fantastic.
Yesterday after I sent the log we caught a small Mahi Mahi and had it for dinner. What a treat. We didn’t put out the line today as Mark was doing “investigative” work in the engine room. We are hypersensitive now to every little noise and we wanted to check all connections of engine to transmission to prop shaft one more time. It seems like all is well in the engine room, but we have no fish for dinner tonight.
There are two other boats that are very close to us, but not within sight yet. When we check in with the evening net, we will see exactly where they are. This morning when we reported our positions, the net controller joked about us being able to meet and have a barbeque with the other two boats. It is interesting that having a boat within 60 to 100 miles feels close! There are now four more boats that we know of that are behind us and numerous boats just ahead of us, so we have lots of company. We like checking into this net that we all established twice a day. It helps us feel connected. Our friend Patrick of Aqua Magic is net controller for the evening check-in and since we are further back, Mark helps with the relays from boats that are even further behind.
We have traveled almost 900 miles in our first seven days out here. Our average daily distance traveled has been 138.5 miles per day. If we can continue that, we will be in Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas in about 16 days from now. That’s the best case scenario, but it sounds good to me.
by Judy Handley | Apr 27, 2006 | Passage To French Polynesia - Marquesas, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 192, Year 1: Calmer Day–Day 6
Date: Thursday, April 27, 2006
Weather: Clear Skies with Cumulus Clouds on Horizon (Cloudier Morning)
Water Surface Temperature: 79 degrees F
Air Temperature: Nighttime 77 degrees F; Daytime 80 degrees F
Latitude: 05 degrees 23 minutes S
Longitude: 102 degrees 07 minutes W
Location: Passage from Galapagos to the Marquesas, Day 6
Miles to Go: 2203 (~133 miles last 24 hours)
Miles to Date: ~733
Today was a much calmer day than yesterday. No flying squid, no whales, no getting burned while cooking. We are moving along, one quarter of the way to the Marquesas. When the wind stays above 15 knots, we make great time, but there are periods during the night and again during the afternoon when the wind drops to 10 to 12 knots. When that happens, we move much more slowly, but we are still averaging about 140 miles a day. The total number of miles to our destination from the Galapagos was about 3,000, so if we keep up this average the total trip will take us about 22 days. If we lose the wind entirely due to the weather system in French Polynesia, of course the trip will take longer. But we are settling in and enjoying the days.
The weather has been gorgeous. We are well protected from the sun and it actually feels cool at night and sometimes during the day. When the sun goes behind a cloud, I get chilly. At night we wear long pants and jackets-not what I expected south of the equator, but I’m not complaining, just explaining. The first couple of nights we had to zip our jackets and it was so humid that dew covered everything. It rained our third night out and since then the air has dried out and there is no need to zip a jacket at night. During the day, there are never clouds overhead but the horizon all around is decorated with puffy little clouds. The night sky has been phenomenal-so many stars. As we look to the south we see the Milky Way clearer than we have ever seen it before.
I got an e-mail from my friend Linda back in the Concord School District in response to my mention of being hit in the head with a flying squid. She said she didn’t know squid could fly, but she looked it up on the internet and learned that squid, like flying fish, don’t really fly. They literally shoot out of the water and glide using their fins to help them glide across the water. A certain species of squid can actually “glide” at 24 miles an hour. If the squid that hit me in the side of the head was traveling that fast, he probably had a good concussion from hitting my hard head!
For our sailor friends out there, I just want to remind you that you can check on our position daily by going to Yotreps at Pangolin on the web. There is a link on our website in the “Where We Are Now” section. I’m not sure that section is up-to-date on the site, but the link there will get you to Yotreps. Our son Justin that manages our website is leaving for a three week trip to Africa so I know that part of our website will not be updated from now until the end of April. Checking directly with Yotreps is the best way to get our position. All you need is our call sign to enter on the Yotreps site. It is KB1LDP.
by Judy Handley | Apr 26, 2006 | Passage To French Polynesia - Marquesas, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 191, Year 1: Encounters with a Squid and a Whale–Day 5
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Weather: Clear Skies Above with Cumulus Clouds on the Horizon
Water Surface Temperature: 77 degrees F
Latitude: 04 degrees 47 minutes S
Longitude: 099 degrees 57 minutes W
Location: Passage from Galapagos to the Marquesas, Day 5
Miles to Go: 2337 (~137 miles last 24 hours)
Miles to Date: ~599
When you get hit in the head by a flying squid at exactly midnight, you should know that your day is going to be an interesting one. I was on watch and moved back to sit at the helm at exactly midnight last night to record the “vital signs”. At least twice a day, every night at 2400/0000 and every morning at 0900 the person on watch records wind speed, boat speed, course, weather, position, and all of the other details in the log book. I had just moved back to do this, when WHAM, a flying squid hits me in the head. Who knows what the squid was flying away from, but after observing the strange creature that was still wiggling, I threw him back in the water.
The next event happened at 0730. I was sleeping but I awoke to see Mark rushing past me to get the V-berth. I asked why he was in such a hurry and he said he had to fix the knot meter. Still a bit groggy, I asked what was wrong with it and he replied that we had just hit a whale and that the prongs on the knot meter were bent. That woke me up. “We just hit a whale?” Mark confirmed and I hopped up to help check to see what other damage was done. Hitting a whale at sea is always a threat and one of those things that you never want to happen. Once the knot meter was fixed, I asked for more detail. What other damage? Was water rushing into the bilge? What kind of whale? I had at least 40 questions and Mark patiently assured me that all was well. He saw a whale blow and then the boat lifted slightly out the water and the whale emerged on the port side. It was at least as big as our boat, maybe longer. I went to the cockpit to look for other whales, and sure enough, behind us and to starboard I saw at least two others. Mark saw more. I spotted a blow, strange, at an angle like it was being blown by the wind, and then I could see part of the whale’s back and small dorsal fin. It was moving fairly fast and came up three more times to blow and show its back and then it disappeared. We think we crossed the path of a pod of female sperm whales. The one we hit must have been close to the surface and then dipped when we hit. Unlucky to hit a whale; lucky we didn’t sustain more damage. Two other boats that are part of our net have had similar experiences. I hope this is our last whale encounter on this voyage.
Then came the news on the net this morning that there is cyclone in the French Polynesia – Tuamotu area. We had heard that there were 40 knot winds in Papeete, Tahiti, but on last night’s Pacific Seafarer’s Net, Don Anderson, the weather forecaster for the net, was reluctant to call this weather system a cyclone. By this morning, however, our Fatu Hiva Net was calling it a cyclone. Whatever, it is far from us right now, and will not move this direction. The bad news is that a cyclone in that area will probably suck all of the air out of this region. People two weeks ahead of us are already feeling the effects. Hopefully we are far enough away that the winds will return as we get closer. In a normal year, there should be no cyclones in the eastern Pacific after the first of April. I guess this is not a normal year.
I decided to spend the day baking bread and making banana bread from all of the bananas that fell on our deck yesterday. It looked like it was raining bananas! We bought a huge stalk of bananas for the trip and hung them from the boom gallows knowing we would probably not be able to keep them for long. When the winds picked up yesterday, the motion of the boat caused those that were a little ripe to fall. We collected those that fell and put a mesh bag around the remainder. So the bananas are under control for now and we have banana bread and whole wheat bread. Unfortunately, I got thrown against the hot oven when the boat lurched over a wave and have a nice size burn on my thigh. Another “interesting” event for this day.
The good news is the sailing right now is great. The seas are fairly calm and we still have about 15 knots of winds from the ESE. Except for a little rain on Monday night, we have had wonderful weather . . . so no complaints. I’ll try to make sure tomorrow is a calmer day aboard Windbird.
by Judy Handley | Apr 25, 2006 | Passage To French Polynesia - Marquesas, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 190, Year 1: Flying with the Trade Winds–Day 4
Date: Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Weather: Clear Skies Above with Cumulus Clouds on the Horizon
Water Surface Temperature: 77 degrees F
Latitude: 03 degrees 30 minutes S
Longitude: 095 degrees 21 minutes W
Location: Passage from Galapagos to the Marquesas, Day 4
Miles to Go: 2499 (~150 miles last 24 hours); 462 miles so far
If you look back at yesterday’s miles to go, it looks like we traveled 228 miles in the past 24 hours. Well, we have been flying, but not that fast. The trade winds kicked in full tilt about 24 hours ago and we adjusted our course. We were originally headed more south in order to get out of the doldrums and into the trade winds. Now that we seem to have entered the trade wind belt, we are running a more direct route to Fatu Hiva (our first landfall in the Marquesas) and that has shaved off some of the miles left to go. We will not have been out a full four days until tomorrow morning, but so far we have traveled 462 miles. We feel very good about this and just hope the wonderful winds and sea conditions stay with us.
We are falling into a routine-sleep, eat, watch and read, do a chore, cook a little, sleep, eat, watch and read. And once in a while we put out the fishing line. That’s about it, but we are really enjoying the time. Tomorrow is a fishing day and right now it is time to cook dinner. Ah, if only life could always be this simple.
by Judy Handley | Apr 24, 2006 | Passage To French Polynesia - Marquesas, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 189, Year 1: Back to Sailing–Day 3
Date: Monday, April 24, 2006
Weather: Alternates Between Clear and Totally Overcast, Some Squall Activity
Water Surface Temperature: 76 degrees F
Latitude: 03 degrees 30 minutes S
Longitude: 095 degrees 21 minutes W
Location: Passage from Galapagos to the Marquesas, Day 3
Miles to Go: 2728 (~125 miles last 24 hours)
We’ve had another good day. We motor sailed through the night and into the day, but we are currently sailing with a full main and headsail going 6.6 over ground, 5.8 through the water, which means we are finally getting a boost from a favorable current. Right now we have 12 to 15 knots of wind, rising to 18 to 20 when we go through a “storm patch”-my name for an area of convection activity. The sun is setting and it is raining a bit right now. This is the first rain we have seen on this passage, but the skies look as if we might have squall activity through the night. Windbird could use a good fresh water wash, so we will welcome the rain. We had two days with a drizzle in the Galapagos, but other than that we have not had rain since the Caribbean.
I have started my research reading for the South Pacific and already have learned so much. The Pacific Ocean is twice the size of the Atlantic and it is greater than all of the earth’s land surfaces combined. But on a map, the islands of the Pacific just look like little dots. Most people, myself included, have heard some names like Tahiti, Bora Bora, Fiji, and Tonga, but otherwise are very unaware of the republics, kingdoms, and protectorates in the whole of the South Pacific. If you are reading these logs, you will probably learn more about the South Pacific islands than you ever wanted to know. I am letting go of my attachment to the Galapagos and getting into the journey through the Pacific. And, of course, these logs will reflect that.
As I started reading The Pacific Crossing Guide, one of the first questions addressed was why anyone would cross the Pacific. The text explains that just as there are boats of many different sizes and shapes, there are numerous reasons for crossing the Pacific. Usually people are doing this as part of a circumnavigation or they are just South Pacific explorers who stay in this area for years. We fall in the category of the circumnavigators, although we will not make the final decision to go all the way around until we reach New Zealand. As the Crossing Guide states, “The Pacific is an ocean that needs time-six to eight months for a Pacific crossing from Panama to New Zealand.” We left Panama on the ninth of March and will probably leave Tonga or Fiji for New Zealand around the first of November. That means we will fall in the average of taking eight months for the Pacific passage. Right now, however, we have to concentrate on making the twenty to thirty days it takes to get to the first landfall. So far, so good. (Seems like that has become my mantra!)
