12/2
from Caitlin:
The wind has veered a bit just abaft the beam and the sailing is easy. The seas are small, and we are enjoying all the things you enjoy in lovely weather at sea–sky, clouds, stars, flying fish, sea birds, sunsets and sunrises, phosphorescence, shooting stars galore. Seriously, until the hours I’d spent on night watch this year, I didn’t realize how many kinds of “shooting stars” we can see. There are fast ones, super slow ones, ones that seem to flare up. There are short ones and ones that seem to arc across half the sky. And there are so many—on a clear and moonless three-hour I’ll often see 6-8 shooting stars, even without watching for them.
We celebrated crossing the equator back into the northern hemisphere last night with an offering of rum to Neptune and an offering of a linzertorte decorated to look like a globe for us mortals. Near the equator here, we can see the quintessential northern hemisphere constellation, the Big Dipper, ahead of us and the Southern Cross astern.
This morning we are doing our usual stuff–washing dishes, downloading weather reports, handling sail changes, changing the rags in the forepeak that soak up the somewhat-diminished leaks. There’s always someone on watch, often someone in the galley, usually someone napping. Right now Arlo and Alma are working on Spanish and math respectively, as bigger seas and higher winds are forecast in a few days.
From Alma:
Last night I dreamed that we got to Hawai’i. We were in a wide bay with a narrow entrance. This morning we were getting the boat cleaned up when my mom said, “Alma, it’s time.” I woke up and realized I had been dreaming. We are still on passage and right then I had to go on watch. Bummer. What did happen last night though is that we crossed the equator. I didn’t end up getting up for it which is fine with me. I was really tired this morning anyway. But I was definitely awake by the time the linzertorte came out for breakfast! It was delicious. I don’t know if I have ever had one before, but it is definitely competing for the “Alma’s top five desserts” award!
12/3
from Alma:
Still sailing along.
We are more downwind today.
Days are shortening.
12/4
from Arlo:
Nights at sea are interesting. We usually eat dinner in the cockpit, and then we will read aloud from our book. Then either my dad or JT will go below to do the dinner dishes, while my sister or I will stand by to dry the dishes, because you can’t leave dishes out to dry at sea. Then I will go on deck to brush my teeth and floss. Then depending on the time, I will either read and then go to bed, or just go to sleep immediately. If I wake up in the night, I will occasionally go give the person currently on night watch some company, because I only stand the dawn watch and an afternoon watch. We are still pretty fished out, and although we had a can of mackerel for lunch today, we are still not fishing today. We finished our last bananas, and of the 100-200 that we had on board, we only lost a few. That’s a lot of bananas to eat in one week. My sister and I are cramming in as much school work as possible, because after the next few days, we will have bigger seas all the way to Hawaii.
12/5
from Jason:
0015 hours. Still on Marquesas time, ½ hour ahead of Hawaii. The wind went light and so far South of East that the roll was shaking the sails more than the wind was driving them. We looked at the weather forecast after dinner and after lots of deliberation, we struck everything but the main, double reefed the main and fired up and steamed due North. So here we are now, the wind light and behind us, the main prevented out to starboard, just barely held full by that little tailwind and running along at 2200 RPM’s and traveling five to six knots. We’re solidly into the ITCZ now. I think we were at about 6 degrees 30 minutes Norrth when we made the sail change. At 0030 hours, just now, we reached seven degrees North. It’d be great to steam straight through this ITCZ and get going in the Northeast trades.
Arlo’s done a couple after dinner readings of Farley Mowat’s “The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float.” Mowat’s way of exaggerating and making his language mock eloquent is great. Arlo’s reading of that too. He’s got good dramatic tone and gets really into it at the funny parts. His voice accentuates the characters and their emotions and he speeds up a bit as if he’s got to go faster to get it all out before he cracks up.
12/6
from Arlo:
This morning I cut up two huge pamplemousses for breakfast to go with cereal. We still have around 20 pamplemousse at least, plenty to get to Hawaii on. We have some bigger seas coming our way and some accompanying heavy winds. I mentioned this in the previous musing, but we have been watching the weather files that we get through the satellite receiver, and it still looks rough, and although I have never been in seas like that I am interested to sea (Ha-ha!) what they are like. I also will not have to do much school work if any at all, which will be nice. We just made it out of the ITCZ yesterday and luckily for us it only took about 12-18 hours of motorsailing to get through it. We got several rain showers, from the frequent squalls, and we all took the opportunity to wash some clothes, and ourselves. My sister and I have moved from the forepeak for more comfortable sleeping places in the big seas, and hopefully that should make sleeping a bit easier.
12/7
from Jason:
It’s about 2PM. It’s a popular time to try to catch a quick nap. Arlo’s on watch. I’ll relieve him in a second. We’re under double reefed main and staysail and are flying along at six to seven knots. We’re a day and a half into the Northeast trades and moving North fast now. We plan on riding North for a few more days to be upwind of Hawaii when the wind and seas increase. That will put us in position for a roaring broad reach down to Hawaii. We’ll see!
We’re at that point in the passage now, 11 days in, where the days all fly by and run together in one big memory of constant motion of sea and sky. Our only company is an occasional tropic bird circling the boat, or petrel speeding along the waves. We’ve gotten to that place where it feels like we just do the same thing again and again and eventually we’ll be there.