Marshalls to Alaska Day 21: Warm and toasty with the smell of baking bread

Greetings,

After motoring all day, the wind filled in after dinner and we started sailing. We found ourselves going faster under sail than with the engine :)

We have set a new standard RPM for the engine on this passage to conserve fuel, so it generally gives us just over 5 kts of boat speed. Sailing on a close reach in 10-12 kts in flat seas easily pushed us faster (6-8 kts of boat speed). When we would get to 8 kts, I would either turn a little downwind to slow down or reef the genoa if it became an extended period of time.

Today was another 'getting ready' day; we are expecting higher winds and bigger seas tomorrow, so we made extra food at dinnertime (Chicken with Spicy Peach sauce, from our well-loved copy of the Boat Galley cookbook given to Victoria by our friends on EXODUS when they flew home), and Victoria made bread this afternoon. The idea was for the bread to be available for quick eating tomorrow, but there is already half a loaf missing after dinner!

Our temperatures continue to drop. The sea temperature is now lower than our battery voltage on our chart plotter display (12.1 deg as compared to 12.6 V). The kids were excited to see their breath this afternoon.

The one maintenance job that needed to be done today was to tighten the 'leach line' on our main sail. This is a fine line that runs the length of the back of the sail and is tightened to manage the shape at the back or 'leach' of the sail depending on wind speed. It turns out that the only thing holding the line in place was a stopper knot at the edge of a 'button hole' in the sail. When we next see a sail maker, we will get a more sturdy mechanism (jam cleat?) put onto the sail. In the meantime, Max jury-rigged something that will get us to Dutch Harbor. I think I am glad that I was sleeping while this evolution happened, because he had to lower then boom and then stand on the dockbox to reach up to the back edge of the sail and haul down on the line to tighten it (all this while staying on board and not giving us a reason to practice our man-overboard drills [I was clipped in with my harness. Max]).

Given the calm conditions today, there was also time for reading books in the cockpit. This is a supposedly-typical-of-cruisers but rare-aboard-Fluenta event :) As for me, the book I am reading at present is "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", which we recently introduced to Benjamin. The kids and I are taking turns to read chapters aloud to him.

The nice thing about motoring for hours and hours is that it basically gives us free hot water and free boat heat. We ran our water maker most of the day, and since the batteries are pretty full anyway, we had plenty of power to make as much water as we needed. Because of the heat exchanger that we installed on our engine, the entire boat's heating system was at maximum, so the water was hot and there was plenty of it. We do a lot of projects that simply maintain (or restore) the status quo, but installing the heat exchanger was a definite improvement! It is so nice that the boat can be warm and dry when we are motoring.

Our AIS reminded us again that we are not alone out here, but we didn't need to worry much about the CPA - we were seeing contacts that were 90 nm away because of the propagation.

Johnathan spent some time chatting with me at the start of my watch (after he had gotten his brother settled for the night in his old new-to-Benjamin sleeping bag). With the seas being so flat, we enjoyed seeing bioluminescence moving by the boat. Instead of the showers of light that we have often seen from the motion of the boat landing into the waves, we were getting single intense points of light that would 'burn' for a few seconds and then disappear, kind of like candles floating by.

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the starry skies much in the last few days. This is because we haven't seen them! Our skies have been pretty cloudy ever since we turned East to avoid the gale. I saw a clear patch last night just as I was going off watch. The moon has finally reappeared in the last couple of nights, but again, the sky has been so covered in clouds that it has been a rare companion on watch. I am glad that I got to look out at the stars so much in the early part of the passage!

Love to all,
Elizabeth
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At 2019-07-01 3:13 AM (utc) SV Fluenta's position was 47°36.09'N 173°30.95'W

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