Okay, so night #3 was unpleasant but no additional broken boat bits to report so will call that a win. Apparently I should not have boasted about a dry helm and silent engines in my last post. I actually had to pull out my foul weather jacket which I haven't used on the boat since possibly the Atlantic crossing?!?! The volume of rain we saw through one squall after another I am convinced rivaled how much rain we experienced during a tropical storm in Grenada. But like all good sailing stories, it can't be substantiated.
In addition to the rain, there were two highlights to my evening. As I sat at a now very wet helm seat surrounded by complete darkness with the only light on offer from distant lightning that surrounded us and the annoying hum of an engine, suddenly this supernatural glow caught my eye off our starboard (right) side. Once my eyes had a chance to adjust, I witnessed the most spectacular bioluminescence drifting past us. I can't adequately describe the large, greenish orbs that swirled and intersected with each other. I aimed my flashlight on the water to see what was causing the dancing lights but this offered no answers. Jellyfish?? A school of fish?? I have no other suggestions but it was a beautiful sight and a welcome distraction to my drenched self-pity.
On this high, I turned back towards the front of the boat when something else appeared in my periphery to the left. I quickly realized I was sharing the helm seat with a most unwelcome guest. Slowly darting towards my leg was a HUGE cockroach. Yup. A big, ugly cockroach with antennas that rivaled the size of its body. Feeling trapped in my seat and paralyzed with fear, I managed to flick it away with my jacket sleeve. With this momentary reprieve I was able to scramble down the helm station into the cockpit. I quickly caught sight of it again, where it was now exploring the seat back cushion of the helm seat. Of course I did what was only logical....I started screaming. I felt like I screamed for a long time before Ella came up to investigate. She aided me by preparing me with bug spray and a shoe. I stood there glaring menacingly at the beast hoping it would recognize it needed to find a new ride but it remained undeterred. I was left with only with one possible option, I had Ella wake up her dad. Despite Darryl's equal dislike for these nasty bugs, he is more of a problem solver than me and managed to bravely go into battle with the beast and conquer. With the roach now crushed and drifting away at sea, other than a bruised ego, all was well on board again.
On a side note, this morning I told Iris about the battle with the bug and she calmly says to me..."oh, that is what you were screaming about"?! Seriously kid??? No investigating to see whether your dear mother needs assistance, she clearly just managed to get herself back to sleep.
Now that I have demonstrated to all my lack of resilience I will end this post here. All is well on board. The engine did eventually get turned off and we are enjoying an easy sail at the moment with only one squall hitting us so far today. We will see what night #4 has on offer...
Friday 31 January 2020
Thursday 30 January 2020
Rain, rain and more rain
So our second night was much better than our first with only one squall paying us a visit which where we were trimmed well for so it passed without incident. However, Day 3 has been one squall after another. Needless to say the cockpit is soaking wet. The only saving grace is the angle of the wind and rain is on the opposite side to our helm so we are able to stay relatively dry at the helm when the squalls hit. Squalls always seem so much easier to contend with during the day when we can see them coming from miles off and are more than prepared for them when they hit.
Despite the torn sail and wet weather, we really can't complain. We have been sailing beautifully along, haven't needed to turn on the engine once since leaving. Even when the sun is needing to fight its way through clouds the solar panels are doing a great job of keeping our batteries charged during the day. The seas were a bit confused yesterday which generally does not leave the crew in a great mood, but today the seas are cooperating better. The girls only mildly grumbled about having to do a bit of school today after taking yesterday off. Otherwise, the girls spend their days laughing while binge watching the series, Big Bang Theory, so really they shouldn't complain about putting in an hour of school a day.
As usual, the Maple crew prove to be incompetent fishermen and despite having two lines in the water, we have yet to get a nibble. Meanwhile when we were in the Marquesas we had friends who took pity on us and generously shared portions of marlin, wahoo and yellow fin tuna with us. It is not like the fish are not out there they just seem to do a terrific job of evading our lures. So instead we enthusiastically enjoyed fish tacos last night using wahoo courtesy of Sugar Shack, thank you guys!!! We still have 500 miles to go before reaching Tahiti so perhaps I can try to be cautiously optimistic on replenishing our now depleted fish stocks.
I will sign off for now as another squall looms behind us.
Despite the torn sail and wet weather, we really can't complain. We have been sailing beautifully along, haven't needed to turn on the engine once since leaving. Even when the sun is needing to fight its way through clouds the solar panels are doing a great job of keeping our batteries charged during the day. The seas were a bit confused yesterday which generally does not leave the crew in a great mood, but today the seas are cooperating better. The girls only mildly grumbled about having to do a bit of school today after taking yesterday off. Otherwise, the girls spend their days laughing while binge watching the series, Big Bang Theory, so really they shouldn't complain about putting in an hour of school a day.
As usual, the Maple crew prove to be incompetent fishermen and despite having two lines in the water, we have yet to get a nibble. Meanwhile when we were in the Marquesas we had friends who took pity on us and generously shared portions of marlin, wahoo and yellow fin tuna with us. It is not like the fish are not out there they just seem to do a terrific job of evading our lures. So instead we enthusiastically enjoyed fish tacos last night using wahoo courtesy of Sugar Shack, thank you guys!!! We still have 500 miles to go before reaching Tahiti so perhaps I can try to be cautiously optimistic on replenishing our now depleted fish stocks.
I will sign off for now as another squall looms behind us.
En route back to Tahiti
Well that first night was unpleasant to say the least. After such a chill first half to Day 1, the second half decided to throw us a curve ball. We were hit by two squalls, the first of which we were very much unprepared for as there is no moon beyond 10pm right now so we had no light to work with to see what the sky is doing other than to see that the stars have disappeared. Our experience up to yesterday had been that squalls in the Pacific were pretty low key, perhaps you see some rain and a 5-10 knot increase in wind speed. But that is all, generally passing quite quickly. Given that for the first 14 hours we were only seeing 6-10 knots of apparent wind, we kept the sails full with no reefs, which is not typical of us at night. Well that first squall decided to give us a cruel reminder on why we prefer to be cautious on night sailing.
It was only 11:00pm but the moon, for the tiny crescent it is worth, had already long set. D was nearing the end of his shift and as usual I am lying awake in bed listening to every noise. Suddenly I could hear the boat start to race down much longer and steeper waves than we had been experiencing and the water just sounded LOUD. I raced upstairs to find D hand steering desperately trying to keep Maple heading downwind with the full sails still in a wing on wing formation without accidentally gybing (letting the wind come onto the other side of the main sail). Unfortunately this is very hard to do when skidding down waves with full sails and in 25 to 30 knots of apparent wind. All it took was a moment for the wind to sneak behind us and with one loud boom of a sound, the main sail tore straight across just below the first reefing point. Sigh. We had really hoped that sail would hang on until Thailand as we knew she was starting to show her age. The good news is we can still use the main sail, it just needs to be always reefed at the first reefing point and Maple has a very resourceful Captain who is already exploring how he is going to stitch her up when we arrive in Tahiti. Needless to say we were better prepared for the second squall that hit us last night without further incident.
I will say I am hoping that the rest of the passage does not continue to replicate our first night otherwise this is going to be one painfully long 7 days. On the upside, we have collected ourselves a bunch of rain water to keep our water tanks topped up, which is helpful since the watermaker stopped working a few weeks ago. Always something isn't there?!
It was only 11:00pm but the moon, for the tiny crescent it is worth, had already long set. D was nearing the end of his shift and as usual I am lying awake in bed listening to every noise. Suddenly I could hear the boat start to race down much longer and steeper waves than we had been experiencing and the water just sounded LOUD. I raced upstairs to find D hand steering desperately trying to keep Maple heading downwind with the full sails still in a wing on wing formation without accidentally gybing (letting the wind come onto the other side of the main sail). Unfortunately this is very hard to do when skidding down waves with full sails and in 25 to 30 knots of apparent wind. All it took was a moment for the wind to sneak behind us and with one loud boom of a sound, the main sail tore straight across just below the first reefing point. Sigh. We had really hoped that sail would hang on until Thailand as we knew she was starting to show her age. The good news is we can still use the main sail, it just needs to be always reefed at the first reefing point and Maple has a very resourceful Captain who is already exploring how he is going to stitch her up when we arrive in Tahiti. Needless to say we were better prepared for the second squall that hit us last night without further incident.
I will say I am hoping that the rest of the passage does not continue to replicate our first night otherwise this is going to be one painfully long 7 days. On the upside, we have collected ourselves a bunch of rain water to keep our water tanks topped up, which is helpful since the watermaker stopped working a few weeks ago. Always something isn't there?!
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