Distance sailed in last 24 hours: 206 nm
Distance to Hilo, Hawaii: 1697 nm
Latitude: 13 59.690 N
Longitude: 130 10.599 W
COG: 258M
SOG: 8.9 kts under sail
Wind: 16 kts NE
Seas: 3 ft swell, 4 ft NE wind waves
Weather: 90% Cloud Cover
Barometric Pressure: 1012.1, rising
Sea Temperature: 80 F
Yesterday saw another very pleasant day of excellent progress across the sea. It was warm and sunny with a good breeze, the perfect temperature to lounge about in the cockpit without feeling too hot. Samadhi continued to surge across the Pacific at a very good clip, without requiring much attention from her crew.
Feeling brave, and disappointed by our speed of "only 8 to 9 knots" after breakfast, we decided to fly the spinnaker. The wind was blowing around 15 knots, which is right near the limit for the spinnaker we brought along. Also, we are sailing on a reach (The wind is hitting us on the side.) instead of a broad reach (wind at our rear quarter), or a run (wind behind Samadhi). The day was sunny and beautiful, and the seas were fairly smooth so we rigged the sail and launched it. As the spinnaker started to fill, we trimmed the sheet to configure the sail for reaching. Our speed immediately started going up, 9, 10, 11, 12 knots... Samadhi was straining, the sail wasn't very stable, and we were heeling quite a bit more than we like. The autopilot had its maximum of 10 degrees of rudder applied, and Samadhi was still having difficulty sailing in a straight line!
The chute was essentially dragging the boat through the water in a most inefficient manner and making a massive, turbulent wake behind us. Yelling over the wind, we decided to put away the spinnaker, and thus ended our morning's excitement. Unfurling the genoa and staysail netted us the same 8 to 9 knots we had before and much less stress on all of us! We concluded that we really need a different spinnaker if we want to use it for reaching in the winds we were experiencing. The one we have is simply too big and not cut for reaching. Maybe someone visiting Hawaii from the Bay Area wants to lug one with them from our storage locker? When the sails we trimmed, we sat down and drank some cold Lio Té iced tea and decided that our speed was just dandy.
A little while later, Calvert, the boy's school, asked (through the lesson manual) what we would take with us if we had to leave precipitously and could only bring what we could carry. This is something that's never too far from our mind when out at sea. There's always the possibility of needing to leave most of our belongings to the deep as we move into the newer, more cramped quarters of the life raft. It's another one of those things that we plan for but hope never to do. The philosophical exercise was particularly interesting for Kelly and Phillip because of the boys' answers. Alexander stressed that he would bring along some magazines about video games "so [he]'d have something to read" while Nicholas wanted to make sure to have his wallet and a flashlight.
The past few days, Nicholas has been working on a children's story he's writing with the working title of "Mr. Beetle Blasts Off." Yesterday, he almost completed the rough draft. Soon it'll be time for him to get started on the illustrations. Abuela Linda, we wish you could be here to help guide our budding artist!
While making the rounds on deck, Phillip found three flying fish, side by side. There was a large one, a medium one, and a truly tiny one! The kids compared them to some sort of aquatic Goldilocks story. Regardless, they were no longer flying anywhere without assistance. Phillip helped them into the sky for their final flight back into the sea.
We have been receiving e-mails from a surprising number of people who are following our trip. It's great to hear from friends and acquaintances and nice to know people are taking an interest in our passage to Hawaii! One of the highlights of our day is downloading our email and reading it. (It usually only happens twice--once in the morning, and once at night. This means that it could easily be 24 hours or more before you receive a response to something you've sent us.) Somehow email isn't nearly so special on land.
Just after dinner, as they were about to dig into their Kinder "sorpresas" and unveil the toy inside, the boys had a call from their mother. Afterwards, we had an interesting conversation about satellite phones, and long distance communication in general. It was very difficult for the boys to believe that ships on the open sea did not have telephones until recently. We are still not sure that they truly believed that ships went all over the world with no communication whatsoever... it just doesn't seem possible to them! The Iridium satellite phone may be expensive, and it isn't going to win any contests for being sexy or cool, but there isn't any other way that you could telephone us out here.
We barbecued hamburgers for dinner. The flying fish told us that they thought they smelled delicious, much better than flying fish sandwiches anyhow. We tried to explain to the flying fish about what a cow was, but they didn't seem to believe us either. We tried to talk with the squid but they only stared back at us. Everyone knows squid can't talk!
We spent a fair bit of time in the cockpit simply watching the waves and the endless shapes they make. Sometimes, as two waves meet, a shimmering translucent tower of blue appears. As the sunlight shines through the waves, the resulting color is like the finest gemstones. It certainly helps that the ocean water here is unbelievably clean and transparent. It probably sounds strange to be watching waves as opposed to watching a sitcom or some televised sporting event. We found it to be the equal of anything the entertainment industry has to offer. It's also possible that we are starting to go crazy...
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