Sailing again!!!

Time: 2021/07/15 03:47:02
Latitude: 42-7.92N
Longitude: 171-9.05W
Speed: 6.0
Course: 45T
Wind_Speed: 15
Wind_Dir: SSW
Wave_Ht: .5M
Wave_Dir: SSW
Comment: Spinnaker went up at 1000 local, flew all day despite it being a drizzly, wet overcast afternoon. Winds are forecast to be consistently low so we will take a chance and fly the big sail overnight.


The spinnaker is flying!!! It is such a beautiful sight. We have not had the opportunity to use this sail very much in the last few years so it is awesome to get it flying again. And even better to no longer have the on going drone of the engine. Just peacefully coasting gently down the waves and only the sound of our wake. It is a super dismal day. Very poor visibility with low cloud and drizzly rain on and off. But no complaints here, we are sailing again and actually pointing in the right direction, so all around another winning day on the North Pacific.

Further I have to give props to Silke who changed our lives with an awesome tip to waterproof our helm cover. As anyone who has seen Maple knows she has a very exposed helm. Not much protection from the weather. However, we do have a cloth cover over our heads, which is great as long as the rain is coming straight down and we all know that is not reality when sailing. We had a lot more rain on the first part of this passage to Hawaii. The helm cover was entirely useless because the second it got wet, it developed the best leak right over top of our laps. And so even after the rain has stopped, we still had this persistent drip that lasted long after any rain clouds had moved on. So one of the million things D did while in Honolulu was waterproof the helm cover. It can be the smallest things that make life comfortable out here and that one is a winner with these drizzly days we have had recently!!!

Ella inspired me to finally start knitting a shawl that I had planned to also knit while on this passage. Needless to say, Ella did not get her goal-driven quality from me. Anyway, after many failed attempts today, I moth-balled that project back to the shelf again. Tell me my knitting friends, does anyone successfully knit with lace weight yarn!?!? While I appreciate I have nothing but time out here, I tell you my patience was not up to that task today.

Tonight at 1am Maple time, we get our third bag of candy on this second half of the passage. That is right, we have finally completed 1500nm since leaving Hawaii!! Little by little we are making progress.