Day 17: Earning It

Before 1947, when Chuck Yeager flew a plane faster than the speed of sound, that threshold in the sky was called the sound barrier. Several lives and planes were lost trying to break through that wall in the sky. As I understand it, there is a drag coefficient that increases exponentially as a plane approaches the speed of sound, but that once you "break through" it's smooth sailing, so to speak.

Boy, does that ever sound like the "equator barrier" we have to break through to get to the southern hemisphere and the trade winds that are calling like Sirens. First we faced doldrums and squalls in the Monsoon Trough, and then in the ITCZ, and then the Equatorial Counter Current. (The last one was a doozy; why didn't anyone warn me of Equatorial Counter Current?)

Imagine trying to get to French Polynesia. You're halfway there, 1,300 miles away. It's still southwest of you. Imagine for days and days you've had every sail plan up and down and back up and down again, just trying to make miles. It's no fun. Imagine today the winds blowing directly from the southwest. So you tack and sail due south. All looks good on the magnetic compass, but then you see that your true heading is 25 degrees east of south. Yikes! Reticent to give up any of the westerly miles you've made, you tack over to 260 degrees, just south of due west. But in these seas and light airs, that isn't tenable, even with the motor going. You point, point, point and finally get her sailing at about 280, just north of west. You're slowly giving up your southerly progress and your speed over ground is almost zero (yes, the Equatorial Counter Current). Obviously, you were better off on the other tack-even given the easterly component--because that one at least helped you get south, out of this ocean river and closer to the elusive southern trades. So you tack again, only to realize that the wind has now dropped several knots and you really need the motor to assist, to keep both course and momentum in the large, steep, colliding chop of these confused seas. Of course, you only carry 50 gallons of fuel and you've already used a bunch motoring south through the doldrums, so you keep the RPMs low, just what is required, nothing more.

Down below, you study your new track on the iPad. The easterly component hurts, but you take comfort that you are moving south--though only at 1.9 knots. You check the fuel tank gauge and feel a tad anxious. How long will this go on?

You pull out the blender and the vacuum, taking advantage of the power that the engine is providing. You've finished your smoothie and vacuumed half the sole when you realize the motion has changed and you dart back to the cockpit.

After messing about with things for 20 minutes, you face the fact that the motor sailing isn't working out as well as it seemed when you went below. It would be nice if you could increase power, but you really can't. You shut down the motor and raise the code zero. You're pointing and the wind is light, but these conditions otherwise do not resemble any in which you've flown this sail in the past. An hour later, during which time you raised the code zero, unfurled it, furled it, dropped it, and stowed it, you realize the winds are just too light to sail upon these seas.

Maybe they're just enough to heave to?

Yes!

Ahh, that's a bit better. You go below and check the iPad. You're moving three-quarters of a knot heading E-NE-back to Mexico.

Mexico.

Why did you want to leave Mexico?

My friend, Behan on Totem, says that longer passages remind her of her pregnancies. She said they, "begin with discomfort and a new reality, transition to a spectacular adventure with a natural high, and eventually become something I'm just ready to put behind me." That seems like a good analogy, but during which trimester does an expecting mother face the Monsoon Trough, the ITCZ, and the Equatorial Counter Current?

Behan also said that, "Just as the pain of childbirth is quickly forgotten, any tough days on a passage are quickly lost to memory."

I sure hope so. We're on track to log the longest passage in recorded history.

--MR

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Day 14: Hot and Motoring

We're 5 degrees above the equator heading due south. This isn't a heading for the Marquesas, but a heading on the shortest path out of the area of unsettled weather we need to cross to get to the southern trade winds. Today it's 94 degrees Fahrenheit in the cabin with blue sky overhead and dark-bottomed cumulonimbus clouds in every direction to the horizon. Many of these seem perched on black smears that indicate heavy rainfall beneath. There is hardly a breath of wind and we've been motoring slowly (about 3.5 knots, to conserve fuel) the past 24 hours on still-lumpy seas.

Though we'd rather be sailing, it's not all bad. Between sleep we've been cooking (Windy made yogurt and black beans this morning, I made plantains and a cabbage salad this afternoon) and reading (Windy's cracking up over Lost on Planet China by J. Maartn Troost and reading aloud the interesting passages--even suggesting we consider moving to Hong Kong), and writing comic books (this is how the girls spend a lot of their time).

Yesterday afternoon, though the seas were less settled than now, we stopped Del Viento and Windy and I took turns jumping in to bathe. It was heaven. The water temperature and color were both magnificent. We rinsed off with a bit of fresh water from the deck wash and now we both feel like new people.

It kind of feels like ground hog day out here, again and again. We don't leave the boat. We have no social plans with others that differentiate one day from the rest. We have nothing but landfall to look forward to. Sure, we read different books and eat different foods and have different conversations and see different sunsets and read different emails, but all in a very small environment. I looked forward to this passage for just this reason, to see how this astronaut-like existence would feel. It's not unpleasant. None of us are climbing the walls and tempers aren't rising or anything. If I had to use only one word to describe these days, it would be peaceful.

--MR

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Day 13: The Good, the Bad, the Dead

The Good: Lots of good to report. Spirits aboard remain high. It's body cleaning day--Windy is washing the girls' hair as I type. We've been smelling pretty ripe. I plan to go on deck later and take a proper salt water shower. We're looking forward to a Thai peanut curry dish tonight, with brown rice and fake meat. Found some additional frozen bananas at the bottom of the freezer, so chocolate-banana smoothies are still on the menu. Windy was looking for something in the nether reaches of the forward hanging locker and came across the long-lost bag of 6 pounds of non-spaghetti pasta (I don't know if she found what she was looking for in the process, but that's how it goes).

The Bad: The first reefing line broke sometime during Windy's watch early this morning. It's a pretty heavy line (7/16"), so I was surprised. It broke right where it does a 180 degree bend through the reefing clew. There was no sign of chafe, but it's a high-stress point and the line is probably pretty old. Fortunately, it broke only a foot away from where the bitter end attaches to the boom, so it was easy to pull in the slack and reattach. I fear my computer is on its last legs. It's doing weird things, like the previous one did just before the mother board gave up the ghost. Before writing this post, I finished backing up everything to an external hard drive. This computer isn't even two years old, but it is a cheapo. We've not seen the sun or stars for the past few days, nothing but overcast skies in this gloomy ITCZ. It will be a thrill to emerge from the far side of this. And we've been moving pretty slow in lighter airs. It will be this time tomorrow before we're at the halfway point of this passage (in terms of distance).

The Dead: Daily we meet the foggy gaze of one or more unfortunate fish on deck. Eleanor noted that it's natural selection in reverse. Most of the flying fish we've seen on this trip don't soar more than 2 or 3 feet above water. But these super-able flyers who successfully rise to the level of our deck, die.

--MR

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Day 12: Encounter

About 9:00 a.m. this morning, Eleanor bolted up from the settee pointing out the companionway, "A plane!" Windy figured Eleanor was over reacting to a commercial airliner passing overhead, but dutifully turned to take a look. She heard it at the same time she caught sight of a red fuselage very low and close. She and the girls raced up the stairs into the cockpit.

Windy said a small red and white helicopter finished a tight turn around Del Viento and then hovered off the port beam so close that if it wasn't for the roar of the rotor blades, she felt she could have called out to the two guys in the cockpit and had a conversation. As it was, they were trying to communicate. Windy picked up the cockpit VHF remote and motioned to speak. They shook their heads and the pilot made a thumbs-up gesture and then shrugged as if to ask if everything was okay. Windy gave a thumbs up and then the pilot and co-pilot waved and banked away-quickly disappearing over the horizon.

"Why didn't you wake me?!" I asked when I heard the story upon rising at 11:30 a.m.

"There was no time, it all happened very fast."

"Was it military? Was their writing on the side?"

She said it definitely wasn't military-shiny red with white accents and a swooping logo that was a bit like the stylized kangaroo on the side of every Quantas jet. There was no writing except for the registration numbers and she didn't note which letter they began with. She said it was a small helicopter.

We're literally 1,000 miles from anything. Helicopters don't have very impressive ranges. It had to have come off a boat nearby. I didn't see anything on the AIS until about noon, when a ship named Salt Lake City passed north of us, heading north, about 9 miles away.

There is not much to see out here, so that was pretty exciting, even for someone who slept through the event. We also saw dolphins today, which is a first for this passage. The only other living things we see consistently out here are boobies (mostly white ones) and tropic birds (the ones with the distinctive long tail feather trailing behind) and flying fish. The flying fish have been unusual for their size, smaller than we've ever seen, some only an inch long. The largest has been about 8 inches long and I'd say the median length is probably 3-4 inches.

That's all. We're deep into squall territory, getting hit left and right. We batten down, sometimes we heave to, and listen to the torrential rain pound the cabin top as one passes overhead. Our progress is a bit slower now because we're constantly reefed to some extent, but so far we haven't seen the winds die completely. The seas are still big and confused, so between squalls we're always wanting more wind to keep the sails filled.

I think tomorrow or so we'll reach our halfway point.

--MR

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Day 10: Boisterous!

Given our goal to cross this area of squalls and flat calms as quickly as possible to reach the southern trades, a several-hundred-mile-wide ITCZ* is not our friend. We're approaching the edge of it now (at least where it is currently) and we're still 600 miles north of the equator.

And speaking of now, we are movin' and not groovin' in steep 8- to 9-foot swells coming from two directions. For the past 16 hours, sustained winds have been blowing in the low 20s from our aft quarter. We're headed SSW at 6 knots under a fully-reefed main. We're alternately getting pounded on the side and rolling deeply from gunnel to gunnel (and if you've seen our high freeboard, this is unusual for us) and surfing down following seas. We aren't very comfortable. The only thing that would be worse is entering the ITCZ, losing these northern trades, and being left to wallow in these seas with no wind to fill our sails.

Otherwise, all is good aboard. Eleanor continues to impress with her attention to dish duty, despite the motion. Frances, who normally exhibits a bit of mal de mer, has remained her perky, hungry self, seemingly cured. Del Viento is still holding up well. Recent casualties include the cockpit-mounted inclinometer (smashed by a line wrapped erroneously around the mainsheet traveler car) and two fender whips (which I had to cut after they got tangled up in the water generator tow line).

* inter-tropical convergence zone--a varying area near the equator where the prevailing winds of the northern and southern hemispheres converge, producing unsettled weather

Produce exhausted at Day 10:

Bananas
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Cilantro
Cucumbers
Eggplant
Ginger
Leek
Lettuce
Mushrooms
Pears
Strawberries

Produce remaining at Day 10:

Apples
Avocados
Cabbage
Carrots
Garlic
Jicama
Limes
Onions
Oranges
Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Tomatoes

--MR

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