Position: 05 degrees, 19 minutes South; 131 degrees, 50 minutes West (151 NM)

It’s 0400 local time. Charisma’s bounding along leaving a wide, white swath in the dark night water under a 360 degree canopy of stars. The familiar Big Dipper to my left and the new Southern Cross to my right. I’m keeping her a bit throttled back tonight after last night’s squally episode. As usual we have a double reefed main and 40% rolled jib since this configuration works pretty well at the current 15-20 knots, but will tolerate up to 30 knots of wind. Still, we’re moving along nicely and I’m in a parallel groove listening to Bob Dylan’s “Thunder On The Mountain” on my iPod. Classic driving rock and roll a la Chuck Berry.

Boat’s have personalities and Charisma is no exception. Some days they will do anything you ask, other days they can be very contrary. Wilson the wind vane also has his own personality and I think Wilson and Charisma are in cahoots! Most of the time, I can get them to go the course I want, but sometimes, no matter what I do or what I change, they sail the course they want to sail. Last night, I was trying to sail 225 degrees magnetic. Wilson and Charisma wanted to go 210, which is OK, but not quite where we want to go. So, we’re on 210. I retrim the jib and main a bit, tweak the wind vane adjustment as well as the wheel and; there we go. We’re on 225. I watch the compass for a while and we’re good, so I go do something else and with a wink and a nod, Wilson and Charisma take off on their own. I come back to the helm and look. 210 degrees. So, I change a few more things to rebalance the boat, get her going on 225 degrees, watch for a while. OK, good. Now it’s working. I go off and come back about 20 minutes later and; what the heck!! We’re back to 210!! Oh well, sometimes it’s best to just go with the flow, so I leave Wilson and Charisma to their own for the night. They were still on 210 this morning after Ann’s watch and the ride was getting a little rough, so I changed it to 225. This time they set up and we’ve been going 225 all day. Go figure.

Speaking of the wind vane, as I mentioned Wilson does all the steering. Some folks will wonder; “what the heck do YOU do all day then?” Well, on a long trip like this it’s about voyage management and not steering. You’re monitoring the wind and waves for correct course and sail configuration. Too much sail and the boat won’t track no matter how hard you try and not enough sail and it similarly won’t steer well (and you go too slow!). There’s also periodic planning for weather and navigation. At least once/day I get a weather report on the radio to check whether there are any weather surprises we need to avoid and I also check our position and course on the chart; cross checking against the GPS Chartplotter and making sure we have a hard copy of our latest position in case the electronics quit.

One of the more time consuming tasks in general boat maintenance. Checking rigging to make sure things are tight (found a shackle on the mainsheet the other day that had backed out and was 1/8″ from letting go) and lubricate squeaks. There’s also a lot of systems management. Checking the water and if the tank is less than 75% full, running the watermaker which requires a set of tasks to start it up as well as shut it down. Power management is a big one. We run on our batteries. If they go dead, we’re stuck without navigation, refrigeration and the capability to make water, so I spend a fair amount of time watching them. I adjust the solar panels during the day to try and maintain an optimum angle for charging. At night, when the panels go dormant, I deploy the hydro-electric system. This is a propeller on a very stiff rope that turns a generator which provides electricity for the batteries. Our last alternative is the engine which has an alternator that will charge the batteries. In the 20 days we’ve been out though, we’ve only had to resort to the engine two times during a period in the ITCZ when it was 100% cloudy for two days and we were using the radar a lot. There are a bunch of other secondary systems and then Ann keeps things going (on top of keeping her watches) with laundry, bread baking cookie baking and yogurt making which are things that really make the difference between “roughing it” and having a pretty enjoyable time afloat. Special treats like that out here really help morale when it’s rough and squally and it’s easy to get irritable. She also has developed an incredible spreadsheet that helps track our inventory of food and supplies. Each day this needs to be updated for usage. So far, we are doing well with finding things! And, thank goodness, she makes breakfast and lunch and (most importantly) does all of the dishes. This is no easy feat giving the rocking and rolling of the boat. It takes a lot of balance to do simple things!

Speaking of squalls

You don’t really see them at night. That’s one of the things that makes them so sneaky. What happens is you start to notice that the stars have disappeared. If it’s a big squall, a short time after you realize the stars are gone, it then seems like you’re sailing down into a long, dark tunnel. It gets very dark and ominous. You start to feel the wind cool and then a few raindrops. At this point, you have about 30 seconds to assess the sail combination that you have up and decide if it’s going to work for the gusts. If not, you have to reef/reduce sail fast. If the sails are set right, then you duck down below and start closing the port holes (12 of them), hatches (2) and put the companionway boards in place before the deluge starts. You don’t want the boat to get wet down below, because in the tropics in this humidity, it will never get dry.

So, if you got it all right, when the wind hits it’s Nantucket Sleigh Ride time. If not, Charisma goes wildly out of control, overpowering the wind vane steering and you have to go fight the buckets of rain to change something to get back into control.

At night the powerful squalls develop right in front of your eyes from that little “dark spot” you hardly noticed where the stars started to disappear into a huge looming beast. At that point you feel like Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise preparing to battle a giant cosmic wormhole or be blasted into another dimension. “Spock, what is it?” “Logically Captain, it shouldn’t exist” Ann doesn’t like squalls. (Now Ann speaks-true statement! They sneak up on you and Charisma and Wilson start rocking and rolling. I want to let Bob sleep but I can’t help thinking there is something else I should do to ease the impact. I get the boat shut up tightly but at times she just keeps heeling. Having experienced the ITCZ in Charisma I know she can handle it. But it still can take my breath away and I utter numerous prayers through the squalls.)

So, what about that Time Machine thing (oh yeah that’s right, the title of this post). Ann was looking at me the other morning and said; “What have you done? You look younger!” Ironically, I was downloading the pictures of our equator crossing and thinking the same thing; that Ann looked ten years younger (I’m guessing at the ten year thing, since I didn’t know her ten years ago, but it looks about right). Amazing but true. We’re getting younger. Maybe one of those squalls DID have a cosmic wormhole in it and we went through! Tonight’s dinner plans changed given the swells. We opted for Mac n’ Cheese with fried Spam. See Jerry, sometimes we eat the basics! Of course it went great with the last of the nice white wine from Free Spirit Dave!