Monthly Archives: March 2015

Our major occupation these days is chasing wind, not too much mind you, not too little, but just the right amount and from the right direction. We left Bahia Del Sol seventeen days ago much chastened about the Papagayo and the Tehuanapec, gusty winds north and south of us. Our plan was to squeeze between these major winds, avoiding the crazy currents meandering around these parts, using the favorable ones, staying in the northern tradewinds and make a break for the Marquesas when it seemed right. We fashioned a course, subject to changing conditions and into the chart plotter it went. That’s about the only thing that went according to plan. After the first two days in good wind but horrible sea state we sailed into a hole. We get grib files these days on our satphone and it shows a very slow passage for Escape Velocity. We’re coming to grips with our new rig and honing our light air techniques but the latest grib file shows another windless hole dead ahead. But then they’ve been wrong before.

We’ve had at least two squalls a day and yesterday evening three popped up surrounding us. We sailed right between them, following their course on radar, and the squall coming up behind us moved off with hardly a drop of rain. It’s disturbing how quickly they form and I’ve read that they’re usually stationary but you can’t prove that by me. With all of these squalls popping up so quickly we aren’t inclined to keep lots of sail up which exacerbates the light wind problem. So everyday is different but somehow the same. We discuss what sail, course, or trim changes we might make. We gaze out over the bright blue Pacific from what looks like the bottom of a deep twelve mile wide bowl, so that it feels like we’re always sailing uphill. Nothing interrupts this view except the ever changing cloud formations on the periphery.

In the meantime the weather has been beautiful, the boobies have left, cleanup in aisle two! The SSB radio signals are getting weaker as we approach the halfway waypoint in the middle of nowhere, but a light signal from our friends on Macushla in the Pearls perked up morale. We know the Mexican Puddle Jumper boats are heading down this way so we might actually see another boat someday. You never know.

Yesterday we had a lovely squall where we were making excellent time and the autopilot didn’t have to work so hard. Then the wind dropped to nothing again and we’ve been jibing back and forth in 4 kts of wind trying to keep moving. The autopilot is sawing back and forth keeping us pointed in the right direction and we’re both exhausted from the frequent sail trim changes and frustrated at the conditions. Our Grib file predictions are for 10 kts from the NE. We wish. We’ve got 3-4 from the East. Sometimes I think the only thing propelling us forward is the meager current. Other than that, all is well. Might make pho for dinner.

We had high hopes for a reasonably efficient passage to the Marquesas but that’s gone right out the window. Not that we’re complaining. We have fine weather and enough wind to keep us moving more or less in the right direction but gosh, we aren’t even close to the average speed I assumed we would make. We’ll be lucky to arrive by the end of April at this rate. We’re mostly reading, eating and chasing the birds off the bow, trying to keep the boat tidy. It’s so easy on a passage to succumb to lethargy and before you know it you’re living in what looks like a dorm room during finals week. 

Jack has made it his job to keep the boobies off the bow and get the guano stains off. My job is to keep us well fed which is getting to be a challenge as we run out of fresh fruit and the only fresh vegetables left are potatoes, onions, carrots and cabbage, which suggest a heavy Polish or German cuisine rather than the light Mediterranean salads we long for. No matter. We won’t starve. But I plan to O.D. on papayas and mangos once we get to Polynesia. 

If anyone has been writing to us at our Winlink address, we apologize for not answering but we haven’t been able to connect for a long time. We’d been warned that in this area of the Pacific we would have trouble and that seems to be the case. So we aren’t hearing from anyone at that email address, and if you know Drew or Nancy you can write to them and they can forward messages to us. Also, because we can’t connect through Winlink, our position on Winlink and Yotreps hasn’t updated. You can check the Spot and Farkwar links on the right and see if they’re working. 

The sailing is lovely — slow but nice — and even though our weather reports are constantly predicting thunderstorms we haven’t had a one. We did sail through two mild squalls and sometimes we see dark clouds on the horizon but nothing menacing has come near us. We’re running an engine for a couple of hours today to charge up the batteries. Depending on our angle of sail there are days when the solar panels are too shaded to keep us topped up. It’s times like this we wish we also had a wind generator but really for the few times we would actually need it we couldn’t justify the cost. Still, we don’t like to burn the fossil fuel, even if it’s only a gallon or so. 

I made biscuits this morning and when they came out of the oven Jack made us egg and cheese sandwiches. And that’s the news from EV. No ships, no whales or dolphins, no turtles. Only the birds, who have become unwelcome.

I guess you could call this a negotiation. It’s been tense at times, funny at others, always filthy. We’ve got serious guide books for most of your major life forms aboard Escape Velocity. None more serious or baffling is a tome called Sea Birds by Peter Harrison, The Identification guide to the worlds sea birds. It’s left us scratching our heads just about every time we’ve picked it up.

The first time we noticed “Cochran,” well I didn’t really see him, I noticed guano dripping down our stern stadium seat. I said to Marce,”there must have been a booby on the roof tonight.” Now, I like birds. We’ve been marveling at their grace and beauty as they carve turns to swoop down touching the surface of the waves with their wing tips. We rarely see this lot dive into the ocean but while in the Galapagos boobies dove from fifty feet at high speed, smacking the water all around us. My theory is that these guys were sent out to catch fish and told not to come back until it was their turn to watch the eggs…so what’s the rush, who brought the beer?

So, as I say we’ve been watching them try out several strategies for landing on a bucking catamaran and apparently it’s not so easy. So with a prudent amount of caution I peeked over our Bimini roof. Hmmmm, grayish brown, beige body, red feet, guilty look. Mr. Harrison lists no such bird. Marce says, “that must be Cochran.” When I crept closer I got the hey this is my spot, indignant booby look. I asked him to leave but he wouldn’t hear of it. I took a quick look around and knew he had to go. Yelling, arm-waving, and towel-snapping didn’t work. Shoving with a boat hook did. Let me add that no birds were hurt during the telling of this tale.

What followed was more like a Keystone Cops short than anything. Suddenly they all knew the secret of how to land on EV. I’d see one flying by and he’d look over at us and you could just see him thinking hey, sweet ride. It didn’t help that we’d sailed into a wind hole and were just ghosting along for days.

I was exhausted climbing out on the side deck with the boat hook to encourage some birdbrain off the roof. That’s when we decided to come to grips with our light air spinnaker. Now this thing has been stored down in our port bow locker in a large bag called a turtle since we bought EV. Oh we’ve flown spinnakers before but this one is an asymmetric type with a furler and we know that some very bad things can happen if and when things don’t go well with spinnakers. Oh what the hell, how hard could it be?

I pulled the sheets out of the turtle on the trampoline and found the various parts I thought we’d need. That’s when I looked up and saw nine boobies wobbling on our lifelines, just one short of a minyan, all of them fascinated with the process unfolding before them. I said,”hey, no free rides you’ll have to do chores just like the rest of us!”

It was nip-and-tuck but we flew our green and white spinnaker all day and got it back in the turtle before night fall.

Just a polite smattering of guano from the judges.

Pikers!

During my watch last night rollers started coming across our beam, then a breeze started, not much but enough to push the boat forward. Then followed hours and hours of confused seas and wind spinning around the compass so that the autopilot had trouble keeping us on course and nothing we did with the jib could settle the boat down. We bounced, we rolled, we corkscrewed, all in about 6 kts of breeze. 

By morning the wind finally picked a direction and stuck with it and Jack had the boat moving more or less on course but as soon as I came up on watch a rain squall overtook us and we took shelter inside from the downpour. The wind only reached the 20s for a moment and was mostly 15 kts and it was over in ten minutes. I was happy to have the salt washed off the decks because today was another predicted becalmed day and I was planning to hook up the hose and rinse the decks myself. No need now and we’d rather be underway. The sun is up, the wind is still very light, Jack needs some sleep and I’ll take over as soon as we get the email out. Meanwhile the Guatemalan coffee hits the spot.

My watch, moonrise, becalmed.

In our defense, we found ourselves in a place where no one, as far as anyone can remember, has departed from for the South Pacific. Most people leave from either Panama by way of the Galapagos, as we did last year, or from Mexico, usually around the area of La Paz and Puerto Vallarta, or from even further north, from San Diego. We carefully threaded the needle between the expected effects of the Tehuanapec north of us and the Papagayos south of us, both areas of unpredictable high winds. We threaded so well that we had no wind for the first few days and ended up motoring a full 24 hours before we could raise sail and enjoy a perfect breeze. “Stay north of the equator in the trade winds as long as possible,” our research told us. And that was our plan. But after a few glorious days of sailing we grew overconfident and headed more on the rhumb line toward our destination. As the wind gradually dropped we adjusted sails accordingly and accepted that we won’t make our target arrival date. By Friday it was clear we had sailed right out of the wind, and the weather data we downloaded on the satellite phone confirmed we are surrounded by no wind, likely for the next three days at least. Remember the movie “Dead Calm?” That’s us. Without the psychopath. So we have between 2 and 4 kts of wind and flat seas. Our mainsail and jib are too heavy and require too much pressure to move us in such light air. But wait, we have a spinnaker that’s only been out of its bag long enough to get a good rinse before being packed away again beside the generator. It’s now or never. Sailors know that spinnakers are finicky and require adult supervision. We weren’t sure we could figure it out, or even if we have all the right parts but we hauled out the owner’s manual, systematically went though the steps and with a satisfying WHOMP! as our little breeze filled the chute, voila! We are flying a spinnaker. Sadly, it isn’t making a huge difference in our forward speed, which is hovering somewhere between 1.5 to 2 kts and we’re going to be in this pickle until probably Wednesday when the wind is predicted to start filling in again. Still, it’s a beautiful Sunday, Jack made a delicious omelet for breakfast, we learned a new skill. And that’s not bad.

Every dawn we meet in the cockpit. I’m the night man so I’ll have been up since 0100 and Marce will have just gotten up from her six hour off watch so neither of us is operating at peak efficiency. Don’t get me wrong, on watch we grab catnaps in between our wakeup alarms set at fifteen minute or so intervals, just to have a look around, but there’s nothing like getting a large chunk of continuous sleep. So as I was saying our energy profiles are heading in different directions when we meet. Marce is facing a heavy load of the morning SSB nets, position reports, sending and receiving email and I’m sure I don’t know what all else. All I’m interested in is eating a little breakfast and getting some sleep, but I’ll stay up until she’s finished with her work load.

Of course we pass on wind and sea state information and any concerns we have, chief among those concerns these days is where to cross the ITCZ. Our understanding is that there’s more wind five or six degrees above the equator than below so we’re staying above the ITCZ longer than we anticipated. You know the ITCZ is that squally band of doldrums near the equator where, in days gone past, mariners used to have to dump their horses overboard because they drink too much water while stuck waiting for some wind. Sometimes one forgets what a miracle our reverse osmosis water maker is and our reconstructed water maker is doing very well. Yr. humbl. obdnt. Skpr. works where his talents lay.

Lately the mood of the Pacific has moderated and it couldn’t have come too soon. Gone are the twenty five kt winds and all those nasty nine foot, closely spaced, breaking lumps marching down on us out of north east. It’s been a real revelation to find that with the new rig we can get meaningful speed out of Escape Velocity in less than ten knots of breeze, which is all we have now, and we’re facing the doldrums of the ITCZ. Thank you, Colin Mack and the crew at Mack Sails for a job well done. So it looks like you name your poison, too much wind and waves or a light breeze and relatively flat seas. I wonder if something in-between is possible?

We have to pinch ourselves that we’ve been at sea over a week. The big bite is that on the map we’re still just south of Texas when it seems to us we’re in outer space. Winds are very light and likely to remain so for many, many miles so our hoped for arrival in mid April may have been a bit optimistic. We’re moving along steadily but much slower than our anticipated average speed of 5 kts. That’s ok, though. The weather is fine with only the occasional light squally patch that makes us reduce sail only to find ourselves under-canvassed during the night watches and reluctant to wake the offwatch to do anything about it. There are worse things in life, but it’s cold turkey for those of us addicted to news of the world on demand. Our little portable shortwave radio seems to have packed it in so there’s no BBC or anything else to keep us informed about the world. We mostly read, listen to music and talk about what to make for dinner. Last night a large seabird moved in on the port gate and it took both Jack and me many tries to convince him to move along, even aided by a boat hook. He squawked and complained and kept flying back but as cute as he was, his hind quarters were suspended just above the cleat where we secure the jib preventer. Yuck, no thanks, buddy. I tried the bread in the Ziploc bag recipe yesterday but I maybe didn’t mix it well and ended up with an unmanageable lumpy sticky mess that I couldn’t handle easily for the planned English muffins. We made pizza instead, and had a late dinner after the usual sail change before dark. Lovely fresh mango for breakfast from our dwindling supply of fruit.

This is the beginning of our seventh day at sea and life is good. Last night we passed the westernmost point we reached last year before disaster struck, but of course we’re much further north this time. It’s cloudy, which is nice for onboard comfort but not so good for the solar panels. We’re doing well with power so far, even with the 24-hour running of the nav equipment and autopilot, and the frequent use of the SSB radio. A word about the SSB, which means Single Side Band. It’s a marine radio with a modem attached that connects to the laptop and makes it possible to send and receive email, get weather info and send position reports, all at an incredibly slow rate. But it’s radio and it’s free, unlike our satellite phone which does the same thing faster and more reliably but very expensively. We like to use the SSB as much as possible, but there’s apparently a dearth of ham radio operators on this side of the Pacific and I’ve had trouble connecting to a relay station all week. Finally this morning I tried again as soon as I got up and managed to squeeze out the email and position reports that have been stacking up in the outbox. So check the Winlink and Yotreps links to the right and see if our position has updated. It may not be completely up to date but one way or another we’ll try to keep up with some way for you to track us on our passages. We haven’t had a drop of rain, but with the cloud cover the air is heavy and salty. The last of our bread has succumbed to mold and I dug a 1-lb. bag of flour out of the guest room to try a recipe that calls for dumping the ingredients in a gallon Ziploc bag and mixing it by squishing it with your hands. I sure hope it works because having to clean up a doughy bowl and breadboard doesn’t really appeal to me in these seas. It’s not bad, mind you, the sailing is glorious, it’s just that accomplishing anything takes certain feats of gymnastics that are beyond my energy level today. It’s much more pleasant to sit outside and watch the birds and occasionally dolphins and contemplate the beauty of the sea.