We celebrated leaving the tropics and heading for bear country this afternoon with the tropical flavours of Gummi Bears :) Given that we were in an all-hands dodging squalls region of thunder and lightning, that is about as far as our festive mood went!
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| A few squalls |
After an entirely placid watch on my part, Max came on deck in the week hours last night to one squall after another. Our iPads, satphone, and other devices went into the oven for the first time since our passage from Tuvalu to Majuro at New Year's. I had seen a little bit of lightning downwind of us, but Max had lightning in all directions on his watch. We love to watch a good lightning storm from a house, but we feel very vulnerable as the tallest point for miles around when there is lightning at sea! We have been on the same tack for days (ie since Majuro) but Max had to tack back and forth to follow the shifting winds and to avoid the worst of the heavy clouds. He had some moonlight to see by, but more importantly he had radar to track their location.
By morning, the only real change was that we could see the black and ominous-looking thunderheads above us. With the shifting winds, the kids and I continued to tack the boat to avoid sailing into Mordor or towards South America (negative "VMG" is certainly hard on morale). Finally, we turned back onto starboard tack to dodge a big squall (from which we heard thunder once we got turned) and things settled out a little, and the afternoon actually offered some nice sailing.
We re-stitched many of the seams in our dodger and bimini over the last two seasons (some in house and some at the canvas shop) but somehow the seams holding up our bimini side panels had weakened. Victoria spent most of the afternoon a couple of days ago sewing the starboard one after the stitching ripped, and she, Johnathan and I took it in turns to sew the port one today. I had intended to wait until we had a calm (flat) period of motoring to do the job, but with the tacking overnight, it jumped up the queue today. Both kids like to sing, so it was fun to listen to them sing together while they worked (one on the Speedy Stitcher and one acting as 'bobbin').
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| more repairs ... |
One of my images of long-distance cruisers was that they baked bread and made sprouts on passage. We haven't gotten around to baking bread yet (not cold enough to want to warm the galley) but we have been making sprouts. I keep two jars going, so that at any given time we have a batch to eat and a batch to wait for. With only apples and oranges left for fresh produce on board, sprouts have become the standard ration at meal times to provide the vegetable alongside whatever main course we are having. Benjamin was a little suspicious of them at first, but he is slowly becoming a convert. We used to have a fancy contraption for growing them, but now we are just using two empty quart jars, and it is working just fine :)
The doldrums are known for light and unpredictable winds, and this is what we got after dinner. The wind slowly died to about 3 kts. I saw lightning in the distance, so I decided to motor for a while to give ourselves some distance, but 90 min later, there was still barely 5-6 kts (enough to make us try sailing again) but eventually we gave up. On a normal passage, we would probably motor at this point but on this passage, where we still have over 2,000 nm to go, our preference is to keep our diesel in reserve, so we have dropped our mainsail, and we are drifting with the current. For once, it is favourable, so we are making about a knot in the vague direction of Alaska. Hopefully there will be more wind in the morning!
On the bright side, I have rarely seen such gloriously bright bioluminescence as we have tonight! The contrast between the black water and the brilliant white of the bioluminescence in the wake of Fluenta was extraordinary. Each time the hull came down on the crest of a wave, another band of white moved out from our side. We might not be travelling fast, but it seems that we are travelling on a magic carpet of white lights.
I will end on that note - all is well on board.
Love to all,
Elizabeth
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At 2019-06-10 4:36 PM (utc) SV Fluenta's position was 24°36.09'N 166°32.07'E
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