Author: Stephen

Good afternoon from the equatorial Pacific Ocean! All is well aboard the fine yacht Flyer as the past three days have passed with lots of action, preventing boredom and keeping us on our toes. After two or so days of breezy northeast trade wind sailing between 12n and 10n, we took a minor left turn three days ago at 10n 130w to make a more southerly course towards the Marquesas. 

That left sent us into an area of greater atmospheric instability to the south. Within a half of a day we were confronted with our first squall of the trip. The dark cloud ahead also read loud and clear on our radar, and try as we might to head up and pass it from behind, the dark hovering monster only decided to grow unpredictably and envelop us entirely in its grips. 

Within fifteen minutes the breeze jumped quickly from 15kn to 35kn. Flyer took it in stride, considering we had both a full mainsail and genoa up! We quickly eased the main to bear off to run before the push, and as we unloaded the sails we furled a half the genoa. The rain was tremendous, the heaviest rain we’d ever seen on Flyer. Within ten minutes the wind moderated to about 25kn for the remainder of the squall and and hour later, on the backside of the cell the wind had further moderated to 15kn.

We had learned an important lesson. We needed to set the boat up better and more conservatively for the impending unpredictable squalls ahead. So a couple hours later, with nighttime setting in, we decided to drop the mainsail entirely as we saw another approaching dark mass. This proved a workable solution for the night, though as we soon learned, it was a bit too conservative. 

The squalls that night were mostly lighter in nature, one of which even featured a fully becalmed center. After a long night of almost constant sail trim adjustment to keep Flyer moving, we were exhausted. As the dawn broke, we raised the mainsail again but this time with two reefs tucked in, reducing the sail area by over 1/3rd. This combination proved a good one for the next 48 hours, giving us enough power in the lighter winds to keep moving, but reducing our sail area enough to ride out the big gusts. 

We’ve generally been sailing with this setup for the past two days, with eyes glued to the horizon and radar. We adjust our sails and trim accordingly, and always trying in vain to head up or down in an attempt to avoid them. We’ve found these storm cells to be very dynamic, sometimes materializing quickly in front of us, sometimes growing in unexpected directions, and always configuring themselves to be unavoidable for Flyer. 

Life aboard has also become dramatically more wet. Flyer is a remarkably dry boat compared to most sailboats, but it’s easy to make life in the cabin wet when you’ve been caught off-guard by a squall with your hatches open! The heat and humidity are oppressive here in the intertropical convergence zone. Cabin temperatures have ranged from 82 to almost 90 degrees with humidity levels between 75-85%. Every surface feels wet to the touch. Our sheets and clothes have become adhesives. Sometimes keeping hatches open is a gamble we’re willing to take given how quickly the air inside our cabin gets hot and stuffy.

Another not-so-welcome guest aboard Flyer have been the gooseneck barnacles we’re seeing adhered to our transom. These are weird looking creatures that hitch a ride on slower moving boats through the tropics. On sailboats like Flyer, they quickly adhere themselves and grow all over the hull and increase the boat’s drag through the water, slowing us down. Some have said they can cut a boat’s speed in half when they have matured and populated to a certain extent. To combat the gooseneck barnacles we are dragging a coarse, 5/8” line off the bow for about an hour every day. This line drags along the hull and (hopefully) with the motion of the boat through the water, helps to knock some of the creatures off. Time will tell if this has helped, but it can’t hurt to try, no? Rumor has it that within 24 hours of arrival in the Marquesas, the local fish provide a complementary hull-cleaning service. We are looking forward to that.

As I finish writing here in the doghouse the skies ahead are blue with only occasional small puffy clouds overhead. Flyer is sailing happily at a course of 195degrees magnetic at 6.5 to 7.5 knots under the watchful eye of Piloti, our newly trusty Windpilot. I made a few adjustments to the system and, with the right sail combination and balance, Piloti is thrilled to take the helm for hours at a time to give his robotic counterpart a break. 

It appears the next couple of days will bring more sun, fewer squalls, and, most importantly, some wind to take us across the equator, now only 198nm ahead. With 2,111nm down and less than 1,000 to go to Nuku Hiva, we’re amazed at how far we’ve come on this passage. “I can’t believe it’s been two weeks” James remarked a couple days ago. “It feels like it’s only been one!” I’ll chalk that one up for a win.

Here are some thoughts about three projects or additions we made to Flyer prior to this trip that have made a big difference in our life offshore, particularly related to safety and comfort.

1. Solid handrails and weather cloths on the after outboard stanchions. This was a pretty simple aluminum and sewing project that has ultimately made the cockpit a safer, more protected place to be.
   • The aluminum portion of the project was done when Flyer was hauled out at CSR in February of 2024. Nick Rudnick and his team at Rudnick MFG were great partners in a bunch of aluminum work we’ve done on the boat, and this might have been one of the easier projects, which gives it a high impact rating! We simply welded a 1-1/4” aluminum pipe on top of the last two existing stanchions and the pushpit. They form a solid, grab-able length of rail that was slightly higher than the previous lifeline and substantially stiffer and stronger.
   • The sewing portion of the project was done in the weeks preceding our departure in July of 2025 by Kristen on our beloved Sailrite sewing machine. The cloths that are suspended between the lifelines and rails are known as ‘weather cloths’ and were popular in the 1970’s and 80’s in offshore racing and sailing, as they served to keep the cockpit more dry and less battered by wind. Unfortunately they’ve fallen out of fashion but as we aboard Flyer are in no beauty contests, we’ll do what’s safest and most functional! Traditionally weather cloths have been made of marine canvas, but we chose to use Phiphertex, a strong coated nylon mesh fabric that breaks most of the wind but maintains some permeability for both views and water. If we’re hit by a really big wave, the Phiphertex will let some of the water through, absorbing the impact and lessening the possibility that the weather cloth will be blown apart. Kristen even added some pockets for our genoa and staysail furling lines on the port side.
   • The combined impact of the rail and the weather cloth has made the cockpit feel much more cozy and secure for us, and even gave us the opportunity to add more solar power to the boat, which leads me to our next favorite addition:

2. More renewable energy sources. It cannot be stressed enough that more and diverse renewable energy sources are a must-have on an offshore sailboat. Flyer doesn’t have a generator, so when we’re sailing (and we don’t want the engine on) the boat requires some form of energy generation to keep up with our power demands. We lead a relatively modest energy existence on Flyer, but just the basics -navigation electronics, lights, watermaker, and refrigeration- require us to replenish energy that we use throughout the day and night. Flyer was originally built with only two sources of energy – a modest 200 watt solar array, and a SuperWind generator, neither of which were sufficient to supply enough energy for our needs. So in the past two years we’ve added the following:
   • Watt&Sea hydrogenerator- this thing is amazing. At speeds of 4 knots and above, we are able to generate a decent amount of electricity. When we reach 6 or more knots, it’s a wealth of wattage! Below is the power curve for the unit we have. With two different propellers (the 280mm and 240mm sizes) we can tailor the power output to our needs and speeds. And it will produce energy when other sources will not, particularly at night when going downwind, which is a pretty common situation for us!

• (apologies for WordPress’ horrendous formatting here but the outline format continues …)
  • Additional solar power- When it comes to solar power generation on a cruising sailboat, there’s no limit to the amount that’s right. Solar can be the biggest workhorse of the renewable family, given that most of our time on the boat is not spent sailing but sitting at anchor, when the Watt&Sea won’t give us any power and the SuperWind is hopefully not too active (otherwise we might prefer to find a less windy anchorage!). In 2024 we replaced the meager 200w array on the arch with a new 430w panel, and the new aluminum grab rails gave us additional real-estate to relocate the 2x 100w panels from the arch, to give us tuneable/rotating panels. The ability to articulate their angle drastically improves their efficiency, and these panels have greatly improved our energy generation since we added them in May of 2025.
  • We also added an auxiliary solar panel attachment point at the base of the mast, capable of accepting up to 200w of additional portable solar panels. We currently have 2x 180W folding solar panels that we use either one at a time (when it’s really sunny) or in tandem (when it’s overcast) to boost our generation. While we conceived of this auxiliary system to be used only at anchor, we’ve found times when sailing offshore that it can be really helpful when we need more power, such as a very light-wind streak when our speeds are consistently below 4kts.

3. Cockpit-led preventer system. This is probably the most important safety upgrade we made to Flyer, and certainly the cheapest of them all. The preventer system is designed to pull the boom forward and keep it from gybing accidentally. Accidental gybes are one of the most common sources of offshore sailing tragedies, and research has proven over the years that a fixed, low-stretch preventer system is the best way to combat them. It required only two simple permanent additions to Flyer’s deck plan (a Lewmar rope clutch on either quarter) and a series of removable low-friction leads. I also spliced a more permanently mounted ‘strop’ made of SK-98 low-stretch braided line, that allows us to attach the preventer leads to the boom while the boom is beyond reach. It’s important to have the preventer rigged at the end of the boom since that is where the loads on the line will be the lowest, and you’ll also have the least chance of breaking the boom if it drags in the water. And having the clutches within reach of the cockpit is really convenient which ensures they will be used and adjusted frequently!

04 March, 0320 PST approx 1,500nm NW of Nuku Hiva – Hello from the graveyard shift. As I write we are barreling along on a WSW course with solid trade winds behind us, with a full moon to light our way. Flyer has been keeping up a good pace in the last 24 hours, covering over 140 miles right on course, bringing our 11.5 day total to just under 1,500nm, which, depending on how you measure it, could be considered close to half-way to Nuku Hiva!?

Life aboard Flyer has been enjoyable these past few days. With the boat moving comfortably along, we’ve been able to spend more time just witnessing life in the remote Pacific. Yesterday we were welcomed by a small pod of porpoises who came to play in our bow wave. Shortly after I noticed some leaping sailfish about a quarter mile away, hurtling themselves over fifteen feet in the air! 

Within an hour, another massive pod of porpoises came barreling towards us from the south. They formed a thick frontal line as if they were hunting in a group, swimming at an impressive speed and jumping with great frequency. They sped right past us and were out of sight within a couple minutes, and the force of their collective rush was incredible to witness.

There seem to be many more flying fish in these latitudes. Practically everywhere we look they are flying along, inches above the waves, before smashing face-first back into the blue. They’re so fun to watch, and currently in the lead as the boys’ favorite form of wildlife out here. 

We had a bit of excitement this morning when we hoisted the A3- our reaching sail that we like to fly when the wind is between 5-20knots from between 70 to 140 degrees true angle (the angle of the true wind to the boat’s axis). The sail is set on the bow sprit just above our anchor roller, and it’s managed by a continuous-line furler that allows it to be wrapped up on itself like our genoa and staysail for easy deployment and dowsing. I had just hoisted it, and Paul was in the cockpit about to trim in the sheet to unfurl the sail, when I looked forward and saw the sail, its furler and furling line flapping wildly about downwind of us, not attached to the boat! And in seconds, the sail had mostly unfurled itself and was making quite a spectacle of us. 

We quickly got some help from James on the bow and Kristen in the cockpit. Paul lowered the halyard to me and James while we gathered the sail onto the foredeck. Kristen managed the sheets and steered the boat to a lower course to reduce windage on the bow. 

When it was all down and secured with a sail tie, I noticed the Tylaska shackle that’s supposed to be part of the furling drum was still attached to the bow, while the drum was in my hands, still attached to the sail. We quickly deduced that they had separated because the two small grub-screws that keep the threaded connection locked had somehow worked themselves free. 

Without any replacement grub screws aboard my quick fix was to simply clean and re-fasten the threaded connection, this time with copious amounts of red loctite and as much torque as I could muscle. I’m hoping this holds for the foreseeable future, and at the very least we know now to be keeping a close eye on this part.

Last night’s graveyard shift was graced with a total lunar eclipse! It began around the start of my watch at 0200 ship’s time (PST) and ended around 0500. With some scattered low clouds, it made for an eerie, haunted feeling on deck. 

The last couple of days have gone by in a blur. Not that time has transpired quickly, just less coherently. 

We’ll start with the sailing conditions which, if you’ve been following the tracker, have clearly kept us on our toes, day and night. Contrary to previous forecasts, the conditions have continued to be fickle at best. For the last 36 hours we have been teased with senses of a freshening breeze, only to see the wind speed drop precipitously minutes later. The wind direction is following course, as it usually does, and is swinging wildly through 70 degrees at times. The seas have continued to be confused, mixing seasonal NW swells with wind driven waves from every other direction. 

It’s been really hard to keep Flyer going all this time. Just when we begin to get momentum and feel that we have sails trimmed to meet the conditions, things change almost immediately. We’ve put up virtually every sail in our wardrobe, only to conclude that the sail combination is wrong. It feels a lot like ocean racing, excepting we’re not in a race, right? 

But in reality we have found ourselves in a race with the weather. The ridge of high pressure that initially gave us challenges after Cabo San Lucas over a week ago with light and shifty conditions has continued to expand and follow us westward. We’ve felt like we’re being chased by a gentle demon who enjoys watching us bob around in the windless blue. And we’ve managed to stay just ahead of the bad stuff, which is in some ways good (we have had some wind) and bad (we have had some calms). All the weather models have been showing that there are more consistent, 10-15kn breezes just a handful of miles ahead of us… and we’ve been struggling to catch up!

To make matters even more challenging, our mid-passage waypoint -established as the point at which we think we will enter consistent NE trade winds just north of the equator- has continued to be almost directly downwind of our location. Flyer does not like dead-downwind sailing if the wind speed is below around 15kn, so we sail ‘hotter’ angles to the wind, meaning we don’t point directly at the destination but closer to the wind, giving the boat a little more speed through the water and requiring us to gybe occasionally so we don’t stray too far from our desired part of the ocean.

These conditions mean that we are constantly reassessing both our sail combination/trim and whether or not we should be motoring. The latest outlook for the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ, or doldrums) shows a bit more activity, and therefore potential for sustained calm, than we had originally anticipated. As a result we are saving our motoring for only our most desperate moments, like this morning around 0530 when we found ourselves becalmed after hours of very light-air drifting. 3 hours later we shut the engine down and found ourselves sailing again at a meager 3 knots, 30 degrees off of course. We’ll take what we can get!

Life on board suffers at times like these, or at least my perception of it does. I’ve not slept much recently, so Kristen and I have been flexing our watch times during the day in hopes of me being able to get a little more shut-eye during daylight hours. 

The boys seem in a good mood nonetheless! Paul has been frantically thinking about the sailing dinghy of his dreams (a 29er) and as with all of his obsessions, he finds himself drawing that thing. James has been reading and, when the internet is on, connecting with his cousin Sam and school friends to play games together. 

James also somehow just realized that his hair was too long -probably after discovering a rather large dreadlock-in-the-making- and promptly negotiated the grand opening of Kristen’s Aft Deck Salon.

Anticipating an excruciatingly hot cabin in the coming week(s), Kristen has made the most of our oven and has roasted beets and baked focaccia recently. We’ll be having beet sandwiches for dinner tonight!

To distract myself from the continued second-guessing, I decided to break out my guitar today. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever played it in the open ocean, and it gave me great pleasure. I was revisiting some of my favorite songs by Andy Shauf and the Beths. Maybe I’ll do some Led Zep tomorrow.

The breeze seems to be slowly picking up now, so I need to get back to the sail trim. Thank you all for reading, it makes us so happy to know we can maintain a little connection with you all this far away from home.

27 Feb 19:50 ship’s time – 680nm SW of Cabo San Lucas — As I write we have succumbed to the calm and are motoring again. We’re moving along at almost 6kn with a very light northeasterly breeze behind us. We’ve had a tough and very light wind couple of days here, sticking to sailing through all of it. Conditions were decent at times, and downright miserable at others. Last night, starting just around dinner time, the sea state decided to get really ugly. It felt like we were bobbing in a bathtub full of gigantic toddlers.

The commotion was so bad that despite the decent 12-15kn of breeze we had, the boat could hardly get moving through the friction of the disorganized waves. We stuck to our sails though, knowing that sailing was still possible, just slow and challenging. The motion in the cabin was so violent it was hard to even walk around, even with two hands on holds nearby. The seas finally abated by the early hours of the morning, and we kept sailing all day with a light northeasterly. It wasn’t until late afternoon today that we threw in the towel again and fired up the engine. Not a bad effort from the Flyer crew!

With the quiet, light sailing today we were able to get through a few lingering maintenance items and boat chores. I spent an hour re-shimming the companionway door latch. I guess over the past few years the soft steel catch has been worn down and it wouldn’t hold when the boat flexed, and the bomb-proof aluminum door would swing wildly open as the boat heeled and slam against the opposite open side. Nice to have that one done!

We also discovered today that with the significant increase in humidity out at sea, our freezing plates in our small refrigerator had iced-up much quicker than ever before. I discovered almost a full inch of ice coating the plates, which really reduces the efficiency of the refrigerator, something we care a lot about with our limited electrical energy aboard.

As I usually do, I collected the icy chunks into a bucket and gave them to the boys to play with. This time they thought it would be best put to use cooling the ocean, so they threw blocks of ice into the big blue around us yelling “we’re trying to slow global warming!”

We’re also using this engine time to make more water, and take advantage of the warm water we’re getting. Showers were had again, by most of us, and I took the opportunity to wash the salt off of our cabin house windows and port lights, as well as hose some more dried Mahi blood off of the cockpit floor with hot water. That stuff is pretty sticky, I have a feeling we’ll still be seeing remnants of that fish many months from now!

As of 3:15p today, it’s been a week for us on this journey. Hard to believe, honestly, since it doesn’t feel that long to us right now. Unfortunately though, as you can probably tell, this week has been much slower than we’d hoped. We’ve covered 893 nautical miles in that time, which averages out to 127nm per day. Okay I suppose for a heavily laden 44’ boat, but a bit of a bummer to know we’ve also run the engine for 31.5 hours.

Speaking of the engine, I think we have enough fuel aboard to power at a modest RPM for 160 hours. Conservatively, we really should only use 2/3rds of that. Converting that to miles, we’ve been budgeting around 600nm, or just over 100 hours of motoring at around 5.25kn. 600nm is 1/5th of the journey, which very well could have a lot more dead calm for us to deal with, and we’re really hoping to save our fuel for when we’ll need it the most!

Even though it’s been a slow passage so far, we’re still really lucky we left when we did. The large ridge of high pressure that’s been chasing us since we rounded Baja 6 days ago looks like it’s settling in for quite a while, so any further delay in our departure would have probably meant waiting in Mexico for a better weather window… probably more that 2 weeks later!

We just finished our taco dinner tonight (man we miss the real deal back in Mexico!), and the boys and Kristen are fixing to watch some more episodes of the Office while I stand watch on my early evening shift. Kristen just revealed a surprise cake, that she’s calling the “One-Week Cake,” in honor of this most momentous occasion. There’s a beautiful waxing gibbous moon out and it’s already pretty bright. I’m looking forward to another nice evening out here on the Pacific, even if we are motoring.

25 Feb 1430 ships time – Somewhere west of Clarion Island.*

We’ve been really lucky to have this northerly breeze continue at a higher velocity than forecasted. We only had one very light spell in the middle of the night last night and motored for about 3 1/2 hours. Kristen was below asleep when the breeze piped up to about 6 kn I promptly set the A3 again and we were off sailing. We’ve been sailing ever since the breeze has built since the early hours of the morning and we saw as much as 15 kn today around 11 AM ships time. 

I was texting with Kevin aboard Dark Star (45nm behind us) this morning about how we are getting our boats to move better. It sounded like he had gotten his wind vane going nicely, but no success yet with a larger reaching or downwind sail. So he persuaded me to give our Windpilot another go and I convinced him to give that an asymmetrical spinnaker a second chance. He sent me a picture of his big-ass sail up a few hours later and seemed pleased with the results!

On Flyer, our Windpilot proved tricky at a beam reach today. I think I need to adjust one of the servos in it so it can be more sensitive turning to port (it seems happy turning to starboard even with our mainsail luffing.) I’m also concerned that our solar arch creates a lot of turbulence for the wind vane element and makes it hard for it to be as responsive as it needs to be with the wind at this angle. We know other virtually identical Bóreals who are able to make them work well so it’s gotta be possible, right? I did get it going nicely for 10 to 15 minutes at a time this afternoon. I’ll give it another shot tomorrow.

I rain in the water maker again today and finding our TDS (total dissolved solids) levels lower, which is nice to see. We’re getting readings of about 200ppm (parts per million) today.** Maybe the answer is more frequent use!

Kristen and I regrouped today and confirmed that we’re doing OK with our four on, four off watch schedule. What it means is I have two 4 hour shifts at night and she has two 4 hour shifts during the day. (and of course that means we each have one 4 hour shift at the other half of the day.) Four hour shifts are nice because they give you time to get settled before going to sleep and some wiggle room in case you have trouble falling asleep, etc. Kristen says she’s getting enough rest but shes feeling a little under the weather with a minor cold right now. 

I’m not sure if I’m getting enough rest. I seem to have contracted a splitting headache today, but I’m slowly figuring out how to do cat naps on my night watches which is nice to get a little bit more shut-eye during the dark hours. I’m not sure the two are related, but it would be good to have more motivation to get more sleep. 

To be honest, my biggest fear is that sometime in the next few days one of us might contract dengue fever! We know it was going around in La Paz and really hope that we have escaped it. It has a 10 day incubation period… so here’s to continued decent health until at least March 2! 

I took a shower last night on the deck after dark, and although it was hard to stand upright in the mild seas, it felt really good to be clean again! I think everyone else will probably shower in the next day or so while we have hot water from all that motoring. (We have a hot water tank that uses heat from the engine cooling loop to warm the water… depending on how much we use it can last up to three or four days). 

Kristen made boat pizza last night and it was excellent. It’s basically a sheet pan pizza with lots of olive oil in it to help make the crust crunchy and she’s been making it on the boat for the last three or so years. It’s always a hit. We also had a salad. I wonder what we’ll have for dinner tonight? 

We’re continuing to sail a bit north of rhumb line and it looks like that’s probably still a wise idea.  Given the latest GRIB files things seem to be looking a little bit better for the next few days than they were in previous forecasts earlier today and yesterday. The latest model run shows the breeze will be building tomorrow during the day with a couple minor dips in velocity, but generally it looks like it will be building to the midteens over the next five days! Most model runs show no motoring time for us over the next several days (a threshold I set in our routing software at a depressing minimum sailing speed of one and a half knots). Hallelujah!

James continues his pattern of being the first one awake every morning and it’s so nice to see him come up on deck before the sun rises. The sunrises out here are pretty special and it’s nice to have someone to share them with. Pelle continues to be interested in coming on deck only when it’s dark out and bouncy! No Bueno Gato! as Kevin said. Paul continues to put lures out during the day but no bites in the last two days unfortunately. It would be nice to get another yellowfin to eat soon. 

* A note about these recent posts – I’ve gotten lazy and have been voice-dictating them to my phone when I get off watch in the afternoons. I’m a bit delayed in posting so this is almost a full 24hrs behind. Also, for some reason, the Apple Journal app likes to make some mistakes for me so some words don’t get transcribed well, and I’m not sharp enough right now to catch them all. Also, Journal also likes to make hyperlinks to random crap, and I’ve not yet caught onto that fully, so apologies for that garbage. Finally, WordPress has the most horrendous UI on an iPad, so we are constantly having challenges editing text (which seems like a pretty basic functionality they should have figured out). Apologies for the messiness but it seems the easiest way to share a bit of this adventure with you all every day.

** The World Health Organization has set a standard that anything below 500ppm is considered drinking water, so we have a bit of breathing room.

24 Feb 16:05 GMT -8 It’s so great to be sailing again. The last 24 hours have been pretty light, and the engine has been running almost continuously. We were in a calm for quite a while last night, and we motored through it all into dawn, which was glassy little bit of low, light fog, which looked beautiful on the water.  

We continued motoring through the day today until around 2 PM when we were seeing puffs up to 6 knots. We promptly shut down the engine and set the A3. Since then the breeze has been building, to our surprise it’s now up to around peaks of 11 or 12 kn. We’re sailing along nicely at 6 to 7 kn. What a delight!

Kristen and I were talking earlier about how it’s such a fine line between misery (motoring through the calm) and ecstasy (beam reaching on a gorgeous day in 12 kn of breeze) on a day like today. Sailing is such a funny thing sometimes.

Our Watt&Sea Hydrogenerator is running nicely right now and giving us more than enough power to also make water. A couple hours ago I cleaned the seawater strainer and replaced the five µm filter, but unfortunately, the solids levels are still around the same, high 200’s ppm. Still good enough to drink, but a little annoying to see it creep higher. Maybe I should’ve run that cleaning cycle back in La Paz? Maybe we should just be running it every day? Maybe more use will make it better.

Paul has three fishing lures out right now hoping for another tuna, this one maybe to keep for poke tonight. He pulled out a loose tooth today and after a quick celebration, decided to throw it into the sea for king Neptune.

At separate times today, James and Paul were each stunned when coming on deck at the beauty of the blue ocean all around us. The color of the ocean this far offshore is probably the most beautiful color I can imagine. All oceans have a slightly different tint to them, some grey, some green, some black… but the deep blue Pacific here sure does remind me a lot of the Gulf Stream. 

I’ve had a couple songs stuck in my head for the last few days both of them by Stephen Malkmus. Church on White and the subsequent song on his first record The Hook for some reason both feel very poignant right now on this passage.

It’s hot out here today, and we know we’re only just getting started. The last couple of days have seen quite the variety of conditions here aboard Flyer. Rounding Cabo was boisterous. Decent following seas and a fresh 25-30 knot northwesterly breeze meant we were making good time around and out in to the Pacific. It was not to last unfortunately and we promptly hit a wall and were becalmed for an hour or so in the lee of Cabo. Hard to believe that there’s a wind shadow that lasts over 80miles south of the last bit of land there! 

Since then the sailing has been a bit frustrating, characterized by light and variable conditions. Flyer is a great boat for many things but light wind sailing is not one of them. The boat is a bit heavy for its length and very beamy, which means we have a high wetted surface area ratio to the length of the boat… so it sails a bit more ‘sticky’ at low wind speeds. We’re even heavier on this trip than ever before – and we’re really glad that we raised Flyer’s waterline 3” a year ago at CSR… the boat is REALLY low in the water right now!

In the last 36 hours we’ve seen the light winds slowly clock to the north east which means dead downwind sailing if we were to sail a direct course towards French Polynesia. We believe there is likely more pressure to the north and west of us so we are choosing to sail a bit faster through the water but indirect to our course, aiming more NNW than SW! It’s a bit counterintuitive but we’re hoping we’re doing the right thing.

It’s a bit frustrating to have such light conditions so early but looking at the evolving forecasts, we left at a really good time. The conditions in the Sea of Cortez are getting lighter by the day, and the zone of high pressure offshore where we are now is only going to grow larger in the next 10 days. So a later departure would have been even slower!

We’re also really glad to have left when we did given the news about the escalating cartel war going on in Mexico. We are so saddened to hear about it and hoping the best for our friends (both locals and cruisers) back in Mexico. We’re hoping that cooler heads can prevail soon and life can return to normal for everyone. 

Since I began writing this post we’ve made the challenging decision to start motoring. Sitting becalmed with the potential for wind just a few hours away was too much to bear, so we fired up the old iron genoa to get some forward progress again. The sun is setting while Kristen helps Paul with his homework and we begin to think (again) about what we’ll eat next!

Apologies from the Flyer crew for letting this blog slide a bit over the past couple of months. Rest assured we have found ourselves busy, enjoying the cruising in the Sea of Cortez, as well as making a big trip to visit some family (while still on the continent), and yes doing more boat work. The good news is that we will have time in the coming days to share more about all of this as we are now out to sea.

We departed La Paz yesterday afternoon after a whirlwind of projects and panic shopping. Our good friends aboard Dark Star have been our main cheerleaders, helping hand, and motivation to push off late on a Friday. We’ve enjoyed each other’s company so much that we’ll be buddy-boating our way to Nuku Hiva over the next handful of weeks. It’s about 3,000 nautical miles or so, which more or less equates to a proper family adventure.

Departing the dock was a bit chaotic as the northerly we’ve been riding since showed up a bit early. Dark Star lead the charge and cast themselves off while I was deep in the bilge, Kristen was packing stores beneath Paul’s bunk, Paul was hosing the boat down one last time, and James was in online class. It was a delight to see James arise (in the midst of class) to take a few pictures and bid farewell to La Paz, our defacto home for the last couple of months.

With nerves high with excitement and trepidation, turning the boat in the tight marina proved more challenging than I had anticipated and in the melee of confusion I somehow managed to elbow Paul in the face. He brushed it off but we were all a bit stunned given all that was happening. We swung the boat out of the marina and into the channel, and Flyer was finally underway towards French Polynesia.

Since the work and preparation for a passage like this can be endless, the hardest part is often simply casting off. Despite several surprise maintenance setbacks (more to come on these) in the remaining days before departure, I can wholeheartedly say that Flyer has never been better prepared for a passage. We’ve got a completely refreshed drive-train, holds completely full of food and spares, and a boatload of excitement to experience a small bit of the islands of the South Pacific.

With that, I’ll share a few photos from our departure and first few hours at sea. We’ll hopefully keep a brisk pace up here with more immediate, less polished entries.

And a brief video of the current scene on deck here, about 15nm SE of Los Frailes, Baja:

While we loved the tacos and new friends in Ensenada, we were eager to get back out to sea again to begin poking around some of the more remote parts of Baja. We delayed our scheduled departure from the marina in Ensenada by two days to be sure we’d benefit from the upcoming northerly breeze in the forecast. The forecast held true and on November 5th we finally pushed off the dock around mid-day as the northerly was building into Bahia Todos Santos, looking forward to the nice push for our 200 nautical mile sail down the Baja coastline.

The wind freshened, and we enjoyed a lovely reach out of the bay with our full mainsail and genoa powered up. Our Watt&Sea hydro generator was spinning happily, so we decided it was a good time to replenish all the water we had used while in Ensenada (which, like the rest of Baja, shares only non-potable water from its faucets). The Watt&Sea is a luxurious bit of kit, and still feels like magic every time we get it running. It’s a funny, kick-up rudder looking contraption that uses our forward motion through the water to turn a small plastic propeller and electric motor to generate electricity for our batteries. We can’t help but marvel when we are able to turn our movement through the water into fresh, drinkable water!

An so it was that about forty minutes into our forty hour passage I went below to discover both James and Pauls bunks soaking wet! A quick look around the neighboring watermaker compartment found a geyser spewing from a ruptured hose, and the high pressure salt water was finding every possible seam in the woodwork towards their beds.

With Ensenada still visible only 4 miles astern it was hard to resist the temptation to turn around and spend another day at the dock drying out the mattresses and addressing the watermaker rupture. But our wind-window was closing and we had some plastic sheeting aboard to keep their sheets relatively dry, so we stayed the course and slowly turned southward over the next couple of hours.

A closer inspection of our ruptured plumbing revealed a split in the hose at a rusted reinforcing wire. Further inquiry revealed that our watermaker was entirely plumbed with hoses rated only for vacuum conditions and not the highly-pressurized systems of a reverse-osmosis watermaker! I quickly discovered, however, that the fifteen feet of hosing I kept in the compartment for pickling our system (when we put the watermaker into ‘storage’ mode) was exactly the type of hosing we were in need of. So over the course of about an hour the next day, I replaced all the watermaker system hosing with the proper hose type, all while sailing briskly along at 7.5 knots under full mainsail and poled-out genoa.

As with all overnight passages, these hours passed in a hazy state of minor sleep deprivation, punctuated by moments of transcendent beauty and pure exhilaration. That first night was absolutely stunning. A practically full moon and clear skies made the night watches bright.

Full moons and clear skies in the ocean are a magical thing. I’ll never forget a night when I was maybe 20 or so, somewhere in the Gulf Stream between Bermuda and Connecticut with my father and brother Tom, who took advantage of the brightness and read his book on deck by moonlight. There’s something surreal about the quasi-daylight feeling of a bright moon at sea.

We thought we’d departed Ensenada on our own, but we slowly crept up on a white navigation light later that evening. “Flyer, Flyer, this is Hepatica on one-six, over”our soon-to-be new best friends called on the VHF. “Hey we just wanted to make sure you saw us out here, we can see you a couple hundred meters away” Alex said. We were admittedly a little close but also probably a little curious about who else was out there with us.

At 10am on the second day, our adrenaline spiked when we heard the sound of the fishing line peeling off the spool and Paul landed our very first tuna! After several unsuccessful days of trolling and all the Albacore we missed out on off the Oregon Coast, it was immensely rewarding to catch such a beautiful and prized yellowfin tuna. It found its way into poke bowls within an hour, and became the feature of a few salads and sandwiches over the following days.

Multi-day passages during late fall and early winter are always a bit difficult to plan given the limited daylight hours. Along much of the Baja coastline the challenge is intensified by the minimal (and often wildly inaccurate) charting of the coastline, where we often find ourselves entering an anchorage or harbor visually, without any useful charts for assistance, standing tall on deck looking for areas of lighter color water, breaking waves, or upwelling that would indicate shallow waters. All that is to say we aim for a daylight arrival to any new anchorage in this part of the world! And the daylight arrival can be a tricky thing to get right given varying wind conditions, minimal daylight, and short distances.

After landing the yellowfin, the afternoon of Saturday, November 6 brought a freshening northwesterly breeze as forecast. Our accelerated pace meant that 24 hours in to the passage, we were ahead of schedule, with an anticipated arrival at the remote anchorage of Islas San Benito sometime around 2am! We needed to slow down. At 11am we dropped our mainsail and reduced our poled-out genoa to a minimal scrap of canvas.

By sunset we were seeing steady winds of 30 knots with gusts into the high 30’s, and increasing seas from behind. The scene on deck was mildly boisterous, with the sound of breaking waves right at our quarter and the SuperWind generator whirring along in surges with the gusts. But down below it was a different story entirely. As I popped my head into the saloon, I saw Kristen and the boys sitting happily together watching Schitt’s Creek, as cozy as if we were at anchor.

A little bit Alexis

“Flyer, Flyer this is Raven on one-six” came the familiar voice of Lisa over the VHF around 9pm. “Hey we just wanted you to know that we saw you on AIS earlier but you’ve been disappearing off our screen intermittently. Just checking to be sure you’re still out there somewhere…” Yes indeed we were still out there, and a bit frustrated to learn our AIS wasn’t transmitting reliably! (AIS is the Automatic Identification System used by most vessels offshore, broadcasting your GPS position, speed and heading to other boats within VHF range.) Raven was less than nine miles astern of us, easily within broadcast range of any properly functioning Class B AIS system. Why was our signal not reaching them? More for me to worry about…

The breeze continued to build until the early hours of November 7 when it slowly backed off, leaving us with sloppy, light conditions in the morning. By daybreak at 6:30am we rounded the south eastern corner of Islas San Benito under motor, and made our way into the poorly charted anchorage.

We found our way through some kelp beds towards a nice sandy spot about a hundred meters from shore. Kristen dropped our anchor a little after 7am and the two of us – exhausted from our 40-hour journey – longed for our bunk. But the sound of the windlass and anchor chain woke James and Paul, who poked their heads on deck wondering what the new day would bring! Our first task for the day was to get those mattresses and sheets on deck to start drying in that Baja sun.