Oahu Bound

We're down to our last couple of days! Mark wants to motor in, but that puts us there at midnight, so Danny and I are pushing to slow down and leave the sails up and the motor off. I anticipate a Saturday arrival. We'll see. The winds are expected to die, so some motoring is expected. Just not yet. We've only burned thirty gallons of fuel so far, all to keep the batteries charged. The trade winds rock!

Is anybody out here?

I'm impressed by the sparsety of shipping out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Sailors talk about how inadvisable it would be to solo across an ocean. If this trip is any indication, I can see why those that do it are comfortable with it, even if they do have to leave the helm and sleep periodically.

In the three weeks we've been on this ocean we've encountered two vessels that were close enough to be seen. Both were roughly three miles away. If the crew of each vessel was asleep, what are the chances of collision? If we divide up an area with a 3 mile radius by the size of a 500' ship we have 3,100 places for that ship to be and doing the same, find 575,000 places for Quijote to be. If 26 of Quijote's spaces correspond to each of the ship's spaces we have a one in 22,000 chance of collision for each ship encountered within 3 miles. We've encountered two, so rounding off we'd have a very rough chance of one in ten thousand that we'd be run over by a ship if we crossed the Pacific solo and slept the whole way. I guess to be random the ship's captain would have to be asleep as well.

In fact Quijote, most recreational offshore vessels, and all commercial shipping broadcast AIS signals that raise the alarm when collision is likely. The chances of collision off-shore are much lower than our random geographical exercise would indicate. Not that I intend to do any solo offshore passages any time soon.

The final word on Genny

I have to say Gennifer has redeemed herself admirably. She went into the whole "dragging her head through the water" thing kicking and screaming, but once we got her settled down she has done the job well. We have two lines that restrain her movement and it took some time to get the lengths adjusted just so. The propeller cavitates a little when it tops out in the larger swell like Genny coming up for air, but the prop powers through and she's been plugging along error free for the last day and a half. Hooray for Duogen, a UK company. The output oscillates between 2 and 3 amperes, which isn't huge, but it contributes about 10% of our battery capacity in a 24 hour period. Does it slow the boat? Maybe a little; not noticeably.

Brownies!

Kay left four batches of Costco(?) chocolate chip brownie mix on the boat sans packaging. How long do you think those will last? No recipe? No prob. Mark messaged Carrie (Mrs) who did some research and came up with one. Egg, oil, water, mix, bake. Easy peasy.

Danny made the first batch, understandably misjudged the temp/time so they came out under done. The oven on this boat puts out some heat, but it's definitely a case of know thy oven. He put the pan on top of the stove to check for doneness. The boat lurched. The pan slid toward the back of the stove. I was too far away to intercede and his hands were occupied. The stove swivelled on its gimbal and we watched in horror as the whole pan of brownies tipped and fell behind the stove. Because they were under-done and not set, most of the batch left the pan and landed in a pile of brownie slop behind the stove. Well now, how about that? What could we do but laugh. And cry.

The next night I made the second batch, with extra chocolate chips which Kay also thoughtfully provided. This time they were cooked to perfection and stored where no spatula would be involved in getting them to our chompers. After a big dinner we enjoyed a brownie each and agreed it was a good batch. We looked forward to brownies for a few days. Do you feel the foreboding? What could possibly go wrong? Not what, who! We woke the following morning and Mark had Hoovered the whole batch. He left a 1" square so he wouldn't have to clean the pan. I have to confess to being a little incredulous.

Act 3: This time Mark makes the brownies. If you're keeping score I've had one brownie in two batches. The third batch was dry and a little over cooked, but we apportioned them out to keep them out of Mark's clutches, so we each got three large brownies and have batch remaining.

Thanks Kay!

Blue Bird Day

The boom box Danny brought is cranking out old people's music: classic rock. Loud OPM at that. Remember when Lawrence Welk used to be OPM?

I'm making water as I write. The tanks started the day dry. We emptied all 25 gallons stored in jugs on deck into the internal tankage. The watermaker will add another forty gallons if I let it run for seven hours.

Today is the first day with more than a few minutes of sunshine. The temperature is lovely. There's something satisfyingly tropic about the scenery. There might be nothing but sky, clouds, and water for as far as the eye can see, but it's clearly tropical sky, clouds, and water. The clouds are cotton puffs and the water is a spectacular midnight blue that you can't find anywhere else. They don't call this blue water sailing for nothing.

Moron Genny

The wind and waves were moderated today, enough so that we were able to disassemble the wind turbine from the generator mounted on in the back of the boat and install a water turbine in its place. The water turbine looks like a propeller but is instead propelled by the motion of the boat through the water. Its rotation generates electricity to charge the batteries. It's not enough to keep up with the full battery demand, but whatever portion it replaces means less engine time.

We've been running the engine a couple of hours every day to charge the batteries. The wind generator cut that in half, but as noted a few days ago, we were forced to decommission it for servicing.

We got a good look at the wind turbine today and found the gear box burned up. Hence plan B, the water turbine.

Unfortunately the water turbine hasn't proved to be as efficient as the air turbine. It doesn't spin as fast so it generates less current.

There are other issues I won't bore you with, but it remains to be seen whether or not we continue to use dear old Genny.

of Fish and Furler

We've enjoyed more fresh fish off the hook the last couple of nights. Both times dorado. Danny has a stubby pole that travels well, a good reel, and a set of colorful lures. He installed a pole holder on the stern rail and trolls parts of most days. The excitement starts when the reel starts to sing. Everyone yells: fish on! Danny then goes into his fish fighting subroutine: set the hook, reel, pause, reel, explicative, repeat until fish netted, flopping on deck. It's a routine he executes well. Then he kills the fish, filets it, discards the detritus into the sea and hoses the deck down with the saltwater pump.

Two days ago we had ceviche with scrabble. Last nigh's catch was baked in a pesto sauce. A large fish goes pretty quickly. We lack a good quality filet knife so good meat inevitably gets discarded.

Today we have the pole out sailing downwind with moderate wind and seas that we'll probably have for days. The pole usually comes in at night but otherwise we're likely to keep this sail configuration until we arrive in Oahu. It's comfortable and the wind vane handles it well.

We had an issue a couple of days ago that for a few moments looked like it might be serious. The main sail refused to furl. While working at the mast to resolve the problem, I discovered that a spare halyard had been drawn into the furled main sail, jamming the furler with too much bulk to continue turning.

Thankfully the issue was quickly resolved by working the halyard free from the sail without sending anyone up the mast. We were so thankful it was an easy fix. Furling the main sail is pretty essential.