Position: 10 degrees, 46 minutes South; 140 degrees, 57 minutes West
Blue sky, blue water, all day. 14 knots of wind and 3 foot waves. Nice, nice and nice. It’s also about 80 degrees. Hard to believe we’re in the middle of the ocean, it’s so nice today. Last night was a bit less comfortable though. We were essentially passing from North to South on the West side of the Marquesas and the islands, although more than 20 miles to windward, made the seas very bumpy and uncomfortable. Basically, each island diffracted the large Easterly swells which left us in the diffraction pattern. We had waves combining from all kinds of different directions forming into pyramidal shapes at times which threw Charisma around quite a bit leaving me with a couple substantial new bruises from cooking dinner and getting thrown about the galley. We had the hatches closed fearing a rogue type of wave would combine from out of nowhere and dump saltwater into the cabin. I even put in one of the companionway boards because I saw a couple alarming size/steepness waves sneak up from behind us. We’ve talked with several other boats who got surprised the same way and spent the following day cleaning up and I wanted to avoid that scenario.
Anyway, we’re past the islands now and the waves have settled down to a comfortable ride. We’ve been cruising all day with just the jib doing 5 and ½ knots or so and catnapping trying to catch up on sleep that is hard to come by on the first night out. We’re not in the rhythm yet, although 0300 we’re about there.
Nothing much else to report for now, except for any Hams out there. If you have access to a ham radio with a good signal, we’re checking in with Pacific Seafarers Net at 0330 daily. We’re about #20 in the check-in, so the actual time we come up is closer to 0345. It’s basically a way to stay in touch. If you don’t call in on a given night, they start an alert and look for you. It’s a great service and many of our friends are on it as well when underway for more than a day or two passage. For instance, we’re in touch with our friend Dave on Caminoe who is right now on passage from Mexico to Hawaii.
OK, now you’re real sailors again, none of that land lubber stuff. Glad to hear the cruise control is working well. Too bad you can’t tune in SiriusXM radio. You could even get a Giants game. They won today BTW.
Good thing you are “tuning in, turning on, and dropping out”. News in the rat race world is gettin’ worse (U.S. about ready to go into another recession, Euro about to come apart at the seams as Greece drops out/gets kicked out and Spain next,), China has stopped growing depressing world economy, nobody can afford college anymore and they only want non-residents anyway, and most people could care less about global warming and very few believe in science anymore. Frankly, I would not be surprised if we end up in a world wide depression within a year. Good news: SpaceX sent a capsule to the space station and splashed it down off Baja successfully.
Keep smiling.