Sailing Wondertime

It feels like we are sailing in a dream. We are going on day three of flying our spinnaker with our mizzen up to steady our motion even more. The northeast trades are blowing soft, warm and steady at about 12 knots. Just enough to push us close to 6 knots of boat speed, but not enough to make windwaves more than a foot tall on top of the long, wide following swells. Inside Wondertime, I can hardly tell we are moving at all except for a gentle, slight rocking and sense of rising and falling with the seas. This is the tradewind sailing we hoped to find but didn’t expect considering the variety of conditions that can occur out here. This is the sailing we’ve dreamed about and now it’s true. Bliss.

P.S. We can’t check our regular email out here of course but we’d love to hear from you! On onboard email (text-only) is Michael’s HAM call sign, N7UDM at the domain winlink.org Hope to hear from you!

Total miles at noon: 727 (1/4 of the way there!)
Miles since yesterday: 112
Sail changes: 0

I think we are finally getting into our sea rhythm. For the past few days we’ve experimented with the watch schedule, trying to decide if we should rotate it every night. For now, we agree that sticking to the same times works the best for us as it’s the routine that makes each day fly by.

As I type this, it’s 1730, almost time for me to make dinner. Our spinnaker has been up for over 24 hours and, thankfully, mostly full for the past twelve. The day has just flown by; it seems like moments ago I was waking up for my 4am-8am watch. There is no moon right now, only more stars than I’ve ever seen in my whole life and they actually light up the sky like a distant city. And low in the horizon the clouds had finally cleared so I could see it at last: the southern cross. Our spinnaker was struggling to stay full in the light northerly breeze and I settled in the cockpit with a hot cup of Earl Gray tea to watch the brilliant sunrise. It is getting warmer by the day; we have been plenty warm at night with shorts and a light sweatshirt.

I read for an hour or two and then the rest of the crew was up by eight. I began working on our pancake breakfast and put on hot water for coffees. Holly was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as usual: “What day is it Mama?” she asks me. “Friday!” I answer. “Movie day! Yaaaaaay!” she exclaims. To avoid the daily question of “can we watch a movie today?” we’ve been sticking to Friday Movie Days for some time now. Today was no exception; after breakfast was done and cleaned up we put on “Puss In Boots.” Happily, the cloud cover we’ve had the past week has largely been left behind and we had plenty of solar power to run the computer and charge up the house batteries. The morning also included reading, salt-water showers, and a haircut (for Matt).

We grazed on snacks and leftovers for lunch, the girls put on another video and the adults took turns taking naps. Around four, we all gathered in the cockpit just to talk and play and gaze at the blue disc that has and will surround us for days and days. The view is always the same, yet is continually changing with a seemingly infinite combination of light, clouds, and waves. It is mesmerizing.

After I finish typing this, I’ll send it over our HAM radio as well as download the latest weather files. Dinner will get underway, then it will be time for our nightly SSB/HAM nets (Pacific Puddle Jump net at 1900 and the Pacific Seafarers at 2030). While listening in, we’ll brush our teeth and after the girls and the off-watch crew is off to bed. Michael takes watch until midnight, then Matt, then it will be my turn again to watch another day begin over the deep blue sea.

Total miles at noon: 615
Miles since yesterday: 59
Sail changes: 1
Booby birds chased off the mizzen mast: 13
Top speed: 4.2 knots
Tomatoes remaining: 1

We’ve been struggling to keep moving in very light wind for the past 24 hours. Last night we even kept the spinnaker up past dark, which we don’t normally do when there’s only one person awake to manage it. Around 11 pm however even it was hanging limp and threatening to wrap itself inappropriately around rigging so I woke Michael up to help take it down. We drifted around for an hour or two just bobbing in the the swells. Thankfully northerly wind picked up to about 5 knots during Matt’s midnight-4 watch and we were able to make some westerly progress with the main and genoa, if only at a knot or two boatspeed.

After a few hours of being becalmed this morning a few knots of wind have piped up from the NE and we’ve been able to sail at 3-4 knots all afternoon with the spinnaker. The upside to all this light air is that the boat is hardly rocking at all. Sometimes we even forget we are underway, for a moment, and life carries on below like we’re in a calm, lazy anchorage somewhere: reading books, playing UNO, taking naps.

I’ve tucked away little treats for Leah and Holly to celebrate our major milestones. We agreed that every 500 miles would be a good reason to celebrate so yesterday the girls each got a chocolate egg with a small toy inside. Amazingly, we are 1/5th of the way there!

Total miles at noon: 556
Miles sailed since yesterday: 72
Fish caught: 1
Fish caught large enough to eat: 0
Overripe avocados tossed: 3
Booby birds chased off the top of mizzen mast by hoisting a boat pole up: 1

We are on our fifth straight day of sailing, which is certainly a record for us and Wondertime. We are not quite to the mystical tradewind “we didn’t change sails for a week” sort of sailing. Every hour or two we have to reef or unreef, furl the genoa, put out the staysail, spinnaker up, spinnaker down, on and on. We’ve had wind from 0 to 20 knots this past day but at least it’s mostly been from a NE to NW direction. We are still surrounded by rain squalls and the sky is mostly cloudy. When the sun does peek through, oh my is it bright and hot! We even had enough rain to use our new catchment system (essentially a small thru-hull installed in the middle of our cockpit awning). I was happy to test the rainwater that filled our sunshower 1/4 full by washing my hair. It is indeed good water.

I was talking to a friend on the SSB last night and she asked how the girls were doing. Did they get up with us in the middle of the night? Or do they sleep through? Maybe you are wondering this too. We have actually kept them on pretty much the same schedule as when we are not on passage. Around 8 pm it’s time to brush teeth, then we snuggle in bed together and read some books, then it’s lights out and they are asleep just about right away until their normal wake up hour around 8 am. The motion is better today thankfully but it’s been pretty bumpy the past few days and we’ve spent a lot of time in our big bed reading, coloring, and, ahem, playing iphone games (all educational, of course). They’ve also been coming up with marvelous imaginary games together that’s oh-so-fun to spy in on.

We’re all feeling pretty good now and are in a 3-meal-a-day groove after a few days of only snacking. It’s a good thing because there’s a LOT of rapidly ripening produce onboard.

Total miles at noon: 484
Times becalmed: 2
Number of persons onboard brave enough for an ocean swim: 1
Whisker poles broken: 1
Cup O Noodles remaining: 0

I had the midnight-4am watch last night. It was a very dark watch as there were mostly clouds overhead and no moon. We’re not convinced we’re in the tropics yet, despite being at 19 degrees latitude: the wind is quite chilly and we are still wearing fleece pants and foulie jackets at night. So last night I got out our sleeping bag and wrapped it around me in the cockpit at 2 am. My sleepiness faded as I put on my favorite Ulrich Schnauss album and got lost in the music and the motion of Wondertime charging along in the phosphorescent-lit waves.

By nearly 4 am however, my eyes were getting very heavy and I’d feel them close for a few seconds before they’d pop back open with the memory that it wasn’t time to sleep, just yet. Then suddenly, through the blurriness I saw streaks of light beside the boat. I was immediately up and wide awake; dolphins had come for a night visit! As they swam along with Wondertime, darting this way and that they left trails of light behind them. Simply awesome. I yelled down at Michael and Matt to come up and watch too, and they did. I watched the amazing dolphin light show for another ten minutes, then went down to sleep. As I tucked myself into an empty berth I could hear their squeaks through the hull as they continued to play. The perfect lullaby.

Total miles at noon: 374
Rain and wind squalls passed through: 3
Rainbows seen: 4
Super-ripe cantaloupes eaten: 2
Squashed and moldy tomatoes tossed: 7
Loaves of fresh sourdough bread baked and eaten: 1