4/10 Thursday: At Sea--Day 5

Finally making good COG/VMG towards Cali. Course is 038, speed around 6, position 27:14/158:30.

Good news: Luke came on deck smiling and feeling good yesterday for the first time. I mean not the first time on deck, just the feeling good part. He's been a trooper the whole time, just not able to contribute as much as he's wanted to due to a rather severe case of the seasicks. In spite of it he's been cooking, and standing watches--but I know all too well how he's been feeling. So it's kind of a major feeling of celebration to see him being chatty, being a smart-ass, and finally able to enjoy the boat at sea.

Other news:

Issues:

Seems we committed a small sin of omission at the Ko Olina docks before departure. Somehow, in the hullabaloo surrounding last minute departure prep, the water tanks didn't get topped off, and we realized yesterday that we are pretty low. We should have left with 80 gals in the two tanks, but as of yesterday afternoon found that one is nearly empty and the other has about ten G left. There are 3-5 gallons spares, another 10 in emergency supplies in the life-raft, and then there's the water maker. At least we hope there's the water maker--since we left a full two days before our projected departure date we never had a chance to test it. Peter says it was tested and working fine before leaving NZ last year, so it should be ok, but one never knows until trying... More on this later; for now we think there's not a major problem.

--Shower drain pump not working
--main batteries ("house") not coming easily to full charge.
--leaks at port/aft dorade and behind starboard bunk cupboard (rendering bunk un-useable and half my gear stowed in cupboard area soaked).

Things I've worked on during the trip so far:
--engine maintenance (OC, FFC, seawater strainer change)
--battery and terminal maintenance
--hose clamps checked/tightened (all systems)
--head pump repaired
--pressure water system fixed (loose fitting)
--"Whale" bilge pump ( found hole in pickup hose, tried to patch it, but pump still not sucking at pump with intake hose removed--work to be done ashore)
--sink drain (plumbers epoxy cuz couldn't find fittings at drop out)
--battens 1&2 (cut old #2 batten to fit #1 slot, cut lap joint, fit, fiberglass/epoxy splice two new pieces to make a new #2 batten, grind and form to fit carbon fiber slot at sail luff edge. Repair done at sea.)
--Devise forepeak stowage
--fix stupid WestMarine gear hammock. Twice.
--Figure out Monitor self-steering, re-rig lines
--

4/10 Thursday (later)

So we had a nice sail-powered run today, as approached the top of the Hawaiin trades and began the great-circle turn towards NA. This time the weather router's predictions have been on the money. We've been able to make suggested way-points on time, and forecasted weather changes have materialized as promised. Such a luxury. Compared with anyone who has done the same without the benefit if of GPS, sat-nav systems--we are really just a bunch of punters. However, this crew has not an ounce of hubris in it. We are fully aware that whatever advantage we seem to have is at best transitory, and likely to be tested in the extreme.

But for right now, in this moment, the  water is calm, the ship is sound, and, as I promised early on, bread is baking in the galley oven--nearly done now, so I gotta end this for the moment. Hoping to contact folks ashore tonight via ships comms--but we'll see...

Later:

Bread was baked and a rousing success, although I can see I have some experimenting to do to get it the way I like it. Needs more elasticity. Maybe more kneading, maybe an egg or two? But worked, just the same. The one loaf I made disappeared quickly, and became dinner. Bread with butter, bread with jam, bread with Mannukah honey, bread with Jarlsberg and mustard...

22:00--Wind is gone sea is flat calm--as much as the jolly Pacific can be, I guess. Remain so happy that Luke seems to be done with seasick. He's a great guy, and I hurt for him, going through that--but go through it he did.

Think I found, and hopefully fixed, the source of the leak that was soaking the stuff in my cupboards. Cuz was calm today, was able to carefully inspect, close up, the seams on the starboard side at deck line. Found clearly noticeable gaps in the calling between the gunwale and deck, exactly where you'd expect to find them if you wanted to account for water coming in where it has been. Cleaned the gaps with brake cleaner and dry rags, and silicone-sealed them. Won't know til the next strong seas if I have it right..,

We're motor-sailing for lack of wind, which arrived (or disappeared, depending on your point if view) just about when the Router said it would. So we're on track to pick up our next  waypoint pretty much on time. The first two days out of Oahu were a wash--virtually no miles made good to destination, but we've been knockin' em out for the past three, and are now on the great circle route bound for 40 degrees, which should bring us in to Cali coast around Fort Bragg, and then along the downhill run to SF Bay.

Irksome is still that my wet gear is stuffed in around the the fresh water heater, but just kinda stewing there, due to lack of air flow. Just irksome, tho, no big deal. I have enough cold weather gear to handle the trip, pretty sure.

Peter, Luke and I are doing very well as a team, and seems like the basis for a solid friendship is being laid. We all seem to be able to communicate with each other well, talk about issues without making problems out if then--kinda the best kind of male configuration one can hope for...

Peter and I work well together. Our skills complement each other, and so far we haven't run up against anything we couldn't find a mutually acceptable way to deal with.

The weather tomorrow afternoon is supposed to get a whole lot more challenging. Looking for much higher winds, cold, heavy rain squalls, supposedly just for a few hours.

I've been sleeping in the cockpit the past few nights, which has been lovely. Sleep in my Foulies under the Bimini/dodger, on the lee side. Sleep very well, too. But heavy weather would make that quite bit more challenging. And even if my deck-seal repairs prove effective, they might not keep water from getting in  from the starboard side dorade, and dribbling onto my bunk the way it did earlier on. Then at least the weather and water was warm. Can't expect that from here on, given the latitude.

But that's all still at least a little bit in the future. Meanwhile, we have tested the water-maker and found it working to spec, so one of our problems is no longer a problem. Now, anyhow.

4/4 Friday: Provisioning, and The Great God Costco

So, grocery list in hand, Luke and I sally forth to make a dent in the grocery shopping for Sunyata this morning. We might have been a little premature, not having finished calculations and menu planning--but the consensus was kinda let's just go and get the stuff we know we want, based on a 45 minute discussion of general menus... Then, when we get back we'll figger out how best to pack it into the storage spaces available. There was talk of dividing the booty into meals, based on the menus we had agreed on, in separate containers, each labelled with day and meal, packed accordingly, so we would just have to reach into the top of any given compartment and pull out the next meal.

However, in order to make this a practical solution, a German crew member, or maybe Gordon Ramsey, would have had to have been here.

When one is shopping at Costco, one tends to fall under a certain illusion that the packages one is stacking in the industrial-sized grocery carts are not really THAT big. And, in all fairness to the rest of the crew, I tend to think big when it comes to grocery shopping; i.e., I tend to operate on the general maxim that more is generally better. And the other one, that "if you have it you can use it--if you don't you can't".

So, eleven hundred dollars and three dock-carts later, when we arrived back at the boat, with enough food to provision a small military incursion into the Arctic, and yet still no basic staples, like rice (since the smallest bag of it was 15 pounds), or flour (likewise), we couldn't help notice that the skipper (a vegetarian who is quite happy with some rice and veggies and a piece of fruit or two during a 24 hour period) was somewhat distraught when he saw what we had brought. 

The last time I went on such a provisioning run was with Achim and Erika back in 2004, in preparation for a Trans-Atlantic crossing, and we loaded a helluva lot more food on board than Luke and I did today, so I guess my acquiescence to the stuff that landed in our carts in Costco might have been somewhat due to that memory. But, on review, I remember that they were provisioning for something like 6 months at sea, for a family of four (plus friends and relations they would connect with in the southern Caribbean).

Chagrin is a word that pops into my consciousness.

As it happened, though, it turned out that most of our Costco purchases went over very well with the crew. Even when the reefer quit some days into the trip, things that we assumed would long since have gone off didn't. Things that were initially viewed as perhaps superfluous or overkill (huge chunks of parmesan, Jarlsberg, Coastal Cheddar, a case of Cliff Bars, another case of fig bars, Sabra hummous, beef and Ahi tuna jerky, large quantities of macadamia nuts, bottled pineapple and cranberry juice, etc. etc.) provided comfort during long nights and days of rough weather. One downside was plastic packaging--more on this later.

Costco carried the lion's share of our food provisioning burden--but we spent quite a bit at the local health-food store (Down to Earth), with a few items picked up last minute at Safeway the night before departure.