Settling in

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.