On Schedule

Ship's time is still on Honolulu time, two hours behind Seattle. Ship's time is by consent of the crew. It's a small nugget of autonomy, choosing when you want your sun to rise and set. Our sun is rising around 4 am, so we may elect to make the change to Seattle time before we arrive. The time doesn't impact us much otherwise, except to determine when we start and stop our watches.

Heading east makes the sun rise earlier and heading north makes it colder. I'm wearing gloves for the first time since leaving Seattle in Aug 2019. We must be making progress!

Our two year semi-circumnavigation loop turned out to be smaller than expected, but Quijote is returning around the time we had originally planned. We're a few months early perhaps. There was no French Polynesia, Tonga, Fiji, or New Zealand, but we're on schedule!

ETA?

I'll guess a week into May. Mark is guessing ten days. He's a little more optimistic than I am. I suppose he has grounds to be. He has more experience and the forecast for next week looks favorable. We'll see. My relative pessimism is based solely on my experience that anything challenging takes longer than expected. I present the first week as exhibit A.

Danny is building a big pot of soup for dinner tonight out of canned goods and leftovers. Rice, pasta, protein, anything is fair game. I'll be eating mine with pilot crackers that Kay left onboard last year. They still look okay. Or as okay as they were then.

Mark made grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the soup so I was spared the experience of pilot crackers. I tried one and they're actually not bad. Not some WWII ration that you'd expect them to be.

Luck is a Pendulum

Luck has turned in our favor. We've had several days of favorable wind. We made good progress to the north yesterday. Now we're clocking with the wind to gain more easting as the low pressure systems north of us pass through. Those (scary big) systems have so far been far enough away for us to be removed from discomfort while close enough to provide favorable wind. We've been consulting with the weather guys to be sure that they are seeing what we see. Observations are agreeing with predictions, so that's another point of confidence. As the wind continues to turn, our plan is to continue turning to the east until tomorrow and then head back northeast for several days. That should get us where we want to go without getting too close to the low pressure system that has already turned the corner and is making its way north.

As all pendulums do, the luck pendulum took a swing back again yesterday morning when the mainsail furling gears jammed. An hour or two of fighting with it left us with substantially diminished capability. The mainsail is in a third reef position for the duration of the passage. That will be fine for the majority of conditions we face. When the time comes to furl the sail in all the way, we can muscle it in. We hope.

The mainsail provides sail area in downwind conditions. It provides stability and balance in upwind conditions. We'll just have to live with less of both. Sailing (as in life) is all about making do with less than you want.

On a medical note, I tried to cut the end of my finger off yesterday. Thankfully the nail limited the depth of the laceration, so it looks worse than it is. If I can keep it clean and dry it should heal up quickly.

It was one of those cases of series interruptions. Stowing hoses interrupted whatever else I was working on. Cutting off the hose barb on the end of the hose interrupted the stowing. Laceration, cleaning, and bandaging the finger interrupted that. Then while applying iodine, the boat lurched and sent me flying across the bathroom. I didn't have far to fly, but I crashed into the wall and spread iodine all over the white walls, counter top and sink. Suddenly the project became about preventing the iodine from staining everything the color of rust. To heck with the finger.

So there I was, finger bleeding into a paper towel, furiously scrubbing the bathroom. Eventually the damage was contained, the finger bandaged and hoses stowed. I climbed up on deck into the sunshine to enjoy the sailing and ponder: what was it I was working on before being sidetracked by those hoses?

Sailing Fast

I'm on 2 to 6 tonight. A squall passed through a few minutes ago, accompanied by driving rain that gave Quijote a good wash down. There's nothing wrong with removing a layer of salt off the boat. Here comes another. I have the throttle dialed back to about 3/4 of what it usually is. We're motoring into the wind, waiting for it to shift back off our nose. There is no reason to burn a lot of fuel doing that. The wind shift will overtake us; we won't overtake it.

The mainsail is restless and slapping off and on. It's as tired of inactivity as much as we are. We keep it partially rolled out, even when it's not configured to provide lift because it helps calm the boat motion. Waves drive a lot of lateral and rolling motion that the mainsail and the keel help dampen.

We had a really good day of sailing today. It actually started last night. My watch started with light wind, but mid-way through it started to pick up. I let out some sail and slowed the engine. The boat speed climbed. I did it again. Each time increased our speed. Eventually the engine was shut down and we had full canvas up, flying along at 7 knots in a 10 knot wind. That held for most of the day. When the wind speed climbed again and we started pushing 8 knots, we put in a reef. It was nice to have a fast sunny day for a change.

Adventuring

Where yesterday was a relaxing book club kind of day, today was definitely a work day. I worked the early evening (6-10) and middle morning (6-9) shifts last night. In between I slept like the dead for eight hours and woke to relieve Mark.

After that watch I motivated to do some toilet maintenance. There is a rubber valve on most marine toilets that allows liquid and material to be pushed out of the boat without allowing water to come back in the boat. The so called joker valve is a rather clever device that stretches open for passage from one direction and closes shut when trying to pass from the other direction. It's only shortcoming is that because it's made out of rubber it doesn't last very long or withstand much abuse. When the toilet bowl starts to fill by itself, it's time to replace the joker valve. I've replaced Quijote's many times.

We've been motoring again today to get us beyond these doldrums. As long as the seas and winds are mellow, we took the opportunity to transfer the remaining fuel and water tied to the deck into the ship's tanks. We calculate having about 85 gallons of diesel remaining of the 140 we started with. That's enough for six days of motoring. If we have ten days of sailing, we'll need about sixteen days of provisions to get to the next outpost. Ideally that would be home. As our quartermaster tells it we can make our provisions last that long. So we have 16 days of provisions and fuel as long as ten of those days demand no fuel. Will that be enough to get us home? It's hard to predict. Our luck will have to be better than it has been lately. Then again things could be going a la lot worse. We're still in the game and having the adventure of a lifetime.

Bobbing

We've encountered a fair amount of light air the last few days. We call it bobbing. All we can find it seems is wind that won't help us or no wind at all.

That storm we were advised to steer clear of is still building to the north of us, but it's an open question whether we'll be impacted by it. We ran east, away from it, and now it's predicted to be weaker than initially forecasted. Owing to our caution and pessimistic forecasting, that leaves us too far away, perhaps, to have any contact with it, for good or bad.

So we bob, drift, or charge off in the wrong direction. We're sailing northwest at the moment under grey skies at 3 knots. At least we're moving. In the right direction? Sort of. Okay, not really.

A Day in the Life of Quijote Crew

It's a beautiful morning. A pleasant wind is blowing, just enough to fill the sails and move the boat at a moderate pace. The sun is out and the temperature is perfect for a cool morning in T-shirt and shorts.

We should have the wind vane steering because it uses no power and isn't as noisy as the electric auto helm. But Mark was up here alone at the beginning of his watch when the winds were light and variable. The wind vane was having a tough time, so rather than fight with it, he powered up the auto helm.

A few hours later I've switched back to the wind vane. Our desired course is east, but the best we can do in this wind is southeast, so we live with it and press on. Then the wind starts backing: rotating counterclockwise, blowing from the north, then the northwest. That's great for our intended direction, but we know what's coming and see the grey smear in the horizon. Having no choice, we sail into the squall and are pummeled by rain and sturdy winds in the upper teens. The wind then goes light and fluky, turning the wind vane, and thus the boat, in circles.

After bobbing in place for half an hour, listening to the sails flap, I furl the genoa, fire up the engine, and vacate the scene.

Our weather router has given us waypoints to shoot for that will serve our objectives: finding favorable wind and avoiding the storm to our north. We decide it's worth investing fuel to reach the first of those waypoints and set off, running through the night to arrive before dawn.

We don't expect to see any different conditions at this waypoint. It's just a steppingstone to the next and then the next after that. A couple of days from now we'll be in a place where the winds will shift to the north which will allow us to make a turn as well. The reason for the intermediate waypoints is to give us a place to shoot for at 8 AM every morning.