Sea Life, Or Life on the Sea

(April 24, 2014)

We are sailing away towards Ecuador, somewhere out about 250 miles off the coast of Colombia. Because we actually have to sail this and can't just turn on the engine and point in the direction we want to go and just bull our way down through contrary winds and currents. But that is the real challenge of doing this. I will not lie to you, I have at times gotten discouraged about what seems at the time to be a lack of progress. We hear other boats on the radio (well, okay, one other boat) that left after us and is leaving us in the dust. But I know he is motoring. I know I need to be tougher about it, and not get down in the dumps so easily, but it is hard on me. It is just frustrating, and I think even after this much time out here, I am still stuck in the need-it-right-now attitude that I had while living my old life. A traffic jam would make me furious then. So I simply have to zen out and get used to the fact I am going to be out here for a while more yet. I do have one piece of advice for anyone who wants to try this - you better know how to fix things. If it were not for Mike and his skills, we could not do this.

We have had a lot of squally weather and rain, but no bad storms or anything we couldn't handle. After two full days of being almost becalmed, I welcomed an actual storm because it meant wind and therefore movement. Besides, we were not in danger other than from lightning, and luckily the storm did not have a lot of it, and what we have seen so far has been at a safe distance. This will decrease the closer we get to our destination in Ecuador. The other night I got to see an amazing bolt - it cut vertically across the sky like a huge blazing snake. At this point, we are making decent speed, and our wind direction are not bad for us. Mike discovered that we can make our autopilot sail to the wind, which means we set it and it steers itself along the directions of the wind. This is great for us, because now we do not have to be constantly messing with the autopilot each time the wind changes a bit. If the actual course changes too much, an alarm lets us know so we can decide if that is where we want to go. It is like having someone steer who never gets tired or loses focus.

We have had some nice things happen on this trip. The other day, we were hailed by another sailboat motoring past us on their way to the Galapagos. The boat name was Legacy, and they were flying a US flag. We talked on the radio, and they came up close and took some pictures of us flying all our sails. We exchanged emails, and they promised to send the pictures. They spotted us before we were visible to them because of our AIS system, so we now know for sure that we are transmitting as well as receiving. It was fun to see another boat out here.

The next day we had to alter course because there was a HUGE tuna boat fishing right where we were going to sail. It was interesting to see the way it used its nets and a bunch of little boats. The little boats sped around and around apparently corralling these big tuna into the gargantuan nets. Then the nets were hauled in filled with tuna. (On a not so good note, this kind of fishing is not good, the sea cannot sustain this.) This tuna boat had a helicopter that flew around it looking for tuna, and when we altered our course, the helo flew over us, blinked his lights, and dipped at us. I thought that was pretty cool, I think they appreciated our change of course so we did not interfere with the fishing operation.

We have done one new thing underway, which was to make water. We are also using the generator to charge the batteries, because we can't use the engine for that. Our solar is less effective when underway, because at any given time half of them are shaded by the sails. Plus it has been overcast and rainy, which also has an impact on the amount they can generate. The wind vane is getting used a lot, but it does not generate the amount the solar panels do. Therefore if we want to keep using all of our electronics, we need to do some extra charging, hence the need for the generator.

One thing did happen that was not so good, but I had better get used to it because Mike says it happens to ships at sea all the time. The other afternoon a tiny little swallow landed on the boat. He had obviously gotten blown off course, because they do not generally range this far out to sea. When these birds land on boats like this (and I am not talking about sea birds looking for a rest) they are generally about to die. Mike has seen people on Navy boats try desperately to save them, but he has never seen it work. We tried to give this little guy some water, but he wouldn't drink it. So we left it close to him and made him a comfortable place where he could sit and not get hurt by anything. He spend the night, sleeping with his head under his wing. He was awake for awhile in the morning, but then he tucked his head and went back to sleep. But later on that day he died, and we buried him at sea.

My night watches have been interesting and I have missed them, since it has been a long time since we did an overnight sail. There are these night sea birds that come to our boat every night and fish by the glow of our green mast light. They appear at dark and stay all night. They swoop and glide in the dark sky like ghost birds, sometimes giving off a flash of their white underbellies. It is this sort of thing that I never get tired of. That and looking at the sky - I see several shooting stars on each trip.

Anyway, that will be all for now. We are doing fine, and I will continue to check in, but maybe not every day. No one needs to be worried about us, even if a few days go by without a post. We will simply continue to sail along, awaiting our final landfall.

"It's not polite to get into strange beds naked." (My Mother)

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