Day 3

At 0900 this morning the waves had climbed up to 6 feet. But then the wind died down to less than 10 knots apparent and the seas followed. By 1300 the seas had smoothed out quite a bit. It was still not flat calm by any means, but at least the seas were better. It was actually quite nice overall. With calmer seas, we could open the hatch downstairs for more ventilation, which helped tremendously in cooling it off and making it smell better. We tried to run the AC downstairs, figuring it would work in calmer seas, but it didn’t. That isn’t a good sign. We should have cleaned the strainer, it must be a bit clogged.

It was sunny and hot. In the mid-afternoon some clouds rolled in, which made being in the pilot house more bearable today than it was yesterday in terms of blinding sunshine. But even with the light cloud cover, by 1700 it was so bright in the pilot house from the setting sun that we could not physically stand to be in there. Eric saw a school of what looked like a 1,000 flying fish, the biggest school of them he has ever seen.

At about 1430 the wind started to creep back up, and waves were at 6 8 feet. By 2200, it was up to 16 18 knots apparent from the aft corner. The seas were slowly but steadily building and it was getting noticeably rougher. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted. At 2200, there was still no moon out and visibility was poor.

Day 4

The moon rose well after midnight. Even though it is smaller than last night, it is giving off more light than last night. Odd. Visibility still isn’t that good. The seas progressively picked up all through the night. At 1230, the wind suddenly shifted up to 20 – 26 knots apparent (26 – 32 knots real). The waves have gotten bigger, sloppier and more powerful. We are now in an area that is notorious for nasty seas. We had watched the weather the entire time we were in Bonaire for it to flatten out in this region. It never did. We left Bonaire when the forecast looked its very best, which translated to “tolerable” instead of the normal “miserable”. When we headed out, we knew we’d have to tough out this stretch. And it is tough, all right.

The waves are totally confused. We are getting waves from the aft port corner, the aft starboard corner, aft middle, and starboard beam (from the right side all the way to the back left corner). Waves are 8 10 feet. The assorted waves are crashing into each other then breaking, causing big troughs and new waves. It is not pretty. The boat isn’t rolling much in terms of degrees, but the crazy waves are causing a lot of erratic, corkscrewy motion. We have been in much bigger waves that have caused less motion. But we have gotten slammed by a few big rollers that sent stuff flying.

Remember that our tummies and digestive systems haven’t been too happy the last few days. We have found that when we aren’t feeling good to start with for some reason, such as a cold or an infection, we have a much harder time coping with the seas. Even overall calm passages feel awful to us if we are sick to start with. And now we are dealing with unpredictable motion, which is most unpleasant. At sea, the motion is usually consistent. It may not be pleasant, but as long as it is consistent, our bodies will eventually adjust. But in seas like this, we never adjust. Our bodies just don’t know what to expect. The bad seas has us both feeling a touch nauseated and feeling just generally out of sorts. Between the two problems, it is almost unbearably uncomfortable. We are bored and restless. We are ready to get there, and our speed just keeps going down, which is a morale killer. Now we are down to 5.5 knots at 1700 RPM.

And worse weather is coming. Sigh. We are on track to arrive in the middle of the night, but there is no way we are going to slow down. We’d rather do circles in sheltered water near the islands all night than be out here when it gets worse.

Day 5

By 0030, the wind was gusting up to 30. The seas had picked up to the point where we were literally being thrown around inside from the wave action. 15 degree rolls had become typical (remember that makes a 30 degree swing) and we were getting slammed with many waves that rolled us more than 15 degrees. It was awful.

This morning there were some dolphins playing off the bow. We went out and watched briefly, but Eric gets nervous when we are outside in big seas, so we came back to the protection of the pilot house quickly. He doesn’t like to tempt fate. We are being attacked by baby flying fish. There are literally dozens of them all over the boat, and all of them are tiny little guys.

We are becoming more and more miserable. Time is dragging by painfully slow. It feels like our anticipated arrival time of 0400 is a lifetime away. Christi’s tummy is feeling better, but Eric’s is not. We are both hungry but having a hard time eating anything. Eric hasn’t been able to sleep since it started to get rough. He bounces from bed to bed and couch to couch, trying to find a place to get good rest. He sleeps for maybe an hour or 2, then is up again. We can’t imagine how much more hellish the ride would be without dual stabilization.

Around 1600, the winds calmed back down to 14 21 knots. The seas got a tad bit better as the night wore on. They are a little less confused and we are not experiencing as many big rollers, but it is still absolutely miserable nonetheless. But we are grateful for every ounce of reprieve from the painful seas.

Shortly after sunset we saw a light on the horizon that looked like a small size boat’s running lights. We could only see a single white light, so it looked like it was heading away from us (small boats have a white light up high, a red light on the left side and a green light on the right side so it is easy to tell what direction it is going. If you can’t see the red or green light it is either moving away from you or its lights are broken). We expanded the range on the radar to track it to be sure. It turns out it was running parallel to us, at exactly the same speed. Seeing that we were being paralleled was disconcerting. Our first thoughts were “are they pirates?” After all, we have been hearing stories of piracy not too far south of here, so it was possible, though not probable. We watched the boat closely for a long time. After more than two hours of paralleling us, we decided not to worry about it anymore. If they were pirates, they would have made a move by now. We re-set the radar back and just quit paying attention to them.

Eric is anxious about this night entry. He is scared the charts will be off and we will be unable to enter the channel, and thus will have to do circles in this heinous mess until dawn. The channel is pretty narrow and dangerous on both sides, so if the charts do not match radar and expected depth, we won’t risk going in.