Still excited....

Date: July 6th, 2022

Time: 13:36PST

Location: 34.26.727/124.6.345

Captains Log:

We've implemented a watch system. Hopefully this will give some insight as to exactly what each of us are doing at any given time. Watch schedule consists of 4 positions as follows:

1: 00:00-06:00  9hr break 15:00-21:00 3hr break

2. 06:00-12:00 9hr break 21:00-03:00 3hr break

3. 03:00-09:003hr break 12:00-18:00 9hr break

4. 09:00-15:003hr break 18:00-00:00 9hr break

Date 7/4-7/7:

DN:Position 1

JB:Position 2

GM:Position 3

NB:Position 4

Date 7/8-7/11:

DN:Position 2

JB:Position 3

GM:Position 4

NB:Position 1

Date 7/4-7/7:

DN:Position 3

JB:Position 4

GM:Position 1

NB:Position 2

Date 7/4-7/7:

DN:Position 4

JB:Position 1

GM:Position 2

NB:Position 3

With that, I'll take you through the first two nights. Night one: as we sat in fog so thick you could hardly see much further than the bow and the boat so wet that if felt like it was raining, the best analogy we came up with is that 15 minutes you normally have to endure on a ski lift back up to the top of the mounting when you're freezing to your bones. Except we had to do that all night. On top of that, our sleep schedules are obviously not adjusted at all so it was all we could do to stay awake for the people in positions 1~3. It was an extremely uneventful night other than the shivering. 

Yesterday was a mix of light sailing and motoring through gentle seas. Personally my ego was glowing when I downloaded the yacht tracking and found that most of the boats were following our course. I was not impressed with myself in any way shape or form for leading the southern charge, because we surely have an advantage by being able to motor in our cruising class. What my ego was glowing over however was the fact that we began the southern charge without any knowledge or input of anyone else doing the same thing. Seeing a fleet following our path was reassuring in my decision making process. It was certainly not a situation of "what should we do? Everyone is heading south so they must know something we don't, let's follow them". 

Why the southern charge? This is certainly not the shortest route to Hawaii, but I chose this route because I hope it is the fastest. There's a high pressure system moving in (somewhat already moved in) from the northwest and it's going south. High pressure = low to no wind. Not a good thing for a sailing trip. As this circle of pressure moves down, it's surrounded by wind. I can see that there are a couple of boats that went essentially due west out of San Francisco and possibly a little north. I'm guessing their strategy is to grab the wind on the top side of the high then ride it down as the high moves down, always staying just above that high. I also considered this strategy carefully before choosing the southern route. If I were in a fast and highly maneuverable racing boat I too may have chosen that route as it's certainly the riskier route (riskier not in terms of hazardous conditions, but in terms of completely losing wind and not being able to sail), but if that bet pays off it should yield high dividends in terms of a sure sling shot blast almost straight down to Hawaii. That probably would have been my move had I been helming a highly tuned racing machine. 

BUT NO, we are not in a highly sophisticated racing machine, we're talking about the meaning of life, the compass of the heart, the pains and joys of the trails we walked and of course, we're eating like kings and fishing! This is not the Volvo 70' racing boat with a team of gear-matched sperry top-sider sporting crew. This is a rag-tag crew of mis-matched t-shirts, hats and shoes and loving every minute of it. 

Now lets get into some of the more exciting events of the days! Joe and my watches overlapped starting at 00:00 last night. The wind was blowing quite nicely and we were sailing along a nice clip of 6-7kts. 

The wind kicked up a bit more the boat finally really healed over. Suddenly from down below and avalanche of book boxes, cups, bowls, books and other loose articles started falling all over the place. Although a mess was being created, Joe and my excitement overflowed as waves splashed off the hull. 

Then the real excitement began! I took the spotlight to check the sails and also noticed some sparkle on the surface of the water. At first I was sure it was just some reflection and I thought my imagination was playing tricks on me as it looked like tiny frogs with illuminated eyes were jumping everywhere across the water. We were bumping along at a nice clip of about 7kts but everywhere we looked around us with the spotlight we could see these little things jumping. Joe suggested they were little fish and we realized they were little fish. The entire surface of the ocean around us was covered with little 1-2" fish that would jump wherever I shone my light. We persistently watched these little critters believing that was the extent of the excitement. It's a little humbling looking out upon the abyss of night and it's also the time for a bit of dark humor. One of us suggested how scary it would be if jaws suddenly appeared right there where we were shining out light...moments later I heard splashes around the boat. I brushed them off as my imagination the jaws comments was just moments before. But then it was undeniable, I said "Joe, there has to be some kind of fish around us! Maybe it's a school of tuna!". Then these "fish" went into incredible action as they surfaced just 15 feet away and we realized they were beautiful little dolphins feeding on the jumping fish. Joe and I erupted with joy, laughter, excitement and some good old yelling of "look over there! Look there! Up there!" They were gobbling up the little fish and what a show it was at 2AM. We didn't mean to wake Gene and Nick up but I think they were also pleased to catch a glimpse of the show. 

I was off watch at 06:00 and went straight to sleep. When I woke up at 10:30 I was pleasantly surprised to see fish in the fridge and a great photo of Gene holding the catch. The macrall(sp?) quickly filled our bellies. 

Today the winds are unfortunately again so light that we're using the engine. We carry 134 gallons of fuel and burn about .8 gallons per hour so we have approximately 150 hours worth of motoring available to us. We've motored about 18 hours thus far so fuel is still plentiful.