Oops, forgot to post today’s position. Here it is:

13 degrees, 27 minutes North; 113 degrees 55 minutes West

Self portrait on Day Seven

Happy Easter everyone!

With dinner and the nightly roll call done, we came up the companionway ladder to find ourselves face-to-face with a blue footed booby sitting on the dodger right above our heads. He was very unconcerned that we were on his boat. As the evening progressed we also gained one on the bow pulpit and one on the lifelines about midship. They all stayed until morning. Alas, my booby deterrent system had one flaw: the boobies snuck in when I wasn’t looking.

At this point, completely outnumbered by boobies, I decided Charisma will now become an international wildlife sanctuary dedicated to the preservation of boobies. I will be applying for grant money. We will also be marketing Blue Footed Booby Guano. Known to be an aphrodisiac by New Guinea tribesmen (who know about these things), I’m sure it will do well. Limited quantities will be available for this coming holiday season, so get your orders in soon.

2200 start of the evening watch. We finally have some wind after two days of very light air. It’s veered around behind us and we’re now broad-reaching at about 7 knots, sliding down wave after wave. Nice breeze, full moon behind us; I just had a funny fantasy moment. I was watching the water go by as I often do sailing back to Berkeley at the end of the day and was thinking; “someday it will be like this sailing to the South Pacific”. Hey!! Wait a minute… Hard to believe we’re really out here doing this.

0800. I’m having fun with the General Ham license. The Ham bands are so much clearer than the SSB. The reception is great. I just finished a morning net I call into called Picante Net. It’s run very informally by the guys in Puerto Vallarta who also ran the Ham tests. Check in is between 0600 and 0700. This morning I was talking with them 500 miles to the East and also talking with one of the other boats who left a month ago, has made the Marquesas and is on their way to Tahiti. They are over 2000 miles to the East of us and South of the equator. Amazing you can do this with a radio from a relatively small boat and with not much power.

So….Message to Jon Eberly; Jon, if you can get on Picante Net some morning, it would be fun to see if we can span from here to San Francisco. Picante Net is on 6.212.0 MhZ at 1200 Zulu every morning except Sunday. I usually check in around 1245Z and catch the tail end of the net. Very informal and they know me as “Charisma” (they don’t do call signs. Funny for a bunch of guys who run Ham licensing). Drop me an email if you think you might be on and I’ll be sure to listen for you (or let me know if there’s an alternate time/freq you might be able to get on).

So, mostly that’s it for today. By the way, we’re now very solidly in the tradewinds. We even set the pole this morning after Ann got up. We’re now wing on wing and nicely sliding down the waves almost DDW with Wilson doing a Fabulous job of steering, making a course of 220 down the rhumb line toward Hiva Oa. We should start seeing some days in the 120+ mile range at this point. I’m starting to plan our crossing through the ITCZ, so spent a few hours this morning getting weather faxes to start plotting where the Zone is and where we might want to “cut through” to avoid the worst of the convection.

Stay Tuned

One of many, many beautiful sunsets at sea.

I can’t believe we have been out here for seven days already. Time is flying! I know that we’ve shared bits of this journey with you in Bob’s evening blogs but I thought I would share some highlights and lowlights. I will share lowlights first.

Lowlights: Light wind! We have had one night and one afternoon where the wind is just not cooperating. That means on watch you actually have to sit at the helm and steer or constantly adjust the Monitor. Not the worst job, just frustrating. Luckily only Bob has seen a 0.00 knots reading. I think my lowest has been 1.7.

Distance to Way Point Reading. On the Navpod at the helm our DTW (Distance to Way Point) indicator is unable to record more than a 1000 miles. So every time you come on watch it STILL says 1000. Can’t wait to see that start going down! (As of this moment, it’s 2049 miles to go out of 2648 when we started)

Poop Deck. Unfortunately as Bob mentioned our pet Boobies are not potty trained. You’d think with this huge ocean right next to the boat they could use it. Alas, every morning includes cleaning the dodger and the deck of poop.

Last of the lettuce. Tonight we will be using the last of our lettuce. Onto cabbage salads.

Lack of Fish. We just had a false alarm on the hand line and hope that now that we are picking up speed we will soon catch dinner.

Constant contact with family and friends. We are becoming weaned from the ready contact we are so used to due to internet accessibility. But we LOVE the comments coming in on the blog. Nice to stay connected. We have lots of thinking time and our friends and family rank high in there. We hope you all have a wonderful Easter!

Highlights: Sitting on our “front porch” enjoying the late afternoon sun. We were sitting on the cabin top the other day just watching the waves (the water is so gloriously blue!) and the boobies and the sun. It really is romantic!

Watching the full moon setting as the sun is rising behind your back. I never realized you could see both at one time. I guess you just need enough horizon.

Radio Check In. We have made it our routine to finish dinner and have the dishes done in time to catch the 0200 Zulu (8 pm) radio check in. It is amazing that we can hear boats as far away as the Marquesas! Three boats in the Puddle Jump 2012 Class have already made landfall with a possible fourth tonight. These boats left in mid-March. It’s fun to listen to peoples positions too and hear them crossing the equator. Also fun to listen as the last of our friends jump off and join the fun.

Dinner. Not that I thought that Bob’s great cooking would wane on the open ocean, but we have been eating like royalty. No fish yet, but plenty of good food. And I have contributed too! I have made yogurt every few days and bread! Free Spirit Dave gave us a fabulous recipe that provided a loaf of bread one night and the second half became pizza dough last night! And our lettuce has held up beautifully so we have had lovely salads. Time together. Our watch system is working really well. We are getting 4-5 hours of sleep during nighttime watches and a nap in the day and best of all, early evenings are time to just enjoy this adventure together!

Weather. We are in t-shirts and shorts during the day, sweaters at night. The water is getting warmer every day!