Here we are on another two and a half day long leg of the journey. This time to a small reef in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that’s only just barely charted. On the chart and on the GPS it’s just a little blob with no features. Barely above water. Should be interesting.

The alarm went off at 0400. The first thing I was aware of was the wind howling in the rigging. It was expected, but never a fun thing to wake up to knowing that you’re leaving a warm bed for an unknown ocean. What was it going to be like once we got out of the lee of the island? We jumped up pretty quickly. Ann made coffee and closed portholes and hatches. I set up the wind vane, readied the halyards and cleared the foredeck in preparation for slipping the mooring lines. It’s becoming a pretty well-rehearsed show. (FYI – our trip odometer passed 7,000 miles today!)

After a slug of coffee and gulping down a banana nut muffin that Ann made the night before, we started the engine. Once again the howling in the rigging seemed louder as we prepared to leave. The waves were supposed to be 3 meters. Would they be steep and breaking in this wind? We didn’t take any chances and dressed warmly and added a layer of foul weather gear, PFDs with harnesses and tethers just in case.

Charisma “sails” back and forth at anchor and mooring which means she turns about 30 degrees or so to either side of the wind as the gusts come through. We had two mooring lines and had to time letting them go to a swing to starboard so we would be turning away from Orcinius who was next to us on the port side. I was watching the swings and when I had timed them in my head I told Ann, “On the next swing to starboard I’m letting loose the lines”. Her job would be to steer us around in a 180 degree starboard turn so as to miss Orcinius as well as the reef that was right in front of us and the bigger reef about a ¼ mile to our right that was hidden in the dark although we could hear the waves crashing ashore. OK, the swing started. I dropped the starboard line as it went slack and pulled it aboard. As we swung through the wind to starboard, I also let slip the port line, signaled Ann from the foredeck that we were free and she took care of the rest. We next had to drift on downwind a bit to make room to turn upwind and put up the sails. Given the fact that we would be cutting across the fairly large seas on an angle and with the wind in the mid-twenties, I decided we’d start with just the staysail and storm trysail. That combo should give us about 6 knots boatspeed and still be easy for the wind vane to steer. So up the storm trysail, up the staysail, then a turn downwind, sheet both in, engine to neutral and we’re off. We hit 6 knots right away. Good news there. Now we expectantly waited to see what the seas would be like as we moved beyond the protective lee of the island.

Turned out not too big a deal. The size was (and still is as I write this 12 hours later) impressive, but they for the most part weren’t breaking, so we are surging down them at 6-7+ knots. The wind hasn’t been bad either after the first four or five hours. It’s now down in the high teens and I’ve taken the staysail down and we have the full 130% jib rolling us forward. I’ve left the storm trysail up instead of the main since we’re going fast enough right now and don’t need the extra hassle of reefing and unreefing as conditions change.

So, there we are. The big decisions of the cruising day. Other than that we’re been reading our books and watching the larger waves loom up behind us. Always impressive sights to see huge walls of water come up behind until you find your neck craning as you look UP at the top of the wave overhead, and then see how Charisma just lifts up and over easy as you please.

There’s a beautiful almost full moon shinning a lot of light tonight although right this minute it’s behind some clouds. Dark, light, dark, light….that’s going to be the theme for tonight. Oh, here it comes out again.

As I say out here; simple pleasures.