Have you ever wondered what life is like, day to day, on a month-long, open-ocean crossing? Where there is absolutely no option available to pull over to make a repair, to buy fuel or food, or just to take a break? Well, wonder no more.
This is a thorough description of the 3,000-mile Pacific Ocean crossing from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to the Marquesas, French Polynesia on the sailing vessel Cool Change, a Pacific Seacraft 31, undertaken by Rick and Cindy Patrinellis in March – April, 2018. It contains voice recordings, journal entries, Facebook posts, ship’s logs, photographs, and videos designed to recapture the voyage as accurately and completely as possible. It is a blow by blow, moment by moment account, all recorded while it was actually happening. For a summary, look elsewhere; this is designed to immerse you in the experience, detail by detail. It is likely to be of interest primarily to those who really need to know the details in order to thoroughly appreciate the experience, or who plan on undertaking the adventure themselves.
Casting off the docklines for French Polynesia had been a long time coming: ever since we bought Cool Change in 2010, we had been preparing for this moment. We outfitted her over a period of three years before leaving San Francisco to sail to Mexico, and then tested her systems and added new ones over another three years cruising full time in Mexico. She was finally as ready as she could be. Here is Rick, showing off Cool Change on the morning of departure:
MARCH 26, DAY ZERO
To exit Mexico with Cool Change, a whole slew of officials from different governmental agencies had to come to the boat at the marina, make inspections, sign papers and cast us off. There was no running to the store for a last-minute item, once they completed their duties and signed their official farewell. Having been recorded as leaving the country in the same way as you would had you stepped onto a airplane, we were legally prohibited from stepping foot again on Mexican soil without new documents, once we were given our marching papers.
However, the passage to the Marquesas was going to be long enough without adding the extra several hours it was going to take to exit Banderas Bay. Why not anchor out at the western edge of Banderas Bay for that last night, BBQ one last time, and get a good night’s sleep before leaving the sight of land when the wind picked up in the morning?
We had a great send-off leaving Paradise Village Marina, thanks to friends who wished us farewell. We announced our departure on the VHF radio just before the officials cast off our dock lines. Several cruisers waved and shouted to us as we drove past them, and one honked their horn: a loud, very large yacht horn, as if it were a cruise ship’s horn. That was fun. Laurie from Muskoka, who would be leaving the dock for French Polynesia just after us, took a video as we backed away. My favorite sendoff was from Delsey and Phil, who played “Bali Ha’i” over the VHF radio as we sailed past their condo!
After a lengthy day sail, we had a lovely night on anchor, BBQ’ing hamburgers, making French fries, and sharing a bottle of wine. It was a quiet, still night with nearly a full moon – a fitting way to spend our last night in Mexico.
So, our ocean passage did not really begin on the day we left Paradise Village; indeed, it began a day later. Thus, March 26 was Day Zero.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO:
Editorial Comment: These voice memos were recorded daily by Cindy, mostly to reflect on how the crossing made her feel. They are all addressed to her sister Sharon, who was the one who suggested she make these recordings. They reveal the state of introspection one attains during an extended period at sea. Some express unbridled excitement while others express the challenges and frustrations encountered. Click on the arrow in the center of the picture to begin.
RICK’S JOURNAL:
3/26/18. Cindy had a superbug infection that almost prevented us from leaving the dock, nearly turning all our preparations into nothing but good intentions. We were so worried, but after three days of heavy doses of an injectable antibiotic and another week before tests could prove it worked, she is now ALL CLEAR and we are back on track.
The process of officially clearing out of the country began last week by submitting some of our paperwork to the Marina, and making the official departure appointment. We took copies of our passports, resident IDs and our Temporary Import Permit (TIP) to the authorities so they could check on where we have been, and when we came in and out of the country. We went over to the port captain on Friday and paid the fees. After that we just had to wait for the boat visit when Immigration, port captain, and Aduana (customs) all come to the boat and give us the final clearance to leave the country.
Though Cindy was better medically, we were still on pins and needles because we did not have our sail back from the re-cut that Mike from PV Sailing was doing. He said it would be done by Friday and we were scheduled to cast off Monday. Finally, on Sunday, late in the afternoon, Mike arrived with the sail. We put it up and everything was perfect, though Mike said he thought we should tighten up the staysail headstay about three turns before we leave. He thought the rest of the standing rigging looked good. Never having made that adjustment before, I was in a bit of a panic until Cindy reminded me that a friend of ours, Rob, who is rebuilding an old sailboat in the marina, is a rigger. I went to his boat and talked to him and he agreed to come by at 08:00 and make the adjustment while showing me how. That was perfect, and we got it done in less than an hour.
I loaded all the fuel jugs aboard (12 jugs with a total of 60 gallons of diesel). That was the last thing that needed to come aboard, and we were ready for the customs inspection. Right on time, three young officials arrived and went about inspecting the boat, making sure there were no stowaways aboard! The Aduana person was late so when the other officials finished after about 30 minutes, one of them stayed to watch the boat and the other two left while we waited for the man from Aduana to arrive. When he did, he only looked inside a couple of drawers, filled out some paperwork and we were done. They handed us our Zarpe (clearance form for checking out of Mexico), which we will need to check into French Polynesia. When the officials finished with us, they photographed us leaving the dock. We are not allowed to set foot on Mexican soil from here on out.
Though a bit outside of the rules, we plan to anchor out in Punta de Mita for our last night in Mexico! It is a lovely anchorage and we can relax and get a good night’s sleep before we take off early tomorrow morning. I will be making my Camarones a La Diabla tonight, which will be a treat, and we will enjoy our last margaritas until we arrive in French Polynesia.
Sailing to Punta de Mita is always a challenge because the wind is usually coming from that direction, and today was no exception. Though the distance from Paradise to Punta de Mita is only about 20 miles, we will sail 30+ to get there. Normally we would get discouraged after several hours and we would start the motor and motorsail the rest of the way in. Today, however, we do not have the luxury of having fuel to burn just because we are getting impatient. So, we will sail untilwe are within 2 nm of the anchorage and then we will motor in and set the anchor for the night. We left at about 11 am and looks like we will drop the hook about 6 pm. If our days traveling to FP were like today, we would never arrive! Actually though, we are expecting some good winds as a cold front moves down the Sea of Cortez and outside of the Baja from California, so tomorrow it should be starting to build, and it should be rocking by Wednesday. We need to have winds like that from a low to push us away from the coast of Mexico out past the Socorro Islands, where we can then attach to the trade winds. The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) looked really wide on Windy TY, but Mike says it will have lots of holes we can punch through. We just need to time things right and get to the Socorro’s by about Thursday.
Sailing through Banderas Bay today, we had a pod of young dolphins swim with us for quite some time. It must have been 30 minutes or more. They were very inquisitive and friendly. Our friends Phil and Desley were watching us leave from their condo on the beach and they said they saw a whale surface right behind our stern. Desley said that was good luck for our voyage. Awesome, I will take whatever luck is offered on this trip! As we left the marina, it was cool because we saw many of our cruiser friends and they were waving and shouting to us. One older couple that cruise on an awesome catamaran called Moon Dancer was blowing a conch shell for us as we passed them. It was all very cool to have a sendoff like that and to see all the people that wish us well. As of yesterday, about half the boats that are crossing had left, or about 15 boats. A few left so long ago they are either there now or about to arrive. The weather window we are taking advantage of will be the one most of the rest of the boats choose. We are a day ahead of most of them, which is good as we are the smallest and therefore the slowest boat in this group. Most of them will catch up and move ahead of us within a few days. I am happy with how Cool Change is carrying herself with all the weight we have loaded on to her. Just the last addition of fuel added was over 360 pounds. Our provisioning added hundreds of pounds more.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, Thru Anchor Down on March 26
32 nm pre-crossing. Departed Paradise Village Marina at 1100. Anchor down at Punta de Mita anchorage on the northwestern lip of Banderas Bay at 1909. Wind direction from West at 4 to 18 knots. Motored 1.3 hours; the balance of the time was spent sailing on a close haul, tacking frequently to our destination. Sea temperature 76, barometer 1012, clear skies. Ending Lat/Long: 20 46N, 105 31W.
MARCH 27, DAY 1
RICK’S JOURNAL:
When we got to Punta de Mita last night, it was delightful conditions. Cindy enjoyed the luxury of a shower and I made my Camarones a la Diabla. We sipped Margaritas in the cockpit at sundown. Life is good! We had a very restful night but there were times that both of us were awake and thinking the same things. Ha! funny how that works. Getting out of the Marina and the last few miles and anchoring used about an hour and 40 minutes of fuel, or about a gallon of diesel. In the morning we checked and rechecked weather and all the sources seemed in agreement that we would have some sailable winds just outside the anchorage by about noon. We had everything ready to go and we decided to leave by 10:30. I would be taking the anchor apart and stowing it rather than keeping the weight on the bow for the Pacific crossing. That took some time but went well. I had taken the time to make sure all the bolts were unfrozen a couple weeks before, so all came apart easily.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO, RECORDED DAY 1.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 on March 28
First day mileage: 101 nm, Total mileage: 101 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 20 01N, 107 05W. We weighed anchor at 1030 under power, but by 1140, the engine was off and we were sailing. Steering course of 240M with winds varying in direction from West to North, beam reach to close hauled. Clear skies, barometer 1011, sea temperature 74.5. The midnight hours were pretty wild: we had one wave into the cockpit and several cockpit splashes. The spare gas can and one diesel can came loose on the starboard deck, and it was very bumpy water. The cans were in no danger of going overboard because they were tied in, but they needed to be secured better to keep the deck clear.
MARCH 28, DAY 2
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Editorial Comment: Cindy wrote a Facebook post nearly every day, sending them via our Iridium Go! satellite phone directly to Facebook as she had previously arranged and tested. Often, the posts included a picture. However, the functionality of this Iridium Go! feature was less than stellar, and most of the posts either never made it or were cut off. Nevertheless, the writing continued, and all of the posts are reposted here.
PHEW! Day Two just beginning … Day One of our Pacific Ocean crossing complete! We weighed anchor about 1030 and almost immediately had sufficient wind to sail, albeit a bit slowly. It picked up during the day but we still had mellow seas and full sails deployed on a close haul heading west southwest. About 2100, the winds died and we reluctantly motored for a couple of hours, and then we got enough wind to sail again, so up went full sails in 8 knots of wind. But then, WHAM! The seas picked up to two to three meters on the starboard bow, and the winds were coming at us on the beam at 15 knots. That doesn’t sound like much but I had forgotten how intense a beam reach can be. I kept thinking, the wind is not high enough to reef, but when we hit a steady 7 knots SOG (Speed Over Ground), I woke Rick up and said it was time. By the time he came on watch, we had to reef down to the third reef and deploy the staysail instead of the jib. Meanwhile, the boat is rocking on a 20 degree tilt every time a big wave goes under us. Thank goodness for lee cloths! And this weather continues into the next morning, although a little less intimidating in the light of day. We are safe and thrilled to be out here. All is well on board.
RICK’S JOURNAL:
3/28/18 We were sailing soon after getting away from the anchorage yesterday, but the wind was light and the going was slow. The wind had built to 12 knots and the water was fairly smooth so we were having a great sail till about 20:00 when the winds started dying off. By 20:50 we were down to 1.5 knots speed and the mainsail was flogging. We talked about it and decided to chance running the engine for a couple of hours until we might find some wind. About 2.5 hours later. we were rewarded with winds in the mid-teens. We wasted no time shutting down the engine and getting the sails up. Throughout the night, it blew into the upper teens and the seas built till they were at least 3 meters. We went through a series of sail changes and ended up with a triple reefed main and the headsail fully deployed. That seemed to be the best workable configuration and we kept it through the night and into today (Wednesday). We took a sun sight late in the afternoon yesterday and I will take another today and see if we can plot a running fix. A friend back home sent a message asking us to do a noon site for his daughter that she can use for a school project, so we will do that as well, soon.
The wind generator has worked beyond my expectations. It kept us charged to at least 98% all night while we were using autopilot, numerous electronic systems, SSB radio and the chart plotter. If we did not have it, we would be forced to use fuel each night for at least a couple of hours to top up the batteries. Now we should be able to save that fuel for propulsion when we need it.
There is another boat out ahead of us by several days with a young couple aboard and one extra crew, on a boat named Bravo. Andy, the skipper, reported into the radio net the other day that they had engine problems and were working on it. I did not hear any detail of what went wrong but I am hoping it was not due to salt water intrusion through the exhaust, which can happen in following sea. It can destroy a motor just like that, and the pistons lock up with salt water in the cylinders. Cool Change was built with a through-hull valve in her exhaust that allows us to shut off that port of entry. I have never used it before, but we will be religious about it on this trip. Access to the valve is through the aft lazarette and is not easy or fun. I hang the keys on the valve handle to prevent us from forgetting about it and then trying to start the engine with the valve closed! That would be a disaster.
Towards the end of my shift today, there were a couple of mishaps. First, I was adjusting the brightness of the chart plotter screen and by accident shut down the auto pilot. This sent the boat upwind about 60 degrees and a large wave crashed over the cockpit, drenching me. Then, one of our diesel fuel cans came loose and was bouncing around the deck still attached, but not anchored securely. I had to alert Cindy and wait till she could come up into the cockpit until I could go deal with it. We have a rule that no one goes forward unless the other person is watching the process as it is always a dangerous move.
We have 4 tethers that we use to keep us attached to the boat at all times when we’re outside. There are two along the side of the boat just outside of the cockpit that run along jacklines for forward deck work. Then in the cockpit we each have a tether that is clipped into a jackline there. The fuel incident was kind of scary because it should not have happened. The jugs are held on with seat belt webbing that goes through the handle at the top of the can and then around the bottom of the can, clipped and tightened to a special rail that runs between two stanchions. Luckily, we only had a problem with one of the 12 jugs. Today we will start with our rigging and deck inspections. We will do this every day at the calmest time possible and look for any signs of trouble, loose hardware, chafe issues etcetera.
… Later this day… Was not able to do much of a physical deck inspection today because the seas were just too big. I did use binoculars and check as much as I could see and found no obvious issues. Speaking of sea conditions, I don’t think we have ever been in sustained sea conditions for as long as these were. Over 24 hours of 3-4 meter waves on the beam in winds to 20 kts. It was kind of exhausting. Cindy got very seasick and did not have a good day. She did take some medication, which seemed to help some, but the side effects include making her sleepy. Tough day.
As the winds had been so strong and the wind generator was pumping, I decided to experiment making water solely using available solar and wind power. The watermaker was not working correctly and that got my attention! It was acting like there was a blockage in the system somewhere and it looked like the first filter (raw water) was empty. I pulled off one of the hoses to it and turned on the seacock to see if water would flow and it did, but it was weak and on and off. I think what was happening was that when the system was pumping, because of the rough sea state, it would pull in air and cause an airlock, which would stop any flow through the Clark pump. After I was reasonably sure that this was the problem, I shut everything down and determined to wait for calm seas before attempting to make water. During the process I also inspected the 5-micron pre-filter and found that it was clean and in fine condition.
The whole event just really drove home to me how vulnerable our existence is on the sea. There is no help really, we must be self-sufficient and a simple problem can turn into something that is life-threatening, such as running out of fresh water in the middle of the ocean. I have always taken extremely good care of the watermaker membrane. There is only so much we can carry on this small boat and the decisions are crucial ones. A membrane that is treated well should last about 7 years. Anyway, because I trust the condition of this machine, I think it will continue to work with the spares we do have.
I took a 4-hour rest before my 0200 watch and I woke up thinking that there is no help. Yes we are really on our own. I tried to check into the PPJ (Pacific Puddle Jump) last night at the appointed time. Icould hear nothing and could not be heard. We have the option of an electronic check-in, which I think I will do tonight so as not to cause any concern over us missing a check-in. It was interesting though that I turned on the frequency that is the same used by Pacific Seafarers Net and there was a Maritime net running that was land based out of the US. These are volunteer amateur radio enthusiasts that do this. I was able to communicate with them and I checked in. They were jazzed to have made contact with a vessel heading for the South Pacific. I gave them our position and a weather and sea-state report. I think I may continue to check in with them as long as they can hear me. The net controller last night has a beam antenna that he will point to the area he is looking for calls from. He just happened to be pointing it out to the Pacific when I stumbled on them.
It is getting a bit tougher to write and I don’t want to risk getting the computer wet so I will pause for now. Many more thoughts …. Another system we have had some issues with is the head. It is new this season, and replaced the electric head, which I thought would use too much power on this crossing, among other things. When we are in process of clearing the bowl, it will just stop pumping like it is clogged. I am not sure what is causing this but usually we just let it sit for a while until it works. I hope this is not going to be a sign of trouble to come.
We also have an issue with our remote cockpit mike for the VHF radio. The connector for the mike and the connector it attaches to are not well marine hardened. It has been intermittent for quite a while but may have finally died last night. I have thought about bypassing the connectors and hard-wiring it all. There is also the issue of the hole it will leave where I installed the cable side of the connector. I need to think on this before acting. It is not critical because the unit in the cabin works independently and has its own mike. Just much more convenient to have VHF in the cockpit and easier on the off-watch person as well. We really aren’t hearing much traffic on it and probably won’t, the further out we get. Once we are past the coastal ship lanes, which we pretty much are now, there really is not going to be much traffic that will be within the 25 to 30-mile range of the VHF radio.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG through 0800 March 29:
Daily mileage: 124 nm, Total mileage: 225 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 19 05N, 108 56W. On a beam reach with a heading of 235M, winds from the North at 10 to 18 knots true. Sea temperature 74, clear skies, barometer 1012. Watermaker acting up, probably due to severe tilt. Rick thinks air locks are getting into the system. Will try again in better seas. Both Cindy and Rick took waves in the cockpit during their night shifts and got drenched. Cindy had some sea sickness during the day but it was improving towards the morning hours. Seas and winds calmed at times but then increased again. Lots of reefing and then shaking out the reef, all day and night.
MARCH 29, DAY 3
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Day Three just starting; Day Two sailing to French Polynesia complete! We made 101 nautical miles (nm) in the first 21 hours, and 124 nm in the second full day. Average exactly 5 knots per hour so far. That is a good speed for Cool Change – the most comfortable. At that rate, we will make the 2703 nm to the Marquesas in less than 23 days! We are allowing 30, just in case of course and wind variations. But so far, so good. We are only about 50 nm short of the Socorro Islands now. We are seeing lots of birds. Yesterday we were accompanied by pods of dolphins all day long. We are still eating the dinners we prepared before the passage – eight meals of stew, chile and lasagna, frozen ahead of time. Tonight, I think I will make a salad and cornbread to accompany the chile; it is predicted to be calm enough.
Speaking of sea state, yesterday was pretty uncomfortable. The big swells rolled us back and forth as we zipped through with good wind. I thought after these past four years of cruising, my sea sickness had disappeared, but it raised its ugly head yesterday for a little while. Thank goodness the seas calmed a bit, and now I seem to be fine. Took a little Stugeron too. All that has happened to boat systems so far is that a fuel jug had to be adjusted, the watermaker made funny noises because we were heeled over too much to make water, and the remote VHF cockpit mike connection is acting up again. I would be content to have no more serious problems than that for the trip.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO, recorded on Day 3.
RICK’S JOURNAL:
3/29/18 When I first went on watch last night, it was really nice. The seas had settled way down and the wind was a pleasant 9 to 12 knots. Before Cindy got off watch, we decided to shake out the reef, as we needed more power to keep up our expected 5 knots. It was perfect sailing on a near full moon night until about 04:30. The winds began building and were soon in the high teens. The sea state changed almost immediately to the towering swell that we had the day before. I put the reef back at about 05:00 and just in time. It got pretty gnarly and I got drenched again in the cockpit when a large wave broke on the side of the boat.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 March 30
Daily mileage: 110 nm, Total mileage: 335 nm:. Ending Lat/Long 18 15N, 110 36W. Calmer seas by morning, 10-13 knots winds from the North on a broad reach with a heading of 234 M. Moon 98% full, clear skies, barometer 1014. Sea temperature 75.7f. As evening approached, winds shifted to NW. The main slatted a lot. The low power alarm went off so we ran the motor in the early morning hours for about two hours to restore the batteries. By 0100 on March 30, we were about 50 nm SW of the Socorro Islands.
MARCH 30, DAY 4
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Day Four just starting; Day Three of journey to French Polynesia complete! Travelled 335 nm, 2379 nm to go. It was a much calmer and gentler ride yesterday. All signs of seasickness have faded to a distant memory. We had our friend Desley’s awesome chile with fresh baked cornbread and a nice crisp salad for dinner – it is a blessing when the seas are calm enough to prepare a meal. Of course, calmer and gentler can mean fewer miles, but no worries! We have nearly unlimited watermaking ability and enough food for months.
Thanks for all the well wishes and personal messages – the InReach Delorme satellite device is ringing off the hook! The forecast for the next several days is for similar conditions compared to yesterday. Now our concern is having enough wind to sail, but not too much! Right now, we are sailing wing-on-wing, Cool Change’s favorite sail configuration. We are content with our use of fuel so far – only about 7 hours in 72 hours of traveling. We have enough fuel for a total of about 160 hours of motoring, but we are saving it up for the ITCZ, where southern and northern hemisphere winds mingle in a kind of mixed up messed up way, and sailing becomes a challenge for at least 180 nm or more.
Meanwhile, the fleet of 35-or-so Puddle Jumpers that left just before us or just after us are all around us; mostly ahead of us, since we are a slower boat, but they are everywhere. We can’t see them, but we hear them on the radio each night. One is only 35 nm ahead on the same heading! Our bodies are starting to adjust to the sleep times – I was wide awake during my shift last night, promptly fell asleep when I was off, and feel refreshed this morning. All is well on board. Remember, we cannot see your comments to these posts as they are one-way from our satellite phone, but a friend is summarizing the comments for us. Enjoy the trip with us! Cindy
The Banderas Bay Puddle Jump Group, 2018
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO:
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 March 31
Daily mileage: 88 nm, Total mileage: 423 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 17 25N, 112 08W. Winds N 6 to 11 knots, course 180 to 235M (jibing), on a dead downwind run. 30-75% cloud cover, full moon, barometer 1013, sea temperature 76. Used autopilot all night because mainsail slatting would have been worse with Charlie. Ran engine for propulsion part of night. Checked into Banderas Bay SSB net through a Delorme message to Dazzler because we were having a difficult time hearing and being heard on SSB.
MARCH 31, DAY 5
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Good morning from 436 miles out at sea in the Pacific Ocean, Day Four of our voyage to French Polynesia complete. We are currently at 17 26n latitude and 111 59w longitude on a course of 260 M, slinking along at barely 3 knots in no more than 7.5 knots of wind with the spinnaker and mainsail deployed. Not much wind but got to save that fuel for when we really need it. We had some cumulous cloud cover this morning but we have left it mostly behind. After Day 2 of rough seas that made my stomach complain, I am fine with slow going in calm waters. We have several more days of this weather predicted before we start hitting some big winds again. Plenty of time to prepare some more meals for when cooking will become a challenge. Yesterday we made 88 nm over ground – not exactly on the rhumb line to our destination (hardly ever can while sailing), but close.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL:
3/31/18. Yesterday the winds got light again. We did some route analysis with PredictWind and adjusted our heading to keep a bit more north and west of the rhumbline. We had decided to pole out the jib and sail wing on wing. When we did so, we discovered that the chafe guard that we installed on the jib sheets gets caught up in the claw of the whisker pole. This is a problem because the pole gets stuck in place and is difficult to bring down, and the claw ends up too far away from the clew of the headsail, so it does not extend all the sail to the wind. We did not have the opportunity to fix this issue yesterday but we will be doing it first thing this morning.
Last night after dark we were having a lot of trouble with the mainsail slatting (flogging). When I began my 02:00 watch, it started getting worse because the wind was lessening. I ended up reefing the main to the 3rd reef, which helped, but of course that hurt us because we were not effectively using what little wind we had. The batteries were getting low as we had no wind generator power, so at about 03:40 I started the engine and ran for 1.5 hours. Batteries charged up in an hour. Since then, it has been very light wind, < 6 knots, and we are making 2-3 knots forward at best. Not encouraging. One of the things I am discovering about shorthanded crew like us, is that problems like last night can’t be dealt with as quickly as you’d like because the off-watch person needs to get their sleep. As it is, if there is something that is urgent and requires attention, we wake the off-watch person up but it’s not good to do except in response to an urgent problem. If we had one more person as crew, we could have backup when someone needs to work foredeck rather than having to wait for the other of us to get their sleep and wake up.
Today there are lots of puffy, moist-looking clouds about. Not sure what is coming but looks like something. I also observed a large ring around the moon last night. I forget what that means. Well as soon as Cindy was awake, we went out on the deck and successfully fixed the problem with the head sail leads getting stuck in the whisker pole. We thought about using tape as an anti-chafe material rather than the sheath but I was worried that it would still catch on the claw so we are back to the naked sheets. The jib sheets are much thicker than normal ones anyway and I am thinking that chafe will not be an issue. We will see.
As I was working on things this morning, I spotted another boat a few miles off our port beam. We tried raising them on the radio but got no response. Then a bit later they hailed us and we connected. It was s/v Anne, friends from PV, including KC. KC is making the crossing with 2 other crew, friends from Washington State, and Jan and the 2 other wives will fly there to meet the boys. They had been motoring all night while we were busy wallowing in the low wind with our sails deployed. Then this morning they put up their spinnaker and said they were making 4.5 knots. We had been contemplating same, so we dug out the spinnaker and put it up. At first the wind was too light and it was a hassle but then the wind filled and is currently between 6 & 7 knots, and we are moving 4 to 4.5 knots. Life is good again!
We have been enjoying opening a little gift each evening that Cindy’s sister Kim and her family gave us when they visited in PV. There are 30 wrapped little presents, one for each day of the anticipated voyage. Favorites so far have been a pair of fleece socks and sea salt chocolate! Pete sends us a joke pretty much every day. I realize that there are a lot of people following us on the crossing via our webpage. Some of the sailors have offered weather advice, which is always welcome. We can never get enough weather info, especially on this passage.
This morning I was making water while the engine was on but the main tank was way lower than I thought and I did not want to continue running the engine just for that, so we shut it down and ran another hour on solar. There was not enough wind for the wind turbine. From the amp counter, it looks like the solar was able to keep up. Yeah!! The other night the chart plotter popped a low power message and when I checked, the house batteries were at 11.57 V. That is technically dead and I have never run them down that low before. This was the day we were running the watermaker for a full load on solar. It was too late in the day I think for the solar to catch up on making power, and then we had to use the auto pilot all night because the wind was too light for the windvane to steer.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 April 1
Daily mileage: 78 nm, Total mileage: 501 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 16 53N, 112 53W. Wind N to NW 6-8 knots, wing on wing with 3rd reef to reduce slatting, then changed to Spinnaker with reefed main. Broad reach to a run. Cloud cover 15% to 75% with cumulus clouds. Sea temperature increasing to 77.2. Barometer 1015. Total engine hours from start of passage through 1400: 10.9 hours. Started engine at 0430 (April 1) to make water. Note: Blue light (on wind generator) starting to extinguish at 20A output; started charging at 74+ A. Batteries at 100% at 0545. Watermaker still running on April 1 at 0800. Engine off at 0600. Rick’s log: “Ha. Started filing a jug of water and minutes later noticed it was the jug without a bottom! … Found half eaten flying fish on deck by where Cindy was sitting when bird attacked. Hmmm!”
APRIL 1, DAY 6
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS, Pacific Ocean style. Day Five on our Journey to French Polynesia complete. 78 nm travelled yesterday, 500 miles away from “home” (land)… but I don’t hear any whistles blowing, Peter, Paul and Mary, unless it is the whistling of the wind through our sails. It feels pretty far from anything already, and we aren’t even in the middle yet! Gorgeous mellow sailing all day and night. Light breeze, slight cloud cover, flat seas. Charlie, our windvane mechanical steering system, couldn’t quite cope with the low winds on a run, so we had to use our autopilot, which drained enough power that in the wee morning hours we had to run the engine for 90 minutes to repower the batteries. If only we had one more battery to store power, we could avoid running the engine, since we are always at full capacity at sunset. Oh well. No room!
But on to the main event: I have heard of birds landing on yachts in some inconspicuous place like a forward rail or on an arch and hitching a ride for the night, but the bird that visited me last night landed smack in the middle of the cockpit, on a mission. It was a big white bird with a long narrow orange beak and webbed red feet, likely a red-footed boobie. It had to weigh 25 pounds at least. I was sitting behind the helm minding my own business when it came straight for me, pecking at me as it approached, like a pirate claiming its booty. I started screaming and dancing around like a child who had found a mouse in their bed. Rick came up, and by this time the bird had made it over to the other side of the cockpit. When Rick tried to shew it away, it started pecking at him too. Finally, Rick picked the bird up from behind and tossed it out. It flew away, but then all night, it circled above me. I could hear its wings fly by my ear, and sometimes I would catch a glimpse of its silhouette through the backlight of the nearly full moon. Look closely at the picture below and you will see the silhouette of the bird resting on the wind generator. WTF? Why would a bird behave this way? Do birds get rabies, I asked myself? Well, Rick found the answer in the morning: wedged on the combing between two Bimini supports was a partially eaten dead fish. It must have dropped out of the bird’s mouth and landed directly behind where I was sitting. The bird was after its hard-earned food, that’s all! Rick and I were in the way. So sorry, Mr. bird.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL:
4/01/18 Yesterday, though we did not do great in terms of miles sailed, it was very pleasant. The wind never got above 8 or 9 knots and we sailed with the spinnaker at 4-5 knots most of the day. Later in the afternoon we poled out the headsail so we were in a WOW (Wing On Wing) situation with spinnaker on port and headsail on starboard. It worked so well I know we will be using this configuration again. The other advantage is that with the headsail flying, there is no way that the spinnaker can wrap the headstay, which is common when sailing long distances with the spinnaker. Just a moment of inattention and this can happen. It did today aboard S/V Anna. We spotted this boat this morning, which was only the second visual we have had on another boat since we left. They have a crew of three and it happened to them today. The skipper, KC, said they were eventually able to get it unwrapped.
Into the evening last night, the wind dropped very low again, (about 3-4 knots) so it was a slow night and we had to use the autopilot to keep the boat on track. I had been off watch a couple of hours when I heard a blood curdling scream from Cindy on deck. I was having a hard time understanding her, the combination of her being frantic and me just waking from my stupor. Of course, always the worst things come to mind, either we are sinking, on fire or being boarded by ninja pirates. Fortunately, it was none of these and I came to understand she was yelling now: there is a bird in the boat! I was having a hard time understanding, as I am racing to get topside, why this was such a big deal. And then as I came on deck, I see this large, HUGE, really, white bird resembling a seagull literally jumping on Cindy and pecking at her! Cindy was in the seat on the transom where we will often sit during a watch with her back to the starboard side of the transom. I am yelling at this bird and then it comes for me with his beak snapping wildly, Ninja bird! As he is ready to bite me, I grabbed him and flung him overboard. Fortunately, he did not hit the water but managed to start flying right away and he took off. Cindy and I were talking about the nerve of that bird. That he not only wanted to stop on the boat for the night as often happens on long passages, but he wanted the boat to himself. We were trying to understand what could cause this behavior but nothing made sense; on other encounters they were just looking for a place to roost. They leave in the morning and you spend an hour or so cleaning up after your guest. But this one… he was different.
I came on watch soon after the bird attack and during the night I saw the same bird circling the boat but he never tried to land. Normally if a bird is trying to land at the top of the mast, I will try to discourage them by shining a bright light on them. This is because there are instruments at the top of the mast that can be damaged if a big bird lands up there. I was quite sure I did not want Ninja Bird landing anywhere on the boat so I hit him with the light beam whenever I saw he was close and that was enough to keep him away, until he eventually lost interest and went on his way. Then in the morning it all became clear what was going on with Ninja Bird. Directly behind where Cindy had been sitting, there on the cockpit coaming, I found a flying fish about 8 inches long that appeared to be half eaten. So, this poor bird had probably been flying hundreds of miles and happened to grab a fish just before he came on to the boat to enjoy it in relative comfort. On his approach he apparently dropped the fish in the unlikely location and after landing he was trying to retrieve his dinner, which he obviously thought Cindy was taking from him. We both felt bad for not understanding the situation and dealing with it differently though I was just happy he did not appear to have been hurt when I grabbed him by his wings and threw him overboard.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG through 0800 APRIL 2
Daily mileage: 69 nm, Total mileage: 570 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 16 25N, 113 55W. Winds from the WNW 4 to 6 knots. Sailing 224M on a beam reach, full sails or reefed main and full headsail. 90% cloud cover, Sea temperature 75.8, barometer not taken. Turned off chart plotter to save power but it stopped logging miles so we turned it back on – lost 1.5 recorded n.m. or so. Wind too low all day to use Charlie so using autopilot. State of Charge @ 2100: 97.4. May need to run motor again tonight. One sailboat we saw two days ago is now 70 nm ahead. We are definitely pulling up the rear – slower than most. 25 boats checking in on SSB are ahead of us, and only two behind us, and they will probably catch up. No problem, nine boats haven’t checked in yet and may not have left yet so we have a week’s head start on them. Slowly but surely, we continue in the correct direction! … Vessel sighted ahead at 0415 – fishing vessel, 3 nm off port beam at 0800 Monday. Day 6 engine used for 1.5 hours.
APRIL 2, DAY 7
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Good Morning just as Day … uh … Seven of our Pacific Ocean crossing to French Polynesia is about to begin. Day six complete. Uh oh, I know it is day 7 only by counting back from the day we started … and I only know that because I am wearing a watch with days of the week on it. That is kind of like having to count from the year you were born to remember how old you are. I am losing my sense of time. And time in itself has become an amorphous concept. For instance, yesterday, Mexico’s daylight savings time adjustment kicked in, several weeks after the US. So, we changed our watches. Then this morning I found myself being woken up for my shift before daybreak. I didn’t like that. We are traveling west so if we were going to change our clocks at all, we should change them back, not forward, so that the sun is more or less in the same place in the sky at the same time each day of our crossing. And then there is Zulu time, the one pillar of temporal stability in an ever-changing world, by which we calculate our sun sights and tune in to the radio nets. So, we have at least two different times on board, now maybe three, if we set our watches back to where they were on Saturday so I can wake up with the dawn….
As you might be able to tell, things are going pretty slow aboard Cool Change these days. The seas are calm and we are happy if we can make 3 knots. If you look at any wind chart, you see that the wind is always just beyond our horizon; we are chasing the edge and just missing it. Most boats in the fleet of those crossing are ahead of us, even if some had been behind before. They are either bigger boats with longer water lines so they are faster, or they have more fuel capacity and can motor if they choose to, for no other reason than to get ahead. But we just rely on the wind, which right now simply isn’t here. I was pleased to see we made 70 miles yesterday, but that was partly because we had to motor a little while to restore our battery power again. The predictions suggest that tomorrow the wind should start to pick up for us, just a little bit. But that is all we need, just a little bit … we were told we would be well into the mighty trade winds by now, but apparently, they aren’t so mighty this year. The good news is that members of our loosely knit fleet from Banderas Bay have already crossed the equator; we will get there eventually. Meanwhile, we will just enjoy the ride!
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO t
RICK’S JOURNAL
04/02/18. Yesterday was Easter so we sent out Easter wishes to family and friends. It is amazing to me that we have the technology aboard to keep in touch with everyone on land. Our good friend Bev pranked us (as it was also April fool’s day) by telling us she had met a lesbian who she was very attracted to and she was going to go for it! Ha, really had us going. She even said her name was Lil. (Easter Lilly, how appropriate). So Cindy and I were talking about how happy we were that she had someone in her life and all and then she writes us back to say April Fools! What a brat. We will have to come up with suitable retaliation.
My 0200 watch last night was hard. There was absolutely no wind and because of that, the autopilot was working very hard to keep to a course. This in turn was using lots of power. I finally came to the conclusion that, as we were going nowhere fast, there was no reason to keep powering the autopilot so I just shut it down. A little later I turned off the radar as well. It was a near full moon and I could see very well in the calm conditions so I felt ok doing that. We had only seen two boats since we left.
Then as I was sitting in the margarita seat thinking thoughts of starvation, dehydration and such, I saw a twinkle off on the horizon to our port side. I turned the radar back on and tracked him. I thought it was another cruising yacht bobbing around in the water like we were because its speed showed less than 2 knots. Kind of nice to know we weren’t alone in our pain. Then, after about an hour, our paths were getting closer. We were less than 3 miles apart. I was looking with the binoculars and I realized that it was not a cruising yacht, it was a commercial fishing boat. So, they were out there fishing 600 miles off the coast of Mexico. That realization kind of helps explain something else. I was seeing their radar signature in the wrong location on my screen. It looked backwards in that I was seeing the boat to starboard and behind us when actually visually I knew that the boat was ahead and to port. I went through all the radar settings that could account for this and none of them were set incorrectly. Then, later in the morning just before dawn, I was seeing them in the right orientation. What may have been happening is sometimes commercial fishing boats will drop markers to help them retrieve their lines. I am theorizing that the image I was seeing was from a radar reflector they placed that would have been 6 nm away from them. If it was a longline as I suspect, we went right over the top of it. Fortunately, we did not pick the line up on our keel or rudder. A friend of ours that made this trip a few years ago told a story of having to dive under the boat to clear fishing lines they had picked up near the equator. Would not want to experience that type of fun in the middle of the ocean.
It is kind of eerie when you come across a boat way out here that is not someone you know. It is easy to let your imagination get the better of you with thoughts that they be pirates or otherwise up to no good. We are so alone and on our own. Due to complicated international regulations, we carry no weapons to speak of aboard save for a knife and possibly a flare gun. (Saw the flare gun used on pirates in a movie!) If someone wanted to take a person’s boat and murder all aboard, it would be pretty simple to do and no witnesses.
Cindy and I were talking about the fact that we are really learning a lot on this trip. Aside from polishing our technical sailing skills, we are learning patience and total self-reliance. When you are coastal cruising, you think about how difficult it is to deal with issues aboard but it is nothing like the feeling you get crossing an ocean. There is no help available, though this brings up an interesting thing that occurred – I actually did use our Iridium Go! sat phone to make a technical support call the other day for our VHF remote mike.
We have been having issues with our cockpit VHF mike and it finally stopped working. When I investigated the problem, I found that one of the pins on the connector had corroded right through. It is a crappy connector at best. The only solution to fix it underway that I could devise was to remove the connectors and solder the wires directly between the extension cable and the mike. There is a total of 8 wires that run through the connector that would need to be dealt with. These are also very small wires, maybe 26 gauge, so there would not be an option to connect them with butt or other connectors. I was planning it out and I looked in my manual but could find no wiring diagram. So, I used the satellite phone to call the company and ask them what the color code was. They told me they had no idea as the cables are made somewhere else and they changed depending when they were built! Not much help there. I told the tech support person what I was going to do and he told me that it would be inadvisable and that I could destroy the radio if I made a wrong connection. He did not offer any possible solutions however. Ha!
So, I cut the connectors, leaving enough of a wire tail that I could use the multimeter to make a pin out when I fix it. The other issue will be that I will have to install it through a water seal and provide strain relief for the cables so they do not get pulled apart. This will make it a couple day job on a moving boat. Then I have to hope I can get my soldering iron hot enough running to a 200-watt inverter through an extension cord!
But the general idea here is everything that can go wrong with any of our systems becomes a possible life-threatening situation. That is one big difference between coastal cruising and ocean passage making. Another is that if you really need emergency help, there isn’t any. (We do have a paid medical service on call, but that is not like having a doctor with us.) The last-ditch effort would be to set up our rescue beacon and deploy the liferaft but that means we have lost everything but ourselves. Yes, physical things are replaceable, but Cool Change is a part of us that would be hard to imagine being without.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 3
Daily mileage: 69 nm, Total mileage: 639 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 16 02N, 115W. Course varied from 224 to 245, winds from WNW at 4-6 knots, beam reach, going slowly. Spinnaker got us up to 3.5 knots boat speed. 20% to 80% cloud cover during day, cleared at night. Sea temperature average 76. Barometer not taken. Red-footed boobie joined us at sunset on the bow pulpit. We took a video and had an extra rum shot at sunset. Maybe not a good idea but the lack of wind has been more stressful than expected, especially on Rick. He worked hard today on external mike radio fix. And he was so worried about the spinnaker getting torn. We both needed a little relax time.
Good news is that the wind seems to be holding steady at about 6 knots, enough to sail at about 3.5 knots. Never thought we would be so happy to go so slow. I took my night shift early tonight at 2030. Still plan till 0200 if I can make it. Clipped in, taking no chances. P.S. Nice to be able to use Charlie again – less drain on batteries. … Wonderful stars tonight until the moon came up at 2215 – moon golden, almost full. Wind started to die down when moon came up. Now on autopilot – Charlie can’t handle it. Engine on at 0245. Low wind and water production needed. I=60A at start. SOC 92.8. Wind came up at sunrise to 9 knots. Charlie liked it.
APRIL 3, DAY 8
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
I am reminded of a time long ago while sitting under the shade of a tree with Rick and friends along the banks of the Colorado River on a self-supported whitewater rafting/kayaking trip. We had just ingested a mind-altering substance and I was feeling the effects coming on. I announced, “soon I will no longer be able to speak in full sentences.” Well, the wind in our ocean crossing has finally picked up and I suspect that soon I will no longer be able to hold an iPad in the cockpit to write my morning Facebook post! I woke up to an ominous-looking cluster of black rain clouds just to our north, and to Rick saying it is time to reef. I think we may have been passing through the strongest wind quadrant of that cell, because now the wind has settled a little bit, but the reef remains and we are traveling at a comfortable 5.5 knots or so.
The sun has peeked out from behind the clouds to charge our solar panels, the wind generator is cranking out watts, and Charlie, our mechanical Windvane steering system, is keeping us on course without using any power. THIS is the way it should be, the way we imagined it, not the past several days of light wind. All that is missing is the long period following seas to complete our tradewind sailing fantasy; we are still sailing at a close reach with winds and swell from the NW. But we will gladly take this for now; today promises to be a good wind day, better than the 69 miles we made yesterday. I am glad I did all the chopping for our ratatouille yesterday, as today would have been pretty bumpy. The forecast is for good wind for the next several days. Life is good.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
Editorial Comment: Make no mistake, Rick and Cindy equally shared the cooking tasks on board. However, Cindy planned the meals, maintained the food storage system and fetched all of the ingredients for each meal. Therefore, Cindy’s voice memos often comment on the status of the food provisioning for the voyage.
RICK’S JOURNAL
04/03/18. I realized I made a couple mistakes in the cockpit mike rewire project. For one, I was concentrating on doing the permanent repair, i.e. how I would do it if I were in a marina with all the resources and materials I might need. This wasted time because by the time I realized what I was missing for two different approaches, I had already wasted much time and effort before coming to the realization that I could not complete the job using the plan at hand. The other way this was bad is in the timing. I should have completed the job while we were in the lack of wind state. Anything I do now is affected by boat motion and winds, which makes any job much more difficult and less safe. So, another valuable sea lesson learned.
Yesterday, in spite of the frustration of lack of wind and knowing everyone else was way in front of us, we had some good practice at setting and running with the asymmetrical spinnaker. It had us moving right along in as little as 5 knots of wind, i.e. we could do 3 knots SOG. That was very cool. Cool Change is a heavy girl and my analogy is that she is a bit like a locomotive. Starting from a dead stop it takes quite some time to develop the inertia to be efficiently sailing but once she is moving, she can keep moving a decent speed in very light wind. It’s when that light wind stops and we go to zero boat speed that we have a problem.
I started my 0200 watch this morning with a problem: how to get the two birds that had perched on top of the aft solar array off of it. They were shitting off the back of it and covering the wind vane and the rear storage bucket and washing machine bucket with shit. I am amazed how much these birds can shit. Luckily, because of their webbed feet, they don’t try to perch on flat surfaces much so as is the case with the aft solar array, they perch on the support bar at the back of the panels. As a result, all the shit falls away from the panels and the cockpit but directly hits the windvane, the margarita seat and the buckets. The birds are definitely used to boats and are quite comfortable on them so they are hard to discourage. What I did was use the boat pole to gently push them off their roost so that they had to start flying or fall in the water. After a couple of protest quacks, they took off and I did not see them again last night. I spent a good half hour, though, hosing down the bird shit.
Meanwhile, there was another bird that had taken up a roost on the bow pulpit. Because of our rule that no one goes forward out of the cockpit at night without the other person present as safety, I did not go forward to remove the beast. In the morning when Cindy was up, I went forward and saw that since he perched on the bowsprit that is over the water, there was not a shit issue so I told him he could stay if he wants to. He is still around and he takes off every now and then to hunt for his fish & then returns to his perch. For this high seas bird, life is good. I put a post about him on Facebook asking for name suggestions. We arrived at “Lookout.”
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 4
Daily mileage: 95 nm, Total mileage: 734 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 15 18N, 116 22W. Course 215M to 250M. Wind 8-9 knots from WNW, close haul to beam reach, full sails during day. Late evening, wind shifted to NE, down to 2nd reef main for slat prevention and full headsail, on a run. Cloud cover 50% to 100%, bright moon at night when visible, sea temperature 76.3, barometer 1013. Bird still with us by late afternoon. Flies off to hunt and then returns. We are dragging a fishing line all day. Changed from skirt to fish lure at 1600. No action. At 0100 the morning of Wednesday, April 4, the Concorde tanker passing behind us at 10 nm on a course of 093M in 20 minutes. Turned VHF on, took key out and opened exhaust thru hull, and put RADAR back to every 3 minutes until they pass. Can see lights of tanker. 738 feet long by 118 feet wide. …. Engine on at 0500, zero wind. Making water. Put refrigerator on manual high. Wind increased to 9 knots, Wing on Wing at 0645.
APRIL 4, DAY 9
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Greetings from 750 miles out at sea. Beginning of Day 9 of our Pacific Crossing to French Polynesia. Incredibly mellow sailing at 4 knots in 9 knots of wind, on a run, wing on wing. Is this really what it is supposed to be like in the middle of the ocean or is it just that we are blessed? Thank you all for the well wishes; they are working. We finally have some wind, but not too much, just as requested. We are about 25% of the way there, which means at this rate, the crossing will take about 32 days. We are eating incredibly well with fresh fruits and veggies still – last night I made ratatouille with all fresh ingredients. We still have plenty of tomatoes, romaine lettuce, cucumber, apples, oranges, potatoes, a watermelon, beets, onions, jicama and some grapefruit left before we have to open any canned fruits or veggies. And I have three dinners already made in the refrigerator. Rick makes a little water every day to keep our tanks full. Peaceful, easy feelin.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 5
Daily mileage: 105 nm, Total mileage: 839 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 14 28N, 117 53W. Wind N to NE at 10 to 13 knots. Running wing on wing. Cloud cover 80%, Barometer 1015, Sea temperature 77.5. During the afternoon, we got our fishing hand line caught in the rudder while doing a sail change. We hove-to to slow down, and then Rick was able to unhook it with a fishing hook on a line, weighted by a wrench! We are finally getting to NE winds and swells. Rolly. Cindy bruised shin. Added chafe protection to preventer, tightened screws on preventer eyes. Adjusted pins on boom and boom vang. Charlie on duty. On night shift, uncomfortable yawing. Had AIS contact in early morning, not part of our fleet, moving at two knots. Reefed headsail and main to 3rd reef at 2200. Charlie steering well. No engine run during the night; still had State of Charge at 90.7% at 0800.
APRIL 5, DAY 10
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Good morning from 847 nm out in the Pacific Ocean! Some good news today: we have less than 2,000 nm left to get to the Marquesas, give or take for course corrections based on wind, and, we have reached the TRADE WINDS! Alleluia! Steady 12-18 knot winds and seas from the NE should be expected now and for the foreseeable future. We are still working on the best sail configuration in these winds and swells. We tried Cool Change’s favorite Wing on Wing configuration last night, but it was really uncomfortable. I definitely acquired at least one more bruise than I had the day before. Too much rolling from side to side as the wind bounced between the poled-out headsail and the reefed mainsail. So today we are heading upwind a little more on a simple downwind starboard tack and one reef in the main. MUCH more comfy. Today and yesterday we have had an almost 100% cloud cover, which makes for a cooler and more comfortable time in the cockpit, but doesn’t give us the solar power we need. And even though we have good wind, we are running downwind so that cuts down on the apparent wind for generating wind power. So, the fridge is off temporarily, and Charlie our Windvane is steering, not our autopilot. Charlie is great but sometimes has a mind of his own. So that’s the update for today. Life and times on the big seas.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL
4/5/18. The bird we have named “Lookout” stayed around all day and roosted on his perch on the bow pulpit for the night. Unfortunately, we had more fluky winds all night and the headsail slatted quite often with a loud snap. Apparently, this was not acceptable to Lookout and he decided to go on walkabout. It was kind of sad as I had this fantasy of him being a good passenger and riding all the way to French Polynesia with us, but I guess that was just not meant to be. Through the night we had other birds approach the landing zone of the rear solar array but we encouraged them to go away and eventually they would fly off.
Things can go wrong quickly and easy enough on a boat and one of the things that is always a threat is to have something get wrapped on the propeller or rudder, which could incapacitate the boat. Yesterday we did it to ourselves! All day I had been dragging a line with a lure off the stern. There was a point in the day when we needed to reef the mainsail while we were in wing on wing configuration. We wanted to try and do it without having to start the engine. What we should have done was to first furl the headsail then deploy the staysail. After that, head upwind and drive on the staysail while letting the mainsail all the way out to relieve the pressure on it from the wind and allow us to do what we needed. Instead we tried to sail up into the wind with only the main and put the boat in irons, essentially, to reef the main. Dumb idea! The boat stalled and jibed causing some minor chaos while we sorted things out and then did it correctly. During the process there was a time period where the boat came to a complete stop, and when this happened, my drag line got caught around the rudder.
Fortunately, after we got going, our steering was not immediately affected, and I noticed we had the problem before something worse happened. The line had one wrap on the rudder. It is not regular fishing line but some material called Tuna Tape, which is like a flat braided rope of about 300 lb test. That actually made it a little easier to work with. First, I tried using the boathook to push the line down and around the rudder but the rudder is large and deep and I could not get the tape down even close to the bottom of the rudder. Then I had the idea to use a fishing lure on a separate line to catch the side of the line that went out to sea and the tackle. This way I figured I could cut the other side of the line and possibly pull it through without the chance of making things worse if it did not pull free because I would still have control of one side of the line. The boat was moving along at over 5 knots and after a couple of tries, it dawned on me that we should hove to before going further. (Hoving to is like time out on the high seas. It is a maneuver that causes the boat to come to a stop in the wind and slowly drift sideways with the main more or less centered and the Jib backwinded.) We did the maneuver and now we were stopped. Trying to snag the line with the lure was not working though, because it would not sink fast enough to make contact with the line. I got a box wrench out of my tool kit and tied it to the line along with the lure, and this gave me the weight I needed to get the lure to snag the trolling line. I pulled up the other end and before I cut the boat side of the line it all came free, just from lifting the line on the far side. That was a bullet dodged.
The rest of the day we had good winds though gusty, and the wind slowly was clocking to approach NE direction, which is the sign we had been waiting for that we had found the trade winds! By late afternoon it was blowing 16 – 18 knots and we were flying. We reefed down and continued wing on wing so that we could drive the boat low enough to meet our next way point, still some 300+ miles distant. It kept on building and on the first night watch I was below, with Cindy at the helm. The ride from below was wild and noisy. There was no way I was going to be able to sleep and I was worried about Cindy in the cockpit. I finally went up and suggested we slow the boat down and we discussed our options. She had been coming to the same conclusion and I think would have called me up within minutes for the same reason. We got everything reefed down and the boat slowed from doing 6.5-7 knots to 4, and was much more manageable.
I told Cindy how cool I think it is that we are such a team. When we take on a task like that, we know our roles so well that day or dark we can work together in sync to get it accomplished. That is so rewarding, I can’t imagine having a better team mate than Cindy on the ocean on Cool Change.
We decided we would try to make it through the night without having to do any motorized charging of the batteries. This in an effort to conserve fuel for when we really need it, crossing the ITCZ. We shut down all electronics save for the chart plotter and timed radar. Charlie would have to steer the boat all night. Cindy got everything so balanced during her watch that when I came up for mine, I never had to touch Charlie the rest of the night. The only change I made was to increase the headsail a bit to try and ger an extra knot of speed. Charlie really liked that because it reduced the effort in the mainsail to want to round the boat up. We made it through the night, power-wise, though we started the day 56 amp hours low, which would have to be made up through the day with solar and the wind generator. The winds aren’t quite high enough consistently for the wind generator, which really needs 15 knots apparent to start producing any usable power, so we are going to try and reach the goal of 100% SOC using solar alone. Charlie is steering, and I did not turn the fridge back on until 11 am. Right at the 08:00 shift change, we changed configuration from WOW to a standard mainsail headsail and set our steering a little higher to see if we could get things calmed down. The boat was rolling (yawing) all night and it was getting uncomfortable. We got the change done, and the ride has been great today with almost the same steering reference. Wish we had done that last night!
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 6
Daily mileage: 106 nm, Total mileage: 945 nm. Lat/Long at end: 14 01N, 119 37W. Wind NNE 13 to 17 knots, sailing on a broad reach with a heading of 245 to 254M with the 2nd reef in the main and a full jib. Cloud cover, 50% to 90%, cloud cover 50% to 90%, barometer 1013. Gorgeous day; finally, comfy. No traffic. Getting hit by flying fish. Seas built some in the night. Did not have to run motor.
APRIL 6, DAY 11
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Woopie! Made over 100 miles yesterday, nearly 1000 miles total. Only about 1800 to go. Haha! Poco a poco. Slowly but surely. You know, people told me that knowing others were out here at the same time making the same crossing was not really that much of a comfort because they were all so far away, but I have found that not to be the case. Originally, there were 41 boats total who came to the informal meetings we had back in Mexico who were planning on departing from Banderas Bay this year for French Polynesia. Of those, I believe 10 have already completed the crossing or will complete it in the next couple of days. Another 11 I haven’t heard from yet; they may have not left yet. One had to turn back with battery issues. Last night, 24 boats underway checked in to the SSB radio net that was set up specifically for our group of boats leaving from Banderas Bay. Of those, we are tracking the closest 4 boats, one of which is less than 50 nm away. And we are in touch with a few boats via satellite devices daily. It is nice to know what weather those ahead of us have experienced and where everyone is. It makes this ocean feel a little less huge. And we will feel like old friends once we run into each other in some anchorage or another in French Polynesia, and invite each other over for cocktails at sunset.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 7
Daily mileage: 113 nm, Total mileage: 1058 nm. Lat/Long at end: 13 43N, 120 57W. Wind NE at 14 to 23 knots. Sailing a broad reach to a deep broad reach, 245M to 255M. Various sail configurations including full sail, full headsail with 2nd reef in main, 3rd reef in main with staysail when the wind picked up, and then 3rd reef in main with full headsail. 90% cloud cover, barometer 1013, sea temperature 78. “Hell of a night!” Gusting to 23 knots. Rolling. Splashing, wet cockpit, wet blankets. Charlie holding up. Lightening to the south. Howling in the rigging. Loose whisker pole topping lift. Fish flying into the cockpit.
APRIL 7, DAY 12
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
I think I should take this as a sign that I shouldn’t try to brush up on my French. After months of procrastination, I chose last night to pull out my computer, external disc drive, and special headphones with a microphone attached, to study French in the cockpit while on watch. I had just gotten set up, and was probably in my fifth repetition of “Elle mange,” when the wind insisted I pay attention to it. In spite of my best efforts to focus on my French, the wind said, “Ahoy mate! I’m a’blowin’!” The boat was rocking, the wind was whistling through the rigging, and Charlie was having a hard time keeping Cool Change on course. I woke Rick up to help me shorten sail. No sooner than he went back to bed, we had to shorten sail again. Before we knew it, we were on third reef and staysail and still hitting 7 knots speed with gusts up to 23 knots. Seas were breaking all around us and soaking the cockpit from both sides. Flying fish landed in the cockpit, almost as if they were seeking refuge. Lightening flashed in the distance off port. Rick went below to sleep but soon came back out, saying that this was “spooky” and he didn’t want me to be alone. We sat there, each wedged in to our little corner, for maybe 90 minutes, wondering when it would let up.
Rick wanted to make coffee but was certain he would burn himself if he did. Down in the cabin, things all over were clanking and clinking as if in the middle of an earthquake. We thought the wind had settled a little so I finally persuaded him to go to bed. I wrapped my wet leggings in a towel and covered them with two wet blankets, and finally got out my foul weather jacket designed for Northern California oceans. I remained in the same spot by the helm, ready to turn off the false radar alarm caused by the waves, or release Charlie and hand steer if he gave up the ship. After a long while alone in the cockpit, I finally got to the point where I realized that Cool Change was really handling this weather just fine; it was me who had to get over it. I stared at the Southern Cross, or closed my eyes and felt the rhythmic swaying and rolling of the boat and listened to the breaking waves. Charlie was keeping us on course, and I was warm and secure, tethered into the cockpit and ready to grab a nearby rail if I began to slip. All was well on board. Except, maybe, my French lessons.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL
04/07/18. Yesterday was a great day sailing in the trades; we had a full mainsail and full headsail and went all day without touching the sails. This is trade wind sailing! As we had not been able to hear much on the PPJ net the day before, we decided to do an electronic check-in, where we send all the check-in info in an Iridium email message to Dazzler, the boat with Dan, the net controller. Then at a point in the broadcast, he will read the electronic check-ins with their information on the positions we are plotting. We could not hear the net control person at all. Had we been trying to check in on the radio, someone would have had to relay our info, which takes more of the net’s time and just is not efficient. We are tracking 4 boats, which are the 4 closest boats to our position. The closest one is about 60 miles behind and the most distant of these boats is about 400 miles ahead. We mark their positions as named waypoints on the chart plotter.
As it was getting close to sundown, the breeze started strengthening and I suggested we put in our first reef. We did that and all was fine for a couple hours but while I was down below resting for my 0200 watch, the noises became really loud. There were boat and sea noises, and the movement of the boat was jarring and erratic. It felt like we had way too much power. I went above and Cindy said she was getting concerned as well. So, we put in the second reef and that calmed things a bit but not enough. We decided to deploy the smaller staysail as the headsail and to furl in the headsail. That seemed to get things under control as good as we could, but still the winds were building until we had 20 to 25 knots. The boat was getting hit hard from the windward side and we took a couple of waves over the rail into the cockpit. Flying fish were landing in the cockpit and I would scoop them up and throw them back in the water. It was really kind of a scary night for the most part as we did not know how much higher the wind was going to get.
When I started my 0200 watch, I had not had any rest and worse, I did not dare to try to make coffee because there was so much boat movement that it would be too dangerous. I did not really have any problem staying awake! I ended up furling the headsail and deploying the staysail, and that helped as well.
Earlier in the day I was thinking about a problem we were having with Charlie, where he would steer in an arc and not precisely at all. I was looking it over and noticed that the steering lines from the paddle to the wheel appeared to have too much slack in them, so when Charlie tried to change direction of the wheel, he would first have to take up slack before the wheel could respond, which put a delay into the whole process. I tightened up the lines and it has been much better. Another thing I started to notice was chafing. I had been warned to constantly check it. Now over the last couple of days I have placed at least 10 new chafe guards. I still have one more to install to protect the downhaul line on the whisker pole.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 8
Daily mileage: 118 nm, Total mileage: 1176 nm. Lat/Long at end: 12 44N, 122 57W. Winds NNE, Running on a course of 238 to 255 with 17-20 knots. 60% to 100% cloud cover, barometer 1013, sea temperature 77. Various sail configurations including Wing on Wing and just the jib. Early morning, doused main after jibing to port so as to be able to sail further downwind. Made water during early afternoon with just battery power. Sighted a pod of dolphins in the large swell in the afternoon. At night, fish flying into Cindy’s lap.
APRIL 8, DAY 13
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Had 18-20 knot winds all night long, but this time it was a little more comfortable; maybe we finally found the right sail configuration for it: wing on wing with third reef in main and second reef in jib. Even with that, we were regularly hitting 6 knots boat speed because of surfing the 1.5-meter seas. It will not be long now, maybe a day or two, before we jibe and head South through the ITCZ and the doldrums. That is what we have been saving our fuel for, although we hope for some wind anyway. Just when we finally got this downwind trade wind sailing figured out, we have to change it up again! No matter, though, because I am looking forward to my bunk being on the leeward side for a while. 1183 nm behind us, 1654 nm remaining to the Marquesas!
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL:
04/08. We had been having trouble being able to head SW enough to meet our waypoint of 12N 125W where we could decide to turn due south towards the equator. We decided we should jibe and head south for the day to put us in a better position to meet the waypoint. When we turned south, we decided to pole out the headsail and go wing on wing, as we were just about running dead downwind. Through the day, the winds and seas built to a point where we had 22 knots wind and 2-meter swell. We found that in the wing on wing configuration, though a little rolly and squirrelly, the boat felt good. We were making very good SOG (Speed Over Ground) and the boat did not feel overpowered at all. After we had made about 30 miles to the south, we jibed back onto our heading of 240 and again poled out the headsail. The wind stayed in high teens to 22 all night and we made very good time. At our 0800 log we found we had our fastest day yet.
On the PPJ net last night and tonight, we were informed about a boat named Aftermath having a serious problem in that they lost their steering. It is a big boat with hydraulic steering and they blew a seal in the system and have lost all hydraulics. They are drifting at the top of the ITCZ and the skipper is putting out a call to all boats crossing behind him to please pick up his crew. He plans to hand steer using the emergency rudder and slowly make his way to Marquesas. Several people chimed in to tell him that it was a bad idea to lose his crew, that they are going to be needed if they have to hand steer that boat to the Marquesas. Tonight, the subject was brought up again and the skipper received the same feedback along with some suggestions for things that may help out. The boat is a center cockpit with a larger rear owners’ cabin and this is where the emergency tiller connects! It would be very hard to steer the boat from below, let alone being single-handed.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 9
Daily mileage: 125 nm, Total mileage: 1301 nm. Lat/Long and day’s end: 12 14N, 124 55W. Winds NNE 18-20 knots, deep broad reach on a course of 240M, wing on wing with reefed main. 50%-80% cloud cover, barometer 1012, sea temperature 78. Flying fish in the cockpit. A cargo ship passed within 10 nm of us around noon. Cindy got sick at night and Rick started his shift early to cover. Rick feeling quezy too. Rick saw an amazing shooting star a 0330. Rick thought Charlie pointing problem was due to improper sail trim.
APRIL 9, DAY 14
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Dorado! Rick caught a small Dorado. Just big enough for some sashimi and tacos without wasting any. Gosh those are beautiful fish. We made another 125 nm yesterday, good time. Our weather routing software says we will make it to the Marquesas in two weeks, and today is our 14th day, so I guess that means we are halfway!
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL:
Waters were pretty rough all day. Just for fun I put out a drag line and ended up catching a small Dorado. Actually, he was the perfect size and we made sashimi out of him. The drag line I’m using was made by another cruiser, Dan from Dazzler. It uses Tuna Tape, which I think is about 300 lb. test. There is a snap swivel at one end where you attach the leader and lure, and the other end has a nice bungee that is rigged into the line in order to take the shock out of a big fish hit. It is not fun like using my rod, but on a sailboat, especially when we’re at speed, it is almost impossible to reel in a fighting fish. With the drag line, I can just drag the fish till the fight is gone or he is drowned, before bringing him in. The small Dorado was easy as he only weighed about 2 pounds. So, Cindy mixed up some sauce and prepped the fish and we had some sashimi with half of it. With the other half I made a couple of fish tacos for us.
We had an accident that hurt the boat yesterday. As Cindy was trying to hand up the plate with the sashimi, she got thrown and hit the sink in the galley on the port side of the boat. She still had the plate and tried again, before she had good balance, I think, and this time got thrown to the other side of the boat, and ended up breaking the head door. We will have to find a craftsman, possibly in Tahiti, to repair or remake the door. It is a beautiful door made from teak but not solid enough to take a body blow! The good news was that Cindy was unhurt (though I’m sure she gained a couple of bruises).
Cindy felt so bad about the door yesterday that she cried. I felt bad for not being supportive enough to assure her it would be OK and I was just happy she was not hurt. Her falling scares the hell out of me. I worry about her hips the most. There is no way around having to do front deck work together, which is the most dangerous thing we do. We have a good system though, and are always checking each other that we have the proper tethers and are clipped with the longer tether to the jackline to get forward, then clipped with the shorter tether to something like a halyard that will absorb shock in a fall and limit how far the body will be flung. It is the most stressful part of the day for both of us, I think, when we have to go forward. Its not like you can choose conditions either. When something needs to be done forward, it is normally urgent matter. This morning in some pretty big seas, we had to go forward to move the poled-out jib to the opposite side of the boat after we jibed to port.
When we listened to the net last night, is was very clear except for a couple of distant boats. A few boats have made landfall in the Marquesas and several more will over the next few days. I feel so bad for the skipper of Aftermath with the steering issue. He is so stressed and under so much pressure. Suggestions were made to run ropes through blocks and out of portlights to route to the cockpit. That should be something to keep him busy trying today. He also has a drogue on board that he may be able to rig off the stern with a bridal and get some general steering to head him in the right direction. We will see what happens but I don’t think anyone will answer the call to pick up his crew as that would just be bad for him. Aside from that, I can’t think why someone would want those people aboard their boat if they are ready to abandon their skipper.
The s/v Epiphany, which is on its way back to PV after suffering battery issues, was about 300 miles out as of the net last night. That must have been a rough trip back to Mexico, as there were places with opposing seas and currents.
We finally arrived at the waypoint that we have been heading for over a week now, where we made the turn to the south. From here we go due south towards the equator, which is about 700 miles from us. Getting there, we will be going through the infamous Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), which is as scary as it sounds. Much unsettled weather there and lots of thunderstorms and squalls. There is also the dreaded section called the “doldrums” where the wind just disappears and we may be forced to motor sail for a few days to get through it before we find some favorable winds again. This what our extra fuel is for. We have only motored for 14 hours as of today, day 13, and all of that was for power generation.
When the sky fills with thick clouds as it often does, the solar power production goes way down. The wind generator doesn’t produce any usable energy unless it is in 15 knots apparent wind. Since the wind is mainly from the stern, with the boat moving at 5 knots, that means we need to have 20 knots true to give us the required apparent wind. We have had conditions like that but normally the true wind, though it spikes with gusts in the , rarely holds steady at 20 knots. At least so far. So, while we are motoring in the ITCZ and doldrums, we will have plenty of power, as our high output alternator will be pumping amps. When the batteries are low, during the bulk charge phase, the alternator puts out about 80 amps of its 120-amp capacity. The trick is going to be using as little fuel as possible till we get to there. We have started doing some conservation efforts that help, like turning off the fridge at night and until the daytime charge has sufficiently topped them up. On our radar, which we must use at night, we use an automated program that displays the radar image for 30 scans (about a minute), then goes to standby for 5 minutes. That is a big help because our radar is a big power hog.
Speaking of radar, yesterday we had a cargo ship come within 11 nm crossing our bow. I never actually saw him as he was below the horizon at that distance, but i saw him on AIS. It was during the daytime so did not have the radar on, but as the AIS has a tendency to blank on and off on targets, I fired up the radar and tracked him until I knew he was safely past. That is the first commercial ship other than a possible fishing boat that we have seen in the 13 days since we left PV.
We have been enjoying Kim’s presents, one each night as a ritual after the net has completed and we have had our one shot of spiced rum (known to us as the captain’s rum). We usually have the shot as the sun is setting and we get a laugh about the next gift we open. Some are very silly and some are useful actually. There is a napkin included with each gift that asks a question about our day, or challenges us to do something like make up a rap song about our day. It makes us feel close to Kim and Pete while we are so far away, which is very special. Also, Pete usually sends a joke on the Delorme each day.
The last two days have been high mileage days with good winds. Anything over 100 miles is a plus for us as 100 miles a day was the average speed we planned for this trip, knowing how Cool Change moves and accounting for a lot of extra weight aboard for the crossing.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 10
Daily mileage: 119 nm, Total mileage: 1420 nm. Lat/Long at day’s end: 10 25N, 125 40W. Winds 18-22 knots from NE, on a deep broad reach, wing on wing and/or port tack broad reach as wind shifted to East. Changed course to 180M (heading as close to directly south as possible, to cut through ITCZ and doldrums in shortest distance). Cloud cover 80% to 100%, barometer 1014, sea temperature 78.4, rain. Two rain events about 15 minutes each during night watch. Used umbrella in companionway with iPad as repeater. Rain very clearly visible on RADAR.
APRIL 10, DAY 15
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Ok so the honeymoon with the ocean is over. The romantic notion of crossing the largest open body of water on the planet has been replaced with the reality of what that actually means. Days of the boat rolling side to side with regular slams by sideways waves has taken its toll on my body; if I am not bruised on every inch, I feel like I am. Day 13, the day I made fajitas, was probably the worst. I would chop an onion and by the time I finished, I had to lay down and regain my energy; I was sweating profusely from all the tension in my body it took to just remain standing in one place while chopping without losing the onion to the sole or dropping the knife on my foot. By the time I finished digging out all the ingredients, chopping the onions and green peppers, opening a can of beef, putting them all together and cooking it, it was 3 hours later. Well, I thought, at least we now have dinner made for a couple of days.
Just as I was about to relax, Rick caught a beautiful Dorado, which was my job to fillet. I had put the soy sauce, wasabi and chopsticks in the companionway, and all that was left to do was to bring up the plate of sashimi to the cockpit where Rick awaited his prize. As I struggled up the companionway stairs, a wave hit the side of the boat and I tumbled down the stairs and bounced off the galley. As I started up the companionway stairs again, a wave hit from the other side, and I fell back down the stairs again, this time with my full body colliding with the open head door, and breaking the door! At about that point, I was reminded of a salty sailing instructor who replied to a student who wanted to quit, “you can’t quit! This is the ocean!” In spite of the truth in that statement, I was tempted to at least psychologically throw in the towel. But as if that weren’t enough, I got food poisoning 3 hours later and lost all my food from both ends. Not knowing what caused it, I threw the fajitas overboard. That was a really really bad day. But now that I have gotten that reality check over with, I am starting to adjust better. I move very, very slowly around the boat now, timing every move as best I can with the rhythm of the sea. Until the seas calm, which should be shortly as we approach the doldrums, I am going to limit our meals to simple ones. The sun is out today, I am well rested, and I am ready for the next lesson the sea intends to teach me.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL
04/10/18 The last two days have been a real test of our resolve to complete this crossing. After the fall Cindy took and the food poisoning incident, we went into yesterday 4/9 and it was really difficult sailing. Difficult because seas were big and the wind over 20 knots all day. The concern was doing anything that would hurt the boat. But all day long we flew along, first with the poled out reefed headsail and triple reefed main and eventually we took out the pole. We had come to our left turn where it was time to head south and into the dreaded ITCZ. We were and are on a heading close to due south, 180 degrees. All day yesterday we would get side slapped by waves and several times took a wave over the side. At one point I had a foot of water in the cockpit draining after being pooped. We had two of three companionway slats in and the hood closed all day just in case.
We were able to get an excellent reception of the net last night and the saga continues regarding the Roberts 44, named Aftermath. Our net manager Dan relayed a message from the USCG, who got wind of what has been going on with their loss of steering. They sent a request through Dan to have the skipper contact the USCG Honolulu to give them a status and to let them know what his intentions were regarding the boat and crew. The area of the Pacific we are in apparently does not get the best GPS reception as I am getting warnings on our various devices. The fun news is that we broke our previous speed / distance record yesterday and did 145 miles or 6 knots in 24 hours. That is flying for Cool Change!
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 11
Daily mileage: 127 nm, Total mileage: 1547 nm. Lat/Long at day’s end: 08 30N, 126 28W. Winds NE 17-25 knots, swell E at 2 meters, on a deep broad reach or running with 3rd reef on main and staysail at night, full headsail during day. Course 180M to 200M, winds shifting to NE. Caught second Dorado about 1700. At night, starry starry night, lightening to E and S, gusting to 25 knots, seas big and confused. During Rick’s early morning watch, lots of lightening, big erratic rollers, trimmed in boom over concern of dipping boom in sea with rollers. Put boat clock back one hour to be more in sync with sunrise, “Patrinellis time zone.”
APRIL 11, DAY 16
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST:
Fresh tomato salad after 15 days at sea. Secrets: buy green at farmers market, store dry, unrefrigerated and unwashed, wrapped individually in paper towels
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL
4/11/18. Yesterday was quite the day. We started off with the wind diminishing and we decided to get the spinnaker ready. Of course, there is a Murphy’s law with sailing, so just as I was ready to hoist it after spending 10 minutes struggling with it on the bow, the wind came up to 15 kts, so I packed it back in its bag. By the time I got to the cockpit, it was approaching 18 kts. From there, things just built all day to where we were sailing with deep reefed sails in 20+ knots. I had jokingly asked Cindy if she wanted another small size Dorado for dinner and she said yes. Right as I was starting to reel in my drag line, I saw a bright yellow flash and knew that a Dorado had just taken my lure! When I hauled him in, he could have been the twin brother in looks and size of the one that I caught the day before. In the meantime, Cindy was a little frustrated because she could not remember some of the technique that Dazzler Dan taught in his fishing seminar for filleting the fish. I remembered that I filmed the presentation where he was demonstrating on a real fish from the market and I found it for Cindy. After she watched it, when she took on this fish, she had it done perfectly in about 5 minutes.
The drag line I am using was purchased from Dan as well. Really simplifies things and makes fishing doable from a moving sailboat. With a rod if it is a good sized fish, you must stop the boat to bring it in because reels can’t handle that much drag. Stopping a moving sailboat is easier said than done, especially when you are dragging a potentially fouling line behind. Before when we would fish using the pole, I would normally gaff the fish to bring him aboard. (These were admittedly much larger fish than the last 2 caught on the handline), then I would haul this big, pissed, bleeding fish into the cockpit and he would be flopping and spraying blood everywhere while I attempted to dispatch him without getting hurt or breaking anything. With Dan’s gear, there is a spike on a short piece of stainless cable with a short bar on the other end. The idea is that as soon as you land the fish, you take the spike and run it through one eye and out through the other, and the bar is now locked in place so there is no way the fish can get off of it. I then grab the fish and hold him over the edge of the stern and Cindy cuts his gills to bleed him. As soon as the gills are cut, I throw him overboard attached to the cable and drag him a mile or so till he bleeds out: much simpler and less of a mess to clean up. It remains to be seen how well this will work with a bigger fish but we will find out!
The wind settled down around dinner and net time, which was nice. We were still moving right along but it was not treacherous. We decided to save the fish for the morning and breakfast as Cindy already had dinner prepared, which was awesome! We are close to out of all our fresh veggies though we still have some. Cindy made an awesome Greek salad using tomatoes, cucumbers, a special feta-like Mexican cheese and Kalamata olives. It was great! Then we split a can of dolmas from Greece. Great light dinner.
On the net, the saga continued regarding the boat Aftermath. Dan, the net manager, had a message from the USCG for John, skipper of Aftermath, with 4 questions. 1) Did John have a Sat phone device (No) 2) Did anyone aboard require medical assistance (no), 3) How many days provisioning aboard and 4) What was his plan of action? John said he would tell them he had about a month’s worth of provisioning for the crew but he only had 5 liters of water. Keep in mind he has at least 2 more weeks at sea if they are able to limp on forward to the Marquesas. They were going to set up rain catchment systems on the boat, and since they are in the ITCZ, there is a good chance they will have plenty of rain.
I stayed up a little late and listened to Pacific Seafarers net, which is on two hours after our PPJ net. It is very established and organized, and the net controllers are land-based hams. The woman who was net control last night was in Hawaii. Reception was very good though we did not try to check in. If we did though, I think they would have heard us.
I went to bed after listening to the Seafarers Net for a while, and soon was woke up by Cindy saying she thought we needed to reef. By the time I got topsides it was blowing in the 20’s and the boat was overpowered. We went to the third reef and staysail configuration for the rest of the night. It was difficult to get any sleep after that because the seas got really big and every 30 seconds or so, a big wave would slap the port beam that had the sound you would expect to hear if you hit a solid object. We also were rolling so intensely that even in my sea bunk with my lee cloth, I had to hold on to something with at least one hand to stay in the bunk.
When I started my 0200 watch, it was scary at first until I settled in and accepted that this is what we have. There was no moon so you could not judge when the boat was going to roll from a big wave. Several waves broke in the cockpit and were always a surprise as this would happen one or two times in an hour. This was the first time on the trip where I found myself thinking, “What have we got ourselves into?” As the seas built, they became confused so you could not really go with the waves as they were from different directions and at different heights. The wind speed got to 26 knots. All I could do at that point was hang on, try not to move, especially not stand, and just wait for it to be over. About dawn it started dialing back and calming down.
The next day (Day 16), the seas were back to big rollers out of the NE and a steady but light breeze. It looked like perfect conditions to fly the spinnaker. I went up on deck and started working on getting it ready to launch and the wind popped up to 15 – 16 knots. So, I put the spinnaker away again and instead we flew full sails. All day was really beautiful. Occasionally the breeze would bump up to the low 20’s but mostly about 16 kts True. Cindy was trying out a new recipe out of a no-cook, no-cooler cook book. It was a salmon coos coos with a cream sauce. The salmon was out of a can, the cream sauce was made with powdered sour cream sauce and the coos coos just soaked up some water to be ready. Nonetheless after it was all put together, we decided to put it in a big pot and heat it up because….Why the F not! We aren’t camping, Ha! It was good, rich and filling, but Cindy said it was too involved and the spices weren’t right.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 12
Daily mileage: 104 nm, Total mileage: 1651 nm. Lat/Long at day’s end: 06 51N, 126 49W. Winds 12-18 knots from the NE. Swell NE at 1.5 meters. Sailing deep broad reach to broad reach, course of 176M to 185M, 80% to 90% cloud cover, lightening in SE, barometer 1013, Sea temperature 79.5. The headsail is loose near its foot, perhaps the halyard has stretched – need to tighten when the wind subsides. Taped cockpit shower access door shut because it keeps opening up. Pulled in fishing rig. We are in the ITCZ. Started making water under battery power.
Deck inspection revealed solar panel Velcro off on one side of dodger, and the gas tank was loose again. Added a line to secure it. Emergency knife needed for cutting life raft painter. Made water 1215 to 1630, 40 gallons. At night, seas and winds built through the 2000 to 0200 watch, from 10 knots to 17-18 knots. Changed out jib for staysail at 2300. RADAR shows large squall 20+ nm ahead, slightly west of here. Stationary. Stars were out earlier but at 0135, only one star visible, overhead. Warm breezes, still rolly, Charlie steering. Wind veered back to NE after having backed to N for a while. Good heading. Engine on at 0545 because SOG was below 2 knots and squall approaching rear port quarter, trying to outrun it. Engine off at 0715.
APRIL 12, DAY 17
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST:
Can this get any more exciting? We are on our way to provide emergency water to a vessel in distress! Can you believe it? As Rick likes to say, what could possibly go wrong? Haha. Actually, we have done something like this before so it won’t be entirely foreign to us, but the added challenge of working with a boat with limited steering capability will be interesting. This vessel is one of our Puddle Jump fleet, captained by a retired math teacher, that lost its hydraulic steering several days ago. It is somehow managing to use its emergency steering system to keep a heading but it is slow going and the three crew are down to 5 liters of water for the two weeks remaining. They have no watermaker and we do, and our courses will cross in 20 miles or so. So stay tuned tomorrow for the outcome of this water exchange at sea scenario. Hmmmm…
Meanwhile, we are smack in the middle of the much-maligned ITCZ, where the weather systems of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres collide in towering white clouds with black bottoms that come out of nowhere and dump water and wind from all directions at you in an uncontrollable frenzy. Or at least that is what they say. Actually, the sky was beautiful and dramatic this morning: white puffy clouds, rain sheeting down in three corners of the 360 degree horizon, a rainbow, and just enough blue sky painted in for contrast. We managed to avoid squalls all night long through sheer luck combined with an awesome RADAR feature that shows squall size, strength and direction in color on our screen. Rick found himself maneuvering between them in the early morning hours. Then this morning as I adjusted our course and commented on a rapid wind shift, Rick pointed to this ominous black cloud behind us two miles to the north as the cause in the change of wind direction. Just as I zoomed in RADAR to see if it was getting any closer, the wind picked up and it started to drizzle. By the time we tucked away anything that wasn’t waterproof, furled in the jib, centered the main and started the engine, the squall was well upon us. The rain came down hard and the waves became steeper, with a sheet of vapor over the waves. We motored like crazy southeast and out of the southwest-moving squall. I felt like I was in the movie “Twister” except in reverse – we were escaping the storm, not heading for it.
We should have another day of mostly motoring through the ITCZ followed by more light wind and then it should pick up by the weekend to make a beeline for the Marquesas. Soon we have to start planning for our equator crossing ceremony in 4-5 days. And remind me to tell you about the drama on the high seas … some of the crews of other boats out here are having issues … so much happening I can hardly stand the excitement!
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 13
Daily mileage: 93 nm, Total mileage: 1744 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 05 24N, 127W. NE winds up to 12 knots, changing to SE then S winds 5-7 knots. Course 175 to 193M. Various sail configurations and points of sail. Cloud cover 50% to 90%, barometer 1013, Sea temperature 79.8. Motored five hours in the afternoon to meet Aftermath to deliver water to them. 2000 to 0200 watch: Very strange night. Maneuvered around two squalls to avoid them. Wind direction changed to the South. Possibly also encountered a counter-current. Sailed for a while, motored, sailed again but not a good heading (240M). Wind died, back to motoring. Very quiet night. 0200 to 0800 watch: Dodged several squalls and got hit by one at 0730. Changed time zone to Cool Change zone. In equatorial counter current. Tried sailing in 9 knots but could only move 2 knots. Motored all night. Made water because of Aftermath rescue. Added 2 jugs (40L) of fuel from cans to fuel tank.
APRIL 13, DAY 18
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
When you think you have just about had enough, the universe reminds you of just how awesome it is to be alive on this planet by rewarding you with calm seas, just enough wind to sail, a starry starry night, and an opportunity to do a good deed. And when I say calm seas and just enough wind to sail, I am talking about long, long period swells of less than one meter, water gurgling around the rudder and the sound of waves breaking on the bow as if they were waves breaking on the shore of a small lake on a summer morning. The stars are absolutely brilliant. This is heaven. Who says the ITCZ is dreaded? I love it. Especially after the relentless trade winds.
Our delivery of emergency water to a boat in distress went flawlessly. We calculated a waypoint 27 miles from each of us that was consistent with both of our courses, and both motored there at 5 knots. We met like clockwork, right on time as planned. (That in itself is pretty amazing, that two ships in a 3,000-mile ocean crossing can pick a place to rendezvous by GPS coordinates and actually do it).
They were using an emergency steering system below deck and were unable to steer an exact course, which made it difficult to come close enough to exchange water jugs, but we did it. There were four passes: one for them to toss us a line (rope) with a 5-gallon empty water jug attached, one to toss the line back with the full jug attached, and repeat, for a total of 10 gallons exchanged. We even included an extra little bag of some treats and a touch of rum! We could have given them more water, but each pass entailed a certain amount of risk, and at least that will hold them over for several days until another boat in the fleet can rendezvous with them. Before we arrived, they only had 5 liters of water remaining for 10 days, so they were quite grateful.
Rick tossed the line and heaved the water jug. He is definitely better at both than I am. I steered the boat. We approached them on the upwind side, my logic being that we could veer away into the wind but they couldn’t, and I wanted to minimize the chance that they would blow into us. I was worried that our masts swaying towards each other would become entangled, or that the line would end up in our propeller, or that my stern would swing into them as I pulled away – let’s just say, there were any number of things that could have gone wrong. Rick ended up getting on top of the cabin to have better leverage when tossing the line, and that worked really well.
We were fortunate that it all came out so well. Their appreciation was our greatest reward. That, and the satisfaction of knowing that our little boat, the smallest in the fleet, was the little engine that could: WE were the ones with the watermaker, WE were the ones with the AIS transponder so they could find us, WE were the ones with a functioning steering system and backup parts in case it failed, WE were the ones with every form of communication via radio and satellite available and functioning to coordinate the whole scenario, and WE were the ones who navigated the meetup and orchestrated the plan for the exchange, not the big, heavy, supposedly ocean-going boat in distress. We may be one of the smallest boats in the fleet but we are better prepared than almost everyone. And on top of it, there were other bigger boats in the vicinity who could have arranged to help, but we were the ones who volunteered. Go Cool Change! Go Team Patrinellis!
I promised I would convey to you the saga of Drama on the Big Seas but that will have to wait for another post on a slower news day. We made 93 miles yesterday, Day 17. Our total mileage travelled is 1749 nm and we are 1158 nm from Hiva Oa, French Polynesia.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO:
RICK’S JOURNAL
04/13 Yesterday had Cindy and I really focused and charged and working as a tight team. The night before, after we got another update regarding Aftermath, Cindy made the comment that maybe we could bring them some water as they were ahead of us and moving slowly. After we discussed it, we both decided that it would be a very risky maneuver in the middle of the ocean. It weighed on me all night to where in the morning I brought it up to Cindy again. We discussed options and considered the fact that we have done a fuel transfer at sea before, when we were crew on Adventure. We decided that we would approach the skipper, John, via a message and offer our help. We would be in charge of the scenario and run it the way we knew how. Cindy would be driving the boat in very close quarters with a much larger boat, so above all she had to be in total control of the actual transfer, ready to break away at any time to avoid a collision. My message asked John to meet us on SSB radio at 1900 Zulu to talk about what we could offer.
When we connected by radio, I asked him how much water he thought he needed. He told me 10 gallons, which is a quarter of our main tank. Our watermaker, however, has been doing fine and I have no worries about a major breakdown while on this passage so not a problem. I told him that would be fine. Cindy in the meantime had been doing the navigation planning and came out with a route calling for them to head due west at 5 knots or about 5.5 hours, while we would head due South at the same speed. Aftermath needed to get further west soon anyway and for us it was not even a course change. The timing could not have been better. One of our initial concerns was about how much out of our way we would have to go, especially if it involved using fuel, so it was a relief that no course change was necessary for us.
After about 4 hours we would try to communicate via VHF and go over the details of the plan once again. After getting together we would have them motor as slowly as possible (about 2 knots), with just enough weigh to keep their boat moving in a straight line on a course of 180. We chose that course because, theoretically, the swell would be mostly behind them rather than rocking them from side to side. His crew would be on deck with a throwing line, which he would toss to me after Cindy pulled up on them as tight as she possibly could. Once I caught the line, John would pay out the slack until he got to the end, on which a 5-gallon water jug would be tied. At that point he would toss the jug into the water and I would quickly haul it aboard Cool Change. The line had to be under control at all times to keep from the sterns of either of our boats to avoid fouling a prop, which would be a disaster and very dangerous. Because of their steering issues, the person actually steering his boat would be doing so from below decks with an emergency steering device. He would not be able to see us at all. He would have a small hand bearing compass for orientation and a portable VHF radio from which he would be able to get instructions from John. John’s other crew, a woman, would be on deck with him as second person to handle lines.
It felt almost miraculous that we met at exactly the point we had planned, their heading west and us heading south, after 5.5 hours since we started on the course for the rendezvous. When they arrived at the waypoint, they set their course and speed and waited for us to pull up alongside. It was late afternoon and we were pretty sure we would have enough daylight to get the transfer done. Seas were pretty lumpy and confused so our hope of the 180-heading assuring no rolling was dashed. Aftermath is a much bigger boat with a very tall double spreader mast and it was swinging from side to side in huge arcs. Both Cindy and I had to consider this to make sure our masts did not collide, which could cause one or both of us to be dismasted. All in all, the ways this could go wrong were pretty scary!
After everyone was connected via VHF radios, Cindy headed in for our first pass. We were going to do a test pass just to see how things looked but I told John if it looked good, to go ahead and toss the line anyway. I had cleared the starboard side of Cool Change to the point of moving the running backstays and preventer to give me as much free space as possible. I had rigged five fenders high on the starboard side of Cool Change, and John had done the same on his port side that we would be coming up on. As we approached, I was trying to give Cindy input as to how close she needed to be and finally we were no more than five feet apart for just a couple of seconds, our masts were still offset and John threw me a perfect toss. Cindy immediately started breaking away and I hauled in the line and eventually the 5-gallon jug.
While Aftermath continued on their course, we went about filling the 5-gallon jug with fresh water. Cindy had made up a nice care package of treats complete with three shots of the Captain’s Rum, and we attached that to the jug as well. Then we caught up with them and reversed the rope toss process to get the jug back over to them. When they had emptied the jug into their tank, the whole process started again to get them another five gallons of water. It probably took about an hour total. We were finished before sunset and both of us were on our way. The wind had completely died so we ended up motoring for 12 hours until the next morning, when we got a little wind. It was barely enough to fill the headsail and soon it was slatting, so we rigged the spinnaker and launched it. We flew it for several hours and then the wind totally died off. We were in the area known as the doldrums, so having any wind was good.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 14
Daily mileage: 93 nm, Total mileage: 1837 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 04 15N, 127 55W. Heading 193M to 207M. Wind S to SE 7 to 11 knots. Sailing close hauled to a beam reach, 2nd reef main and full headsail. 10% to 30% cloud cover, barometer 1012, sea temperature 79.3. By noon we had been motoring for 24 hours, on and off, alternator temperature 121.5 degrees, thermometer 158 degrees. Have had five squalls or so in the morning, otherwise sunny. Engine off at noon and sailing. Heading of 210 is direct to the Marquesas, finally! Ran spinnaker for a couple of hours and wind died at 1710. Motor on, motor-sailing with reefed main. Motor off at 1930 sailing full sail. 2000 to 0200 watch: Lovely night. Had to adjust Charlie a few times back and forth. Clear sky. Saw an AIS target to port 20 miles heading in opposite direction but it disappeared before I could capture the data. Motor used in prior watch. Ending engine log: `1883.1 hours. 0200 to 0800 watch: Awesome sailing tonight. 4-6 knots SOG. Magic carpet ride. Turned refrigerator on at 0530. Found bilge switch off.
APRIL 14, DAY 19
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Drama on the High Seas! We are down to only about 20 boats or so who check in to the nightly radio net we set up for those of us departing for French Polynesia from Banderas Bay, México. Of those 20-odd boats, at least two that we know of are having serious crew drama on board. One, the guy with the broken steering system to whom we provided water, got on the radio the same night as he announced his emergency, to ask if another vessel in the fleet could please come by his boat and pick up his only two crew members – he would single hand to the Marquesas, by himself. This, with a broken steering system whose emergency backup has to be run from a cabin below, offering no compass, no visual of the boat’s heading, nothing. And the emergency steering system is so physically exhausting that one person can only handle it for at most an hour or two at a stretch.
What happened on board that was so awful that a captain would be willing to give up his crew, who might actually make a difference in whether he ended up having to scuttle his boat and get rescued? The captain implied that it was the crew who were pressuring him to get them off his boat. What circumstances were so dire that a person would make a commitment for a month-long ocean crossing full of uncertainly and risk, and then demand to leave when the captain needed them the most? All we know about his crew was that they are a fairly young couple from Poland that the captain hooked up with in La Paz. They were not friends of his, the story goes, just people looking to crew on a boat crossing the Pacific. We were all in shock and disbelief when the captain made his announcement on the radio. One of the other captains, an outspoken German fellow and friend of his, immediately spoke up and didn’t mince words. He said it was a “stupid idea” to let his crew go, that they should work out whatever they had to work out and get the boat moving together; they needed to work as a team and that was that.
Ironically, it was that same German fellow who got on the radio a few nights later during the call out for “emergency traffic” to announce that his only crew member, a German woman we believe, has packed her bags and insists she be taken off his boat immediately. He didn’t know what to do and was beside himself. A woman from another boat got the German Crew woman on the radio and tried to talk with her. She was a little difficult to understand because of her accent and a bad transmission, but we heard her say something like, “first it was the ITCZ and then the doldrums, and I just can’t take it anymore!” She also seemed concerned that she couldn’t talk in front of the captain, implying that there would be ramifications if she said anything he didn’t like. The woman from the other boat started asking her if she realized how close she was to landfall, whether she had been drinking enough water, etc., implying that perhaps the crew member’s hold in reality might be slipping. What happened there, one wonders? I can’t help but ask myself, did you not understand what you were getting into when you signed up for this? This is not an amusement ride you can hop off of at the next minute.
Anyone who has been on an extended wilderness trip, and that is what this ocean crossing is, knows that such experiences can expose some intense emotional responses that are typically more tethered in the confines of the civilized world. Sometimes they result in some desperate outcries for help, that seem irrational to everyone but those going through it. I remember one guy on our Grand Canyon river-running trip, deciding to paddle on in his own for a few days, a very dangerous and risky thing to do, because he was having trouble coping with some of the group dynamics. I had heard stories of other private groups on the Grand Canyon splitting up into two or more groups because animosities grew so high between certain participants. Even Rick and I once found ourselves leading an extended river trip in which we had invited a friend of a friend of a friend for some critical gear he offered, who ended up being a mean-spirited and dangerous drunk. He had me crying by the first night, and he risked the safety of us all. What could have been a fantastic adventure was reduced to just getting through it because of the presence of this one guy. We would have gotten rid of him and his gear in a flash if we could have, but we couldn’t. The commitment each made to the group was to stick together until the end.
I am certain there is a lot more to the stories of the two crew rebellions than what first meets the eye. Maybe we will find out, maybe not. But I will tell you, I understand why, in the old days, the punishment for mutiny on the high seas was death. Sorry you are not getting along, but get over it. It is life and death out here!
I am also incredibly grateful that the twist and turns of events in my life have organized themselves to arrange for my making this crossing with the only person I am certain I could do it with, my wonderful husband Rick. Every one of the past 22 years of facing challenges together of co-parenting, illness and deaths in our families, our own medical issues, misunderstandings between each other or with other family members, work issues, house remodeling, kayaking and traveling adventures, not to mention sailing and boat management, have prepared us with the tools to cope together as a team with whatever we face. My heart goes out to those captains and crew who were not so fortunate.
Meanwhile, we have had a brilliant sailing day in the last 24 hours. We are through the ITCZ and allegedly in the doldrums, but we have 12 knots of wind on the beam in gentle seas, with blue sky above dotted with just light white clouds. The SE trade winds are soon to come, so we are enjoying the serenity while we can.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO:
RICK’S JOURNAL
04/14/18 Day 19. A question of balance. Cruising sailing is all about balance. When the boat is loaded with equipment, provisions, etc. care has to be taken to evenly load the boat so it is not bow or stern heavy and same with starboard vs port. That is also what sail trim is all about. Having the right amount of canvas up so as not to overpower the boat, and having the headsail and mainsail work together and not against each other. If a boat is properly loaded and the sails are trimmed properly, you should be able to let go of the wheel and the boat should essentially drive itself in a straight line. If using a windvane (which has been a lifesaver for us), it won’t be able to steer the boat efficiently if the sails are not in proper trim.
Now we get to the people on a boat. They must learn to keep their balance! It’s almost like learning to walk again but everyone needs to do this. The movement on a boat underway is not very predictable unless you are looking at the sea. You must be very elastic and flexing & moving your legs according to the boat movement without even thinking about it.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 15
Daily mileage: 102 nm, Total mileage: 1939 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 02 58N, 128 58W. SE winds at 8 to 11 knots. Course 203M to 209M. Full sails, beam reach. Cloud cover 25% to 50%, Barometer not taken, Sea temperature 79.7. Trying to stay higher to the wind to cross the equator sooner than later, to have more favorable wind angle in the SE trade winds to the Marquesas. Distance remaining to the Marquesas: 1002! By 0530, wind dropped to below 7 knots and started motoring. Engine off 0630.
APRIL 15, DAY 20
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Well, no emergency deliveries of water to a boat in distress today. Just another day of big ocean, big skies, and involuntary isometric stomach exercises!
I thought I would take today to talk about our day-to-day life on this ocean crossing. First of all, it is busy. Each day, each of us commits to 10 hours of being on deck alone in the cockpit on watch, keeping a lookout, tending to sails, watching our course and the wind, etc. That is a big chunk out of our days right there. The other four hours, we share watch duties. I start out my morning watch at 0800 by a breakfast of coffee and homemade yogurt with fruit, unless Rick decides to cook us up a breakfast. I then download weather, record a voice log, record in the ship’s log, write my Facebook post and do yoga while Rick catches a few more hours sleep. From 1200 to 1600, I am off watch and I try to catch a little nap if I can, plus make yogurt, bake bread as needed, “shop” in our stored supplies for dinner ingredients, do laundry, and whatever other personal or boat projects arise. At 1600, I generally cover the helm again while Rick takes a short nap. Then between 1700 and 2000, we squeeze in cooking, eating and cleaning up after dinner, participating in the 1800 radio net, having a sip of rum at sunset in the cockpit together and reflecting on our day. I take the 2000 to 0200 shift in the cockpit and then get about 5.5 hours sleep.
Meanwhile, Rick has the 0200 to 0800 shift and the 1200 to 1600 shift, plus runs the watermaker, monitors our power usage and undertakes other routine maintenance activities. It is a busy day! The only time I feel I could make better use of is my night watch. I was going to study French then, but I am concerned about bringing all the necessary electronics into the exposed cockpit every night.
The temperature hasn’t been as hot as I imagined. It might be because we are constantly in wind, which is a good thing! But at night, even here close to the equator, I find myself needing a long-sleeved shirt and light leggings.
We are now in the doldrums but we still have enough wind to sail. So far, we have sailed 1952 nm and we have 962 nm to Hiva Oa. All of the weather routing models say we should cross the equator on Tuesday and arrive at Hiva Oa a week from tomorrow, Monday. But don’t be surprised if it takes us a little longer.
We have quite the equator crossing planned, complete with appetizers of pâté and crackers, Rick’s famous spaghetti with homemade bread, and Reece’s peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. We have atonement to Neptune planned, costumes for Neptune and Amphitrite, presents, official shellback award certificates, and of course, there will be some rum involved. Let’s just hope that the time of day and wind and weather cooperate.
Well, on to my yoga.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO:
RICK’S JOURNAL
04/15/18 Day 20. Cindy and I were talking yesterday about how, on an ocean passage, you can be (if you choose) completely disconnected from anything back home or in our case, disconnected from current events, including Orange Man, while keeping contact with friends and family, who would worry about you otherwise. I have actually really enjoyed chatting via Delorme to friends and family at home. At the same time, we are in the middle of such a different world and events out here. There are Cindy and I and the boat, which is our whole world.
There is, however, the events and contact with others that are on the same journey. The nightly radio net connects everyone. We are able to get the positions of friends’ boats we are tracking, hear about weather and conditions of every boat underway, and also hear if anyone has problems. We can work together to see how we may be able to help.
The other night we had just tuned in the radio net and the first order of business is always for the net control to ask if there is any emergency or priority traffic for the net. The skipper of the boat named Patience comes on and says he has an emergency. He explained that he has a crew member that wants to be taken off the boat and is making him put out this call. There is a lot of back and forth with net control trying to figure out what was wrong. Is there a medical issue? No! she just wants to get off the boat NOW! There is another boat in the group named Dash and I think the skipper’s wife is a psychologist. She came on the radio and asked to speak to the woman who at first refused but finally acquiesced. She said that the reason she wanted off the boat is that she had been through the ITCZ and the doldrums and she just cannot take any more! It gets back to that statement from Arnstein, our Ocean Passage Making instructor, when he said, “you can’t quit, this is the ocean!” The woman from the boat Dash got some personal contact info from the distressed crewmember and I think has taken it on to give her the therapy she needs till they get to land and she can really get off the boat. Although it is not funny and I am sure she is in an altered mental state because of this trip, it cracks me up that people, like the crew of Aftermath, think they can just say, that’s it, I’ve had enough, come take me away!
The situation reminds me of the time that Cindy and I were on a river trip in Idaho on the Main Salmon. This is a very remote wilderness trip, and once you put on, you are pretty much committed to doing the whole thing to the take-out, some eight days away. Well, it turned out that ours was the last river access permit to be honored; the ones after ours were cancelled due to a fire in the canyon. The fire was chasing us or around us pretty much the whole time. There was a woman with us who was on her first wilderness trip, who was having a hard time. First, she got tossed out of the raft our friend Sue was piloting. Sue had invited her to come along but after her swim, she at first refused to get back in the boat with Sue. She road in Cindy’s raft for a time instead. Then a couple days later, we were traveling down river and the fire was on both sides of the river. She said, “When will they come in to rescue us?” We had to explain to her there would be no rescue, we just had to take care of ourselves and get to the takeout.
This was the same woman, though, who could not understand how to roll up an inflatable bed pad. The pad was designed so that when you unroll it, you first open an air valve and as it unrolls, it takes in air to make a sleeping mat, then you close the valve once it has filled with air. When you are ready to pack it up, you open the air valve and roll it tight, which expels the air. She could get that far. Then though, right when you have it rolled its tightest, you need to close the valve. Otherwise it will just unroll and fill with air again! She just could not get the concept or the timing right so her nicely rolled bed pad would revert to operational mode and she would have to start over. By the end of the trip, she had gotten into an argument with the trip leader (Sue) and said she would not get into the car with her to ride back home. As it turned out, our son Dan and his girlfriend, who were also on this trip, gave her a ride to Seattle, where she could catch a flight home.
The last two days we have been in the stretch called the Doldrums. It is called that because back in the time of the clipper trading ships, they would sometimes get stranded here for days or weeks with no wind. It is the reason we carried twelve 20-liter jerry jugs of diesel with us on the trip, because we may have been forced to motor for hundreds of miles to get through it rather than sit and bob. Well, so far it has turned out to be near perfect sailing through the Doldrums, and aside from a 12-hour motor run the first night in, and one hour last night, we have been moving right along with wind alone. I am so happy about this because I hate to run the engine. It puts me in a foul mood when we have to motor and there is also a list of things that can happen as a result of motoring that would not be in the cards if we were sailing.
For example, one couple, who we had met in Mazatlán, had a beautiful Island Packet 38, and they had left Mazatlán for La Paz. When they were about 25 miles off the Baja Peninsula, a fire broke out in their engine compartment. It spread so fast they did not even have time to launch the life raft before they were forced into the water by heat and flames. They watched as the boat burned and sunk in front of them while they were treading water! Luckily for them, the fiberglass hull put out a thick plume of black smoke as it burned. It was just before sunset and there were some Mexican fishermen out in their fishing panga about 10 miles away who saw the smoke and motored towards them. Miraculously they found and rescued the couple, who had suffered smoke inhalation and burns to legs and arms.
So back to the Doldrums. We are having a delightful sail through them and it is Sunday April 15. At 08:00 this morning we were at a latitude of 2° 58N, which on our heading of 206 M, puts us 220 nm from the equator! Crossing the equator for a mariner anytime is a big deal, but especially the first time. If you are successful and cross it, you are then forever known as a shellback. There are ritual ceremonies, and in the case of the Navy, hazings associated with the equator crossing. We will be working on a ceremony that we will follow when we get there, which should be sometime Tuesday, late morning or early afternoon. We intend to release a message in a bottle as well. Cindy has a special rather elegant meal planned that will include pate, and Reeces pieces baked cookies. Yum!
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 16
Daily mileage: 106 nm, Total mileage: 2045 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 01 31N, 129 53W. Winds E 7-12 knots, full sail, port tack, beam reach. Course 180 to 195M. Seas SE 2 meters. Cloud cover 0 to 20%, Barometer not taken, sea temperature 73.6 (big drop). Put spinnaker up at 1500 and doused at 1700. 2000 to 0200 watch: Steady 8-12 knots, boat speed 4.5 to 5.5 knots, heading a little East of rhumb line in order to be able to sail more downwind when bigger winds/seas hit us, per S/V Anna. 0200 to 0800 watch: Calm. 9 to 12 knots wind. Charlie behaving. Beautiful night.
APRIL 16, DAY 21
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL
04/16/18 Day 20. Yesterday afternoon I was getting a little concerned because the wind seemed to be dying out. That was also in step with our weather reports that called for wind well under 10 knots. This was about 14:30, which is normally about the best wind for the day, so further reinforcement of my fears. What I did not want to do was motor all night! We have done so well in the lack of motor use and once we make it to the equator and head SW, we should have more wind than we want the rest of the way to the Marquesas. We decided to put the spinnaker up as it would still drive the boat for a while, even in 6 knots wind, which was what we were seeing. True to form, this time as I was launching it, the wind came up a bit to around 10 knots. The spinnaker was loving it as we sailed in a fluctuating 8-10 kts, making 5 kts and sometimes 6 kts over ground. This was in spite of the fact that we had a solidly unfavorable one knot of equatorial counter current.
Then about 5 p.m., the wind started slightly picking up and was much less fluky. I knew from prior experience that this could signal a wind increase and we had better get the spinnaker down quickly! Also, the spinnaker needs at minimum of a beam reach or deeper to fly well with our boat. As a result, the course we had been on since we launched it was too high, taking us further west than we wanted to be when we cross the equator. If we could fly regular full sails, we should be able to run much closer-hauled and meet our waypoint heading of 206. We got the spinnaker down and the headsail out, and the wind was a steady 10 knots. We had lost about a knot in SOG but we were going where we needed to go so all was good. Even better though, the wind stayed with us, building a little higher for the rest of the night! It is now going on 11 am the next day and we are just 100 nm from our equator crossing, which should be about 09:00 tomorrow morning! I will need to get busy getting our message in a bottle seaworthy and we both need to work on our ceremonial costumes. Also need to do a complete deck inspection as we expect the seas to get much higher after the crossing so any repairs are better done now. It is going to be a busy day on Cool Change!
Something I have really enjoyed on this passage is that our communication systems are so good, but at the same time we do not have or seek any access to view Facebook, news or NPR. It is a blessing being able to unplug from all that but at the same time we have real good lines of communication to friends and family back home. On my 02:00 to 08:00 watch is when I send messages from our Delorme device to friends and family back home, telling them about what is going on aboard Cool Change. It has been really good for the family because they lose the anxiety over where we are and our safety when we can regularly communicate with them. Especially with my sister Linda, who would be beside herself with worry if she did not know at all times that we are OK. We are also able to post to Facebook through Delorme (Rick) and Iridium (Cindy). As we cannot see the comments on our posts, our friend Bev sends us a summary every couple of days. It is really nice.
Something that has been really special to me is that I have been corresponding with my brother Andrew. We have been so far removed from each other’s lives except for family events and holidays, and I feel like we have made a nice new connection here. He is very interested in what is going on aboard Cool Change and especially our thoughts and feelings about the crossing as it is happening. He is one of few people who really gets what a big deal this is for Cindy and me to be doing this, in our 60’s no less. Also, he has witnessed the whole process since 2010 when we first got into sailing. A few years later, when I told him we were planning on crossing the Pacific, he asked why we did not just take a plane to French Polynesia and charter boats while we are there! Indeed, that is a more common adventure in FP and other exotic locations in the world but over time I think he has come to understand that it is just as much about the journey as it is the destination. He is very happy for us that we have achieved such a huge goal (to us) in life and that we did everything to prepare to pull it off. Indeed, I am talking like we have already made it but I am more confident than ever that we will. Marquesas or bust!
So, Andrew and I have had a dialog going on my late watch. Sometimes he is awake or in and out and sometimes he reads and responds to what I write the next day. For me, I am just happy it is happening. Andrew is a brilliant doctor and businessman though his responsibilities are huge and encompassing. He doesn’t really have a lot of free time to go on vacations etc. as he is busy running his medical facility as well as several medical cosmetic clinics around California. I have always worried for him that he is taking on too much but he is doing what is important to him at least for now. He told me he has a vacation planned to Maui, which is the first time he has been able to get away in two years. He may even figure out how to connect with our daughter Sarah while he is there. She is living on the big island where she performs aerial arts and runs and Airbnb out of her house, complete with a single car rental for her guests.
I will be very happy if our late-night correspondence leads to a more active relationship as I love my brother and miss him very much. I want to propose to him that we have a monthly lunch or dinner date, just the two of us, when I get back home. This is something I try to do with Linda as well, and it is very fulfilling. Life on land can be so out of control and it is easy to shortchange the people that mean the most to you just because you cannot find the time to foster the relationship. Again, due to the awesome technology we have aboard, there are many who are following us via Delorme or Facebook or Iridium. On our Delorme map-share page, people can easily go there and see a visual on a live map of where we are presently located. They also have the option of sending us a message right from that page at any time and we can easily get back to everyone. It makes people feel a part of the trip and that is awesome.
There is a couple that we met in PV who have been sailing and doing ocean crossings for many years on a beautiful, immaculate Swan 43 called Bandit. They really took a liking to us when we met them and they kept in touch as our preparations in PV continued up until we left for FP. Fred and Audrey write us every day and do weather research and share their thoughts with us. They keep track of where we are and how fast we are going. One of Fred’s favorite comments when we have a particularly good day’s run is something like, “Wow, who lit the keel rockets under Cool Change?” They have been aboard Cool Change and so know her systems and condition and they just love the boat. Fred told me that he has been talking with a friend back in California that wants to buy her! I told him in a couple years, he would likely have that chance.
Rob and Nancy are good friends all the way back to when we were on B dock in Sausalito. They left on the Haha in 2012 and left for FP across the Pacific last year in 2017. They have an incredible yacht named Shindig, which is an Oyster 485. It is currently on the hard in Raiatea FP awaiting their return after tucking her in there for cyclone season last November. Rob and Nancy are young retirees (50s) after having done well in Silicone Valley. Rob has been following us and letting us know every once in a while, that he is around. I wonder if they believed that we would make the crossing when we first met them and were going through our sailing training and outfitting of Cool Change. I think they are happy to see us fulfill our dream and they can totally relate.
One of the things that is so significant about this crossing is that we are not youngsters, we are on what is considered a small boat for the crossing, and we are only a crew of two. (ok 3 things!) As to the size of our boat, it is only in terms of the room we have to put things that makes her a challenge. As to seaworthiness, I have always said that there are many 40-foot and larger boats that I would not think of doing this crossing on. It really is not about the size, it is all about seaworthiness and preparations. We had planned on having our daughter Sarah crew for us on the crossing, which would have made us a crew of 3, but early on she realized she could not take on the time commitment so she gracefully backed out. In retrospect I think it was a good thing because as much as I would have loved to cross an ocean with our lovely and talented daughter whom I believe is a natural sailor and adventurer, the quarters would be just too cramped with no privacy for her and that would have been tough. Better she meets us somewhere in FP for a cruise! We’ve told all the kids to start saving their pennies for a flight to FP so they can experience it at some level with us.
There are some, like my best friend since we could both walk, Brian, who I wish I could be communicating more with but he just doesn’t seem to get it in many ways. For one, the process of communicating to us on the boat, though really not that hard, but he does not take the time to figure out what he has to do so when he tries, it usually doesn’t work. The other thing is his life. He is and has always been so caught up in things that he just doesn’t or can’t make the time to keep in touch. I understand it because I was the same way when I was working. Brian is supposedly retired now, with his daughter Lauren running his dental practice, but he is a real estate investor with many properties and this I think drains him of everything in terms of what he can afford to share of himself. That in itself makes me sad, as I do not understand his quest for more and more wealth. What does it all matter when you are dead and gone? Sure, you want to be able to leave something to your kids, but they already have plenty enough for that. I just wish he would dial it all back and concentrate on enjoying what he has in this life rather than constantly seeking out how to add to it.
I remember when they bought this beautiful home in Sonora that they wanted to have for a weekend / holiday retreat. We (family) had some good times with them there and it was extra special because Todd (Brian’s partner) had roots in the area, including another property that was his family’s weekend getaway cabin when he was growing up. About 10 years ago, they had some kind of freeze and the water pipes broke and flooded the house, doing very serious flood damage as no one was around for quite a while after the pipes broke. Brian collected the insurance on it and instead of just working with the insurance company to get the damage fixed, he tried to contract the work out himself to maybe save some money. In the end though, he was trying to manage a project from too far away with too little time. Contractors took advantage of him and did shoddy or no work and as a result, the place is not completed to this day. As of late, it sounds as though they have hired someone to complete the job but I can only hope that everything goes as planned. Brian is a perfectionist of sorts, and sometimes that goes against him. If they are successful in this attempt, I look forward to visiting with them all there, which was why they bought Sonora house to begin with: it was to be the party/get together house for family and close friends.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 17
Daily mileage: 101 nm, Total mileage: 2146 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 00 06N, 130 43W. Winds E to SE 12 to 17 knots (with squall to 25 knots). Seas SE 1.5 meters. Sailing a course of 210M on a broad reach with 2nd reef in main and full headsail. Cloud cover 20% during day, 90% to 100% at night through next morning, some rain, barometer 1010 (dropped). Made water in afternoon off battery power 3 hours 1015 to 1315, SOC up to 91.7 by 1545. 2000 to 0200 watch: squall attacked at the time of shift changes – winds to 25 knots. Rain at 0700. Several small squalls all around, shortened headsail. Coming up on equator crossing today! Found loose screw in traveler – tightened. Performed deck inspection – need to tighten screw on grab rail protector. Retied bowline on jib lazy sheet. Added chafe guard to lifeline by working preventer. Tied off whisker pole for bouncing.
APRIL 17, DAY 22
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
We are shellbacks! April 17, 2018, Day 22 of our Pacific Crossing at 10:30 AM Pacific time, Rick and Cindy Patrinellis crossed the equator at a 130° 47 minutes west. We are in the southern hemisphere. How exciting. We had a really nice ceremony with complete with king Neptune and Queen Amphitrite, atonement to Neptune, and presents and costumes. We tossed a note in a bottle overboard and we also gave a tribute to Neptune by pouring a little bit of very nice tequila into the ocean. The most fun I think was Rick being king Neptune. We have recorded it all on video. It took pretty much all morning to prepare for and carry out our ceremony. After the atonement, we had to shower because atonement involved getting doused with salt water!
The big moment came at 10:30, and we got photos of the chart plotter GPS location as proof. After that, Rick made wonderful pancakes with real maple syrup from Canada and then we kind of cleaned up a little bit. I’m on watch now and Rick is taking a little nap. After he finishes his nap, I will take a little nap and make some chocolate chip peanut butter cookies. After that, we will have some pâté we have been saving for the occasion, and then a spaghetti dinner that Rick has already prepared, followed by our cookies. So, it’s been quite the day of celebration. We have been doing this all while the boat has been rocking back-and-forth in 18 knots of wind on a broad reach, on a direct beeline for the Marquesas. We have less than 800 miles to go, no more changes in direction, just a straight course to the Marquesas. We’re looking forward to arriving there in about a week. I am looking forward to watching the toilets flush the opposite direction!
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
130 47.984 W
Note the Green Equator Line!
EQUATOR CROSSING CEREMONIES
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 18
Daily mileage: 103 nm, Total mileage: 2249 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 01 16S, 131 41W. Crossed equator! Winds NE 12 to 18 knots (squalls to 25 knots), course 199 to 210M. Course Deep broad reach, full sails or 2nd reef main and full headsail, swell less than .5 meters, cloudy skies, barometer 1010, sea temperature 76. 2000 to 0200 watch: No log since 0800 this morning. Celebration day! Changed sleeping sheets, had ceremony, baked cookies. Mmmm. Had some wine too. Great day. Seas calmed. Kept main reefed so went slowly. At beginning of 2000 watch, a sliver of a moon and Venus appeared on the western horizon. Cindy needed to change batteries in head lamp and add new log sheets to clipboard, and file the old log sheets. Charlie keeps heading up. Fishing vessel crossed our bow at 3.5 nm @ 2130. Had AIS: Gilantas #393, moving 6.7 knots course 143. Cindy put autopilot on and RADAR full time until risk of collision was over. VHF radio on, handheld also. 0200 to 0800 watch (Rick): Started motor at 0215 to make water and charge batteries. Engine off at 0430. Water complete @ 0430. Big wet squall from behind at 0400 to 0430. Went to full sail at 0500. Winds got to 25 knots and reefed at 0800.
APRIL 18, DAY 23
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Less than 700 nm from land. Another 100+ nm day yesterday, and predicted to be even better in the coming week. Landfall next Tuesday or thereabouts, at Hiva Oa, The Marquesas, French Polynesia. In the meantime, we are surrounded by vast, open, undulating seas with two-meter swells, and winds up to 18 knots from behind us. The sun is shining now, but we have maybe 90 more miles of potential squall weather. Rick got hit hard by one just after his watch started last night at 2 am – a hard, prolonged downpour and 25 knot winds where you can’t read the chart plotter. After that we will be in the SE trade winds, all the rest of the way to our destination.
A day or so ago, we spotted a large white floating object off our beam to windward about 200 yards. We were going fast enough that getting to it would have been a major project, so we just let it drift off. But one has to wonder, what was it? It looked to be about two foot cubed or greater. It was bright white. What if it was a lost package of cocaine or heroin? My preference would have been a pot of gold, but that is less likely these days. If it were drugs, what would we do with it? Arrive in a foreign country to check in and say, “oh and btw, we found this cocaine in the sea and thought we should probably turn it in to you.” Yeah right. That would go over well. We would probably be put in jail or at least be interrogated by multiple international drug enforcement agencies forever. Where did we find it? How do we know what is inside of it? Why did we open it? How did we recognize what kind of drug it was? Are we now, or have we ever been, a member of the communist party? Haha! It is a sad commentary when you conclude you are better off passing by a pot of gold than facing the consequences of finding it.
Hasta luego. Or as they say in French, A bientôt!
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL
04/18/18 Day 23. Well, yesterday was the day we crossed the Equator out of the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere! At 10:30 am on 4/17/18, Cool Change reached latitude 00°00.000. We were videoing and photographing the chart plotter in the final seconds as is customary. Just prior to the equator crossing, we did a ceremony to ask forgiveness from Neptune for our sins and were redeemed and cleansed by having a pitcher of sea water poured over our heads. Once across we had another ceremony where we presented each other certificates that were Neptune’s orders for all sea creatures not to mess with us as we are his guests. (I do hope they pay attention to that one). We then dropped our message in a bottle we had prepared with a note, some boat cards and money, into the sea. The note inside the bottle tells about us and our voyage, has our email addresses and asks whomever finds it to email us and also our son Dan just in case we are not alive when it is found. We have a friend from San Francisco that sailed around the world, and he dropped a bottle, which was found 12 years later! Finally, we gave Neptune a taste of some fine tequila, courtesy of our friend Rich from California. It was a fun and memorable time crossing the equator. Cindy and I will both be getting South Pacific style tattoos to commemorate the crossing.
Most of the day and all night the water was very bumpy. We purposely slowed down so that the sailing did not interfere with the special day. Cindy had stashed away some pate and special crackers for an appetizer. That night for dinner we had Rick’s spaghetti and a glass of Cabernet for the occasion. What a cool day this was, and we are shellbacks! Our friend Bev came up with the hashtag #fuckyawereshellbacks.
Continuing on with the day, I was very tired mid-morning and was sleeping my off-watch hours of 08:00 to 12:00 hrs. Cindy woke me up when she yelled into the cabin, “Turn on the radio!” I did and went to the companionway to see what was going on. There was a very large black and white fishing trawler crossing close off our stern. He had blown his horn after failing to reach us on the radio and Cindy called him back. He said in heavily accented English (English is the language of all commercial shipping) that he was checking to see if we were OK and did we need anything. He offered us a Tuna and said he had fresh tomatoes and potatoes too! I guess he is not used to seeing a boat as small as ours in the middle of the ocean. We told him we were fine and declined the food offer as we really don’t need anything. I think he would have been prepared to deliver on his offer if we were in trouble. Very good captain! I think I heard him say he was from Nuku Hiva, which is an island in the Marquesas. At the time we were 750 nm out from the Marquesas. I took some video of the boat steaming away from us. They moved pretty fast and within 30 minutes they were out of sight.
We had been struggling with a counter current from the equator that has been robbing us of between 1.5 and 2 knots of speed over ground for days. It is very noticeable while sailing and when looking at our daily miles run. Finally, we appear to have broken free from it last night and we are flying along today at close to 6 knots. The weather forecast shows wind increasing on all three models so as long as the seas aren’t too rough, we can make really good time flying with just the first reef in the main and full headsail as we are now. The other thing we noticed about the equator region is that the water temperature got colder. We include water temp in our logs and it went from 79.6° to 76. Now it has come back up and I am hoping that this will bring us a Dorado, who likes the water to be close to or in 80s.
One last change we saw beginning last night was that there are seabirds around again. We had not seen any for over a week till early this morning and I spotted two: one was white and the other was dark-colored; likely the white was an orange footed boobie. I think I wrote earlier about the incidents that occurred to some of our winged friends. One in particular I was concerned about because he was perched on the rear solar arch very close to the wind generator and I thought I heard a thud and definitely heard the bird splash in the water. (This was at night when they are looking for a place to roost till the morning). My suspicions were confirmed when I was doing an overall inspection the other day and found blood stains on the wind generator pole above the rear solar arch. Such mayhem comes to the birds that visit us! I feel bad but there is nothing much I can do. I will try to shoo them off the solar arch in the future if they are perched there as I can reach that area with a boat pole.
Cool Change has been damaged by their presence as well. Fortunately, the wind generator appears not to have been damaged in its encounter with the bird. But the mechanical Windex at the top of the mast, which is there to give us a visual of wind angle, was broken when a large bird tried to land on it when the mast was whipping back and forth in the seas. The choice spot is on the bow pulpit but so far only two birds have chosen to roost there. We have not had as many flying fish and squid on deck the last few days. Not sure why that is but it is welcome as the squid leave an ink stain and I worry about the flying fish clogging a scupper drain as they usually end up right at or near the drain.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 19
Daily mileage: 115 nm, Total mileage: 2364 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 02 42S, 132 55W. Winds NE to E at 14 to 20 knots, Swell E 1.5 meters, sailing course of 211M on a broad reach with 2nd or 3rd reefed main and full headsail. Sky 10% to 100% cloud cover, barometer 1010, sea temperature 78. Today a tuna boat approached us from behind, honked. Cindy contacted them on VHF. They asked if we wanted some tuna! Very friendly. I think they actually would have given us some. Also asked if we wanted tomatoes or onions! Haha! We said no because seas were rough during day and we were concerned about the transfer! Then they took off.
2000 to 0200 watch: 80 nm so far today, seas were abeam at start of shift, boom was practically hitting the water so I reefed. Seas seem to have shifted to more aft now – more comfy. No squalls. Wind variable 13 to 20.
0200 to 0800 watch: Rough, bouncy night. Good speeds and escaped equatorial current. Starting seeing sea birds again. No squalls hit but a couple of small ones were seen on RADAR.
APRIL 19, DAY 24
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Only 554 nm to go! 2371 nm travelled so far. We should make landfall by Tuesday. Oh, for the sweet smell of land and a full night’s sleep in the arms of my husband! Birds are returning and ships are being sighted so we know we are getting closer. Yesterday afternoon, a large fishing boat approached us from behind and honked their horn. Scared the s!?t out of me. A very friendly guy with very broken English got on the radio and first reassured me not to worry, that I didn’t have to change course or anything. Then he asked us if we wanted some tuna for lunch – he had plenty of tuna to share! Then he asked me if we needed anything else: tomatoes, onions, etc. So cute. He sounded like he was serious about launching a tender to deliver the tuna to us. But it was rough seas so I politely declined the generous offer. I think they deliberately diverted their course when they saw us on AIS, just to say hello! How sweet.
We could be going faster but we opted for comfort and safety over speed again last night, reefing down the mainsail again. We shook out one reef this morning and I think it may be time to shake out another! In the light of day, it is easier to feel more comfortable going faster. I think I will wait for Rick to finish his nap before suggesting it. To shake out a reef, Rick needs to go to the mast. To put one in, he doesn’t.
A funny thing happened the other night with my star finder iPad app. I have been using it all along to identify stars on this trip, and it has worked perfectly. I just raise the iPad with the camera facing a section of the sky, and it shows me a picture of the sky at that location with the names of the stars and constellations labeled. But not after I crossed the equator! It registered North as South, and East as West, and vice versa! Even after entering my GPS location manually, it had it backwards – the moon was shown in the eastern sky when it was in the West, along with the rest of the sky. Must be a hemispheric-centric bias – a program designed for reading in the northern hemisphere, and the developers hadn’t bothered to work out the bugs of using it in the Southern Hemisphere! Haha! Fortunately, there was a work around, although kind of a pain: you can manually reorient the cardinal directions, but only for that session.
We made spaghetti a la vongole (with clams) in a cream sauce last night. Chicken enchiladas on the menu for tonight. Today I might cut open the watermelon I have been saving in the fridge – one of our last fresh fruits. But we still have plenty of dried, freeze-dried and dehydrated fruits and veggies, plus onions and potatoes, so we won’t get scurvy, even if we sailed all the way to Australia!
A bientôt. Until later. Cindy
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL
4/19/18 day 24. The day started out great, we had only about 600 nm left to our destination. As the sun came up, the winds went to a nice 15 – 17 knots and we started counting off the miles. I had both drag lines deployed thinking this was going to be a good day to catch a Dorado. I have added an alert mechanism to the fishing lines to tell us when one or the other has been hit. It consists of a string that ties on one end to the shock bungee and the other end to a clothes pin, which I can clip somewhere along the side rails. When a fish hits, the bungee stretches, which pops the clothes pin from where it is clips and gets our attention. Aside from some false alarms, the system works well.
Cindy was going to make a new recipe for enchiladas for dinner and we were designated to run the SSB net this night as there are only about seven boats on the water still, the other ones having made their destinations, so we lost several net controllers. Of the remaining boats, we and Harlequin are at the front of the pack. We estimated that we would make landfall Tuesday afternoon 4/24. Well the day went by really fast with good speeds. We were running with our 2nd reef in the main and a full headsail and making 5-6 knots. I was a bit nervous about running net, so I went over the script a couple of times and warmed up the SSB early. The net broadcast went very well in that everyone could hear me and I could hear them. What we do is capture everyone’s position and some other vital info about speed, heading, and localized weather & barometer reading.
After the net, Cindy and I sat in the cockpit watching the sun go down with our customary sunset shot of rum or tequila. As we had enchiladas, (which were excellent!), we decided on Tequila. The ride was smooth & fast and we decided to leave the sail configuration as is for the night. Cindy had the first watch and I went below to get some rest. It was not long before things started building up and I was literally getting tossed out of my bunk. I went to check on Cindy and we decided to put in the third reef. We did that and the boat was still overpowered so we put a reef in the headsail as well. I went back down below and it was not too long before Cindy called me back up and said it was still really crazy. We furled in the headsail completely and deployed the staysail, which is our dedicated storm sail.
When I came on my watch at 02:00, it was especially difficult to get ready because the boat was being tossed so much. I am not sure how I was able to make coffee but it was a precarious operation. Cindy said she had been having squalls all night and there were several in the area, one actually overhead, which was not large but was dumping rain. Cindy went down below and I started a very long 02:00 to 08:00 watch. I thought it would never end. The winds built even more through the night until we were seeing 21-26 kts with huge seas. The waves were confused and every so often a huge one would slam into us and cascade over the cockpit. I was genuinely concerned for our safety and there wasn’t much more canvas we could lose. The only possibility would be to drop the main entirely and just run on the staysail. That would involve going forward, though, which was just too dangerous, so I stuck it out with our configuration and had a wet, scary, miserable night. I was so happy when the sky started lightening. Usually things change about that time, with a quick increase in winds and then it would settle down to something comfortable, but there was no change.
There was one night while still in the Doldrums where I had a very special experience with a squall. When we first were encountering them in the ITCZ, they would appear on RADAR very clearly and often times we could dodge them. It was quite satisfying when a big one would pass right behind us or in front, heading to the West as we were headed South. As we got into the Doldrums, they were getting bigger and more frequent. Also, they had this nasty habit of forming right on top of us, so there was no warning. Normally the winds would come up to 25 knots, the rain would dump, and in 10 minutes or so, it would pass over. The boat would have had a good rinse and we would either be drenched or have dodged the rain by hiding under the dodger. This one night, it was about 05:00 on my watch and I had been sailing along all night nicely with a second reefed main and a full headsail. I noticed on RADAR that a squall was developing right behind us. At first it looked small as it was building and I did not think much of it but then all of a sudden, the radar image was huge and it was overtaking us. I wanted to reef or furl in the headsail but I did not have time and did not want to try this once the winds were on us. The rain and wind hit simultaneously and the last glimpse I had of the chart plotter showed the wind at 30 kts as I was scrambling to get under the dodger for some protection. I was concerned about the sails but there was nothing I could do at that point; auto pilot was driving and it was too late to reef so I just held on under the dodger and hoped it would pass over us quickly.
Then something very strange happened. The seas had been fairly large and confused during most of the night and the boat was rocking accordingly. But as the boat sped up, all of a sudden it got incredibly smooth. It was too dark to see if this was because the seas were smooth from being flattened by the wind forces but I don’t think that was it. More like we hit this magical speed running downwind where we were on top of the waves and riding like a toboggan down a fresh groomed slope. It was an incredible if not scary feeling as I had no idea what would happen next. The squall was the biggest of the trip and kept up for about 40 minutes with this amazing ride. Cindy slept through the whole thing, the only sensation she would have had was a very smooth ride, though, so not surprising. That experience was my sailing memory of a lifetime.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 20
Daily mileage: 134 nm, Total mileage: 2498 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 04 17S, 134 27W. Winds E 14-26 knots, 3rd reef and staysail, beam reach, swell E at 2-3 meters. Cloudy and raining, Barometer 1009 (dropped), sea temperature 78. 2000 to 0200 watch: Rain cloud after rain cloud. Uncomfortable night. 0200 to 0800 watch: wild scary night. Big seas @ 10 feet, lots of squalls and rain. About 0400 wind got up to 24-26 knots. Dipped boom once and sheeted it in. Radio conversation with Harlequin and good AIS in morning. They are 5nm SE of us.
APRIL 20, DAY 25
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
I guess Neptune didn’t consider our equator crossing ceremony sufficiently serious to warrant his blessing – not before a few more trials. Starting last night, he gave us 20 to 24 knot winds, 3 to 4-meter breaking swells every 7 seconds on the beam, and rain cloud after rain cloud. The rain is gone for now but the swells and wind remain, at least for the next couple of days. Don’t let our relatively slow speed of 5 knots or less fool you – we are reefed way down so can’t go very fast. Our dear Cool Change was built for this abuse – she can take it. But Rick and I are getting pretty tired. That anchorage is going to be ever so much sweeter.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL
04/20 2018 Friday day 25. When we charted for Thursday, we had gone 138 miles in one day. I think that is our second-best day for miles but they were hard won. I had to wake Cindy by radio because I didn’t want to make an unnecessary trip down below. Right as she was getting up, we got hit by another huge wave and the coffee pot that was sitting on the gimballed stove in a pot clamp went flying as did several other things. The cabin was in disarray. When Cindy came above, we both had to move very slowly and carefully to get to our destinations safely. I slept for about an hour but I am too anxious to sleep any more so I am doing this writing and thinking about my next watch that starts at noon. We pulled down a weather report, which doesn’t show the winds we are having, but the outlook looks like things will remain the same for the next three days. It’s going to be a long haul for our last miles to the Marquesas.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 21
Daily mileage: 139 nm, Total mileage: 2637 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 06 05S, 135 54W. Winds E at 14-30 knots, swell E 1.5 meters, course 200M on a broad reach with 3rd reefed main and full or reefed headsail. Clear skies except for squalls, stars out at night. Barometer 1009, sea temperature 78. Windy day all day with SOG in excess of six knots, big swells, nighttime a little quieter starting about 0200. But after that, biggest squall of the crossing caught us from behind and went to 30 knots and lasted 40 minutes. Took one wave over the side of the cockpit, surfing to 9 knots.
APRIL 21, DAY 26
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
Are we there yet? 272 miles to go. 139 nm sailed in the last 24 hours. We are getting anxious. Most of the boats we left with are already there, bragging about the wonderful times they are having. We hope to arrive sometime Monday. The wind, seas and squalls continue to keep us on our toes. It is too rolly to do laundry and all our clothes are salty. Other than that, we and the boat are fine.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through 0800 APRIL 22
Daily mileage: 140 nm, Total mileage: 2777 nm. Ending Lat/Long: 07 53S, 137 17W. Wind SE at 14 to 18 knots, swell SE 1 meter, sail configuration varied according to wind from 3rd reef main and 1st reef headsail to full sails. Course 200M. Beam reach. Skies variable from 5% and stars, to 100% cloud cover. Barometer 1011. Sea temperature 78. At sunset we hove-to for dinner and got the handline wrapped around the rudder. We cut it off but we are not sure if it is still there. Hope not. 2000 to 0200 watch: Smooth, fast sailing day today. Saw what looked like sea gulls. Currently only 188 nm from Hiva Oa. Reefed at midnight, overpowered before that at a steady SOG of greater than 7 knots. 0200 to 0800 watch: Good speeds tonight with 3rd reef. No traffic. One more night on the sea!
APRIL 22-23, DAY 27
CINDY’S MORNING FACEBOOK POST
110 nm to go, cruising speed 6 knots. One more night at sea and we’re there! Ok, since this probably is my last post before landfall, I suppose I should be philosophizing about how this voyage has changed my life. Maybe that insight will become clearer after a full night’s sleep, a hot tub and a massage. Oh, wait, there are no hot tubs nor massages on Hiva Oa! As Rick likes to say, this island only recently discontinued the practice of cannibalism, so we shouldn’t expect much in the way of amenities! (Actually, that is not quite true, but it makes for a good story). It is true that the only real town on the island is referred to by Lonely Planet as a “village” with a total of maybe twenty rooms for daily rental scattered throughout the area. Not that we want a room; just a quiet anchorage would be fine. Mostly, Hiva Oa is high volcanic cliffs, lush jungle, archaeological sites and petroglyphs, and the former home of the artist Paul Gauguin. He is buried there. Hiva Oa is also the place we check in to French Polynesia with the authorities. But I can’t think about that now; all I can think about is that full night’s sleep.
CINDY’S VOICE MEMO
RICK’S JOURNAL
4/22/2018 Sunday day 27. Well, the last two days on the water have been very good mileage days for Cool Change. So much so that rather than arrive Tuesday morning as we predicted several days ago, we could arrive as early as Monday morning! We have been pushing it, running perhaps a little overpowered but not dangerously so. The good seas and wind continued all night and we actually needed to slow down the last few hours of the night as I did not want to be approaching to close to land in the darkness. As we knew we would be in sight of the island of Hiva Oa at daybreak, I promised Cindy I would wake her up while it was still dark so she could see land the same time as I did. As soon as Cindy was up on deck, we shook out our reefs and got moving again. We enjoyed some coffee as the sky slowly started to lighten. At first it was difficult to make out because of the clouds and mist, but we could start to see the outline of the NE tip of the island. We had arrived!
To the anchorage it was another 15 miles. We sailed for a while and then decided we should go ahead and motor as we needed to top off our water and get a good charge on the batteries before we went into the anchorage. As we got closer, we started hearing radio traffic and familiar voices from Dazzler, Muskoka, Night Tide, Maia, Harlequin and Dash. Cindy got on the radio with Dash and got some good info on the anchorage and current conditions. We found out that the supply ship was in the bay so a large part of the anchorage was off limits to give it room to maneuver coming in and leaving.
We cautiously made our way around a crowded anchorage looking for a spot to anchor. Because of the tight quarters, we knew we would need to anchor bow and stern, but we did not have the dinghy deployed, so that was going to be difficult. My hope was we would be able to get one of our friends to assist with the stern anchor, which we normally deploy after we have set the bow, using a dinghy to position the stern where we want and set it about 100 feet out. We weren’t able to raise anyone on the radio at the time and so we got into a very tight situation with a Beneteau that was less than 20 feet off our starboard side. It was tense until we got the dinghy put together and in the water. About that time, Scott from Muskoka came over to help. He used his dinghy like a tug to push Cool Change to the right position while I ran out the stern anchor and dropped it. He was positioned between us and the Beneteau in his dinghy so that if we got too close, his boat would act like a giant fender between the two. After we were secure, we took a deep breath and were getting ready to take a nap when we heard a call for assistance from Helen and Ian on Night Tide. They were dragging and very close to some boats behind them. Both Scott and I showed up in our dinghies, and Helen asked me to come up on deck to run the windlass while they repositioned. Scott worked on the kedge anchor for the stern.
SUMMARY OF SHIP’S LOG, through anchor down in Hiva Oa on APRIL 23
Daily mileage: 163 nm, Total mileage: 2940 nm. Lat/Long at end: 09 48S, 139 01W (at anchor). Winds SE 17-18 knots, Swell SE at 1 meter, sailing beam reach with 2nd reef main and full jib on a course of 203. Half-moon at night, partly cloudy, barometer 1011, sea temperature 78. Today we made water, dried laundry, reduced vberth clutter, and hopefully got rid of the lure on the rudder. 1130 engine check: fluids good, no leaks, adjusted raw water belt. 1200: SOC 94.5 CE 30.4, I 4.84. 1320: watermaker on since 1215, SOC 94.5.
The night started out picture perfect – last night at sea! Later, a little rougher and a bit of counter current – a half knot or so. Approached bay at 1325, Anchor down at 1555, depth 9.3 feet, 82 feet of chain forward, 80 feet aft.
CROSSING STATISTICS
Total engine hours: 51.3
Engine hours for propulsion: 39.75 hours
Engine hours for power generation: 12.3 hours
Fuel used: 25 gallons
Fresh water generated: 300 gallons
Average speed: 4.5 knots
Rhumbline distance: 2704 nm
Track: 2940 nm
Duration: 27 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes
CINDY’S LAST FACEBOOK POST OF THE CROSSING:
When I first came to San Francisco from the Midwest at age 21, I would drive my motorcycle out to the south end of ocean beach, find a sandy, ice plant-covered outlook to tuck myself into away from the highway, smoke a joint and stare at the Pacific Ocean. It was where I got my inspiration, solved all my woes, and made my plans. I was always in awe of how vast the Pacific is; I loved how it made my worries not seem so significant, by comparison to its expanse. I always wondered what was out there, in that huge ocean. I never once imagined I would be out here in it, crossing the largest expanse of open ocean on the globe. But here I am. Now I know what that vast expanse is like. It has its own weather regions, varying currents, different temperatures in parts than in others (the water in the counter current near the equator was almost 5 degrees cooler than before we entered it), bright starry nights alternating with full cloud cover with squalls and rain storms appearing as if from nowhere, and everything in between. The fish are different in different parts, the swells can be short or long and their height is best measured in meters; there is just so much variety out here, more than I would ever have imagined.
I was first attacked by an irrational fear of heights when I was riding a four-person chairlift alone up the face at Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe. All of a sudden, I felt the desperate need to jump off the chairlift. That would have ended in certain death. The only thing that saved me was closing my eyes and transporting myself in my mind to a beach I loved in Mexico. Imaging the sounds, sights, smells, tastes and touch of Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, saved me.
Now I have a new place to go to in my mind when life becomes intolerable. I am trying hard to memorize it all so I can transport myself back here when the time arises. It is twilight. Venus is just above the western horizon. The Big Dipper is coming up over the eastern horizon and the Southern Cross is just off Cool Change’s port bow. Wisps of clouds decorate the horizon. I am sitting on a cushion with my back against the starboard transom. Water gurgles around the rudder to the delight of my left ear. Cool Change breaks through the water causing waves to flush by on starboard. As a swell passes under us, we roll up and down like a hobby horse in very slow motion. We also gently roll back and forth to the left and right as the swell pushes us to leeward and then we recover. The motion is not violent, uncomfortable or off balance; it is more like a rhythmic dance. A warm breeze caresses my left cheek and soothes my nostrils with its clean, slightly humid, salty aroma. There is constant sound of wind and waves and gurgling and whooshes and then, nothing, complete silence, as Cool Change balances on top of a wave before sliding off. I look up to see our full mainsail steady in the wind, moving us solidly forward at six knots in 16 knots of wind at slightly broader than a beam reach. I am so grateful that we were blessed with this beautiful night as the last night of our Pacific crossing.
An incredible read. My sister made this journey and your writings helped me to know other details of her journey, thank you
Hi Cindy and Rick,
This is Jane from Aeolian, we met in Mexico before we shipped our boat back to Washington State. I have enjoyed reading your blog and catching up on your travels. I will look forward to your stories of the next season in the SouthPacific.
Jerry and I will be taking our new boat, Shamaal – an Outbound 46, to Alaska this summer. Then heading back to Mexico. We are not sure where to go next!
Jane
Hi Cindy & Rick!
My wife Noel and I are a couple of years behind you guys and just beginning our life with our “new” 2004 Pacific Seacraft 31. We bought her in January and with lots of help are beginning the process at our home port of Oceanside, CA (we live in AZ). It just so happens we have family in Raleigh and were able to visit with Steve and Thumper and do the tour last month at the PS boatyard. Thanks for being such an inspiration and feel free to reach out via e-mail anytime!
Blessings!
Mike & Noel