June 6… Water Water Everywhere…. no boards shrinking though, but we seem to be going through the sargasso sea ( is that really a thing?) Reminds me of coming down to San Diego, and having to go miles offshore before we headed into the bay – issues with seaweed.
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Night Lights… not much to see!!!!
Same same… we are north of Turtle Bay, having decided in the wee hours not to go in there for a break, so we kept chugging onward, during a fairly benevolent night run. Some swell, some wind, some waves.. nothing like the first night. And this morning.. wow.. I woke up to glassy oily calm seas, albeit a bit swelly, but long and deep… 8 or 9 seconds about 6 to 8 feet tall. And all around us now are rafts of kelp, and seabirds, and pockets of bait fish, and dolphins. No sun – but we both agree if no sun means zero wind, we will take no sun and be happy.
But the kelp… dratted stuff.
The paravane stabilizers have done an amazing job keeping us happy – even when we had to turn east as we rounded Isla Cedros and moved closer to the shore, with the seas on the beam, we were just fine. But one of their unfortunate habits is to collect kelp. So we are kept alert by being on kelp-watch now. Small strings are no problem, and really we already have some dangling gaily off of one of the chains.. but we don’t really want to drag those fish through one of these big big rafts. It amazes me that there is so much kelp 40 miles off shore.
But it has been a great morning, I slept really well, several times, and although it’s my turn to sleep again I made a good brunch ( down to two meals a day, seems reasonable… granola bars at midnight)… and then tidied up, collected garbage, put dirty clothes into the right hamper ( rather than on the floor of our closet – ) and washed the pilot house windows. We took a LOT of salt on the first night and chances are we will take more, but now that it is calm, washing the windows seemed like a good idea.
Drawing the line at vacuuming – and I really would love to be fishing, judging by the bait balls around here and the birds, but what would we do with a big fish, and I’d probably catch a ball of seaweed anyway.
I have become relaxed enough at night to read while I am on watch – easy to read on my computer, then scan everything – get up every five minutes.. works well. When it’s like this I could cruise forever.Except we would run out of food! or at least veggies. I was so sick about throwing veggies away last time ( what I couldn’t roast and freeze had to go) that I was very miserly with buying them this time.
If I could find my can opener I would be a bit happier, but somehow that has gone AWOL.
Lawrence and I both share the same habit,when we come on watch in the middle of the night… he goes for the chewy granola bar, and I go for the good old fashioned crunchy ones. That and a swig of gatorade and a few saltines… unfortunately we tend to enjoy our treats early on in our watch, and then look around thinking “should have saved that for later.. now what do I do??”. I was digging into the fancy trail mix at the beginning of the trip but when I added up the calories of all those cashews, raisins, pieces of coconut and smarties – back in the cupboard they went and out came another package of soda crackers).
Looks like we are through the worst of the kelp.. so the other captain has gone to do an engine room check and then have a shower.Yes!!! a shower!! I had one this morning and my world suddenly became SOOO much BETTER!!! Showers aren’t easy in high seas and crashing waves…( oh Penny it wasn’t THAT bed! it only feels that way at night!!) but today seems a good day for ablutions.
Unfortunately we are having an issue with the satellite, totally gets itself in knots if we are motoring in the wrong direction and can’t find the mother ship. When we changed course, and after I had gone to the couch last night, hallelujah, it found it! Unfortunately again I had turned off all my wifi on all my little critters, but Lawrence hadn’t .Needless to say everything that had been waiting anxiously to make itself known came down the wire and he had a lot of mail to survey and answer. Me, I got nothing .. if I had been awake I could have finally blogged and let people know that we are indeed still chugging north … but he re-adjusted our course to bear almost due north, well, NNW in the old parlance I think.. and the satellite went dumb again.
sigh.
Lawrence promises me that at some point we will turn and allow our electronic toys to all talk to the rest of the world.. meanwhile, we are running silent. Which actually is pretty fine. We have music… I have my books… and I am clean. What more could one want?
( fish. one could want fish. )
Later… we have changed time zones and even though it is just an hour I am all out of whack. Until my computer tells me otherwise, or my phone ( which won’t happen until they get working wifi) I really have no idea what time it is. Funny. Lawrence has done a course change in order to get the satellite working – so far no joy. Well, we have had calm seas, and sunshine, and dolphins leaping off our bow, so missing out on a little social networking won’t kill me.
The other thing that amazes us is that there is no traffic out here. The occasional AIS signal indicates freighters and such passing us a long way out, but after the first day when we were dogged by that sailboat and pated by a few large cruisers, that is it. We had some fishboats yesterday? the day before yesterday? and pangas… now nothing. I guess everyone is already where they want to be, whether it is north or south. So for now it’s just little ol’ us. And ain’t that grand!