Yesterday morning, we saw a pod of dolphins playing at the bow. There were only 5 or 6 and they didn’t stay long, just a couple of minutes. They were tiny little guys, the smallest dolphins we have ever seen.

The waves were mildly uncomfortable in the early hours of the morning, and as the day progressed, the waves got bigger and bigger. By the afternoon it was definitely well into the “uncomfortable” category, not quite at “miserable”, but close. Eric got sick. His body just doesn’t do well in the lurching head seas. We had to lower the RPMs by 200 because we were just hitting the waves too hard at the higher speed. We were only doing 4.8 knots, abysmally slow for 1700 RPM.

Today the ride started off just a touch better than yesterday. In the afternoon, the sea Continue reading →

We have a confession to make. As you all know, when we crossed the Pacific Ocean on our 21 day passage from San Diego to Nuka Hiva, the blog postings were in real time. We didn’t want anyone to worry about us, so we seriously downplayed how miserable we were during that passage. Now that the blogs are no longer in real time, we feel no need to underreport. By the time an entry gets posted about ugly seas, we are already safely in a port, so no one needs to worry.

A secondary reason we downplayed our misery on that first passage was because we were novice blue water travelers, and we didn’t want to sound whiny. We figured that Continue reading →