Sailing Wondertime

Yahooie! We are officially half way there!

My, but this is a big, huge, rolly ocean.

We are at 6 degrees north. It is hot and steamy and you just wouldn’t believe the smell that is growing by the day inside the boat; it oozes and swirls around in the air from our bodies, the dinette cushions, our beds, the garbage, the head, dirty dishes in the sink. We had a little wind squall last night that brought a sprinkle of rain and are definitely hoping to collect enough rain soon to give us all a badly needed freshwater rinse (we are saving the water in our tanks just for drinking and we don’t have a watermaker). The smells and heat — and nonstop rolling — gave all the adult crew another bout of sea-nausea these past few days but we seem to be better today. I managed to not only bake a loaf of sourdough bread this morning (Del Viento, your travelling starter is happy as can be back out here!). I also got an entire pot of last-of-the-zucchini soup going in the pressure cooker just a few minutes ago without having to run outside and put my face in the wind like a puppy dog every few minutes.

The girls are handling the trip amazingly well so far. As I suspected, Leah is thoroughly enjoying the extra time playing games, reading and just talking with her parents. She is very proud that she’s sailing across this ocean and loves to find our position on our various maps and globes. I can tell Holly is pretty much done with all this based on the increasing frequency of temper tantrums, but then maybe she’s just being 3 1/2. We did sit in the cockpit yesterday afternoon and reenacted the entire “Gato con Botas” movie which she was thrilled about and I probably wouldn’t have found time to do except for being out here. Holly tells me she’s looking forward to a playground, ice-cream, and sleeping in her own bed when we arrive at the islands. For what we are asking both girls to cope with, it’s pretty amazing to see how, mostly, happy they are out here.

The NE trades continue to blow steadily at 15-20 knots and we are rocking and rolling, night and day, south.

Total miles at noon: 1323
Miles since yesterday: 129
Number of times we’ve had to fix broken reef hardware on the boom: 2
Gallons of fresh water used to mist ourselves in the cockpit (well worth every drop!): 0.15

The wind came up last night just as we were tucking the girls into bed. It increased from 15 to 25 in what seemed like a matter of minutes. We reduced sail lickity split to just the staysail and were comfortably moving along at 5 knots with only that little sail up. We were hoping that it was just a wind squall and would pass but it wasn’t, the wind whistled in the rigging all night long. Sleep was hard to come by what with all the commotion and rocking back and forth as the waves slid under our port quarter. When it was time for my watch at 4 am the warm damp wind was still gusty but starting to moderate a bit. I curled up in a corner of the cockpit with my ipod and immediately closed my eyes and fell asleep. My eyes snapped open minutes later and I spent the next three hours desperately trying to keep them open, where I’d been trying desperately to sleep just a few hours before. By the time Michael was up at 0800 the wind had dropped enough for us to unfurl the genoa and hoist the reefed main back up. We’re now cruising steadily towards the ITCZ — squallville — and tonight we have just under 600 miles to go to the equator. Getting so close!

Total miles at noon: 1194
Miles since yesterday: 114
Flying fish, deceased, found in the furled mainsail: 1
Cabbages remaining: 5.5

We are definitely in the tropics now; it is hot, humid, sticky and smelly. Combined with the rowdy, confused seas all I want to do is lay in front of a fan and dream of ice-cream. The wind did clock around more to the east, just aft of our beam so we have been able to sail all day with our main and mizzen up as well as the genoa. This has made for a much more comfortable ride and Wondertime is happily ticking the miles off. We continue to celebrate the little milestones: today marked 1000 miles. In a couple more days we’ll officially be half way there and, assuming we don’t drift too long in the doldrums, we should be crossing the equator in less than a week. Then it’s only 800 miles or so more until landfall at Hiva Oa.

Of course, that’s still two weeks to go, many more days of sailing toward the edge of the horizon and waiting for that tiny bit of land to come into view. As I look ahead at the miles and miles to go, I realize I am sailing toward the edge of many things: my endurance, my patience, my anxiety, my fear, my joy. Just when I think I’ve reached all there is, I keep finding more. Anxieties come around (how many days are we from a hospital again?), fear of something going very wrong. But then I have no choice but to let it simmer for a while, accept it and watch it pass. Like the changing sea around us.

Total miles at noon: 1080
Miles since yesterday: 129
Flying fish found stranded in the galley: 1

What a difference a day makes! The wind finally picked up a bit last night so we took the spinnaker down and unfurled the genoa. The swell has built up from multiple directions so while we’ve got a nice steady 15 knots of wind from the NE there are seas from the north, NE and east pushing us around crazily. It’s like a washing machine inside and it’s taking all our energy just to hang on and get some snacks in our tummies. I’ve spent most of the day in bed reading and playing games with the girls. A day of this and we’re actually looking forward to drifting around in the calm doldrums. On the bright side we’re making 5.5 knots steady in the direction we need to go and celebrated being 1/3 of the way there today!

Total miles at noon: 951 (1/3 of the way there!)
Miles since yesterday: 112
Number of days we are behind in our “24 Days to Speaking French” book: 9

Today’s report is from Leah:

We saw cool dolphins jumping out of the water really high! And we even got to get a bath in our big green tub that holds our stuffed animals (but we took all of them out). We used salt water (it only had one tiny nettle jellyfish in it). We were playing Cooties and Candyland in mama’s bed. And I have one new grown-up tooth and I have a little-bit loose tooth! And when I got it loose I bit on a fork accidentally last night when we were eating dinner. Every 500 miles we get a special treat. Mama says it might be tomorrow.

Total miles at noon: 839
Miles since yesterday: 112
Lucky booby birds who got a ride on our main mast all night: 1