Day 2

It was a smooth ride until around 0430, when the wind picked up to low 20’s. After dawn, we moved closer in to shore where, where the wind was only 1 4 knots apparent and the seas were smooth. Man, talk about a drastic difference! No wonder they advise running so close to shore. It was another gorgeous, cloudless day.

Eric saw a turtle this morning. What made him notice it was he saw a bird standing on the water. Not sitting, standing. He did a double take and realized the bird was standing on a turtle that was swimming in the water. Eric tried to get a photo, but the bird sensed the camera being turned on and flew off. He took a photo of the turtle, but you can’t really see it in the photo. It looks like a smudge. Christi thinks she may have seen a turtle shortly afterwards, but isn’t sure. It was farther out.

At 1300, Christi also saw bird standing on a turtle. We had thought it was a freak occurrence the first time, but now we think it could be a common behavior. As she was watching the duo, suddenly a four foot sailfish leapt out of the water in the distance. It smashed back down into the water and a couple seconds leapt up again. It jumped at least half a dozen times in total, each time landing hard. At 1330, a half dozen or so dolphins came to play at the bow of the boat. At 1400, a couple of them were still playing. Usually, they don’t stay that long. Maybe it is luck and coincidence that we are seeing so much sea life now and saw so little in the rest of the world, but it seems to us that the sea life along the west coast of the Americas is the most active in the world.

It was another pitch black night. Since there are no clouds in the sky, the stars are incredibly vibrant, twinkling away like millions of diamonds reflecting a bright light. At around 2000, the wind picked up to 20 22 knots straight on the nose and the seas had picked up a little, too, so we didn’t really want to move away from shore where the wind and seas would be worse. But, just as we feared, in the dark we got disconcertingly close to a fishing net and barely avoided it in time, so we moved farther out. We figured our overall safety is worth a little discomfort. And, it turned out the seas weren’t that bad. Yes, they are head seas and head seas aren’t fun, but it really wasn’t bad.

We experienced a few minor problems today, too. At 1600, Eric checked the DC water maker. The filter looks to be clogged, so he shut it off. The two watermakers share a filter, so we will have to change it when we get to Mexico. We have plenty of water for the time being as long as we take short showers and don’t do laundry. The downstairs AC unit is still clogged. We had hoped it would magically fix itself, but no such luck. And our starboard side navigation light went out again.

Day 3

It was a long night. First of all, dark nights tend to drag by slower in general. Something about not being able to see adds a layer of anxiety that makes you keep wishing it were dawn already. Second, as time dragged on, our perspective on how uncomfortable the ride was changed. The seas were consistent all night. The waves were small but rapid. They weren’t sharp, so it was not an uncomfortable motion, but we were still consistently bouncing. It felt like being on a bumpy roller coaster. Occasionally, we would get a bigger wave that made us feel like we had caught air, which is kind of like a roller coaster, too. And, we all know that no matter how much fun a particular roller coaster is, there is only so many times in a row you can ride it before you have had enough and are ready to get off the ride. Only, we can’t get off. While it was certainly not an uncomfortable motion, we are so tired of the constant up and down.

From midnight to dawn, the wind continued to lighten up, but the seas stayed exactly the same. As the sun rose, the wind was down to only 10 knots apparent. It had to flatten out soon, right? Once it was light enough out, we could see there was only about 6 inches of wind chop. The swells were about 3 feet, and while they were coming at rapid intervals, they were gentle swells without any sharpness to them. If we were going south, it would feel flat as a pancake to us. If the waves were coming from the beam, we would barely feel it. But it was directly on our nose, so we were hobby horsing like crazy.

In the late morning, the seas improved a little bit for a few hours, but by late afternoon it was back to being the same as it was earlier in the day. Our speed has been abysmally slow, at one point in time getting all the way down to the high 2’s. No, that is not a typo. The currents were against us. The current finally let up some. We picked up the RPM’s from 1700 to 1850 to help keep us on schedule, but even at the higher RPM we are only averaging about 5.5 knots.

After dark, a radar target suddenly appeared right next to us on the screen. The target literally came out of nowhere. Eric took evasive measures and moved away. It turned out to be a little fishing panga that was sitting in place and not moving. The fisherman did have a flashlight with him, which he turned on after we had already moved away. Had he not appeared on radar, we wouldn’t have hit him, but we might have hit his net. And being as it was so dark out, there was no way we would have seen him at all had the radar not gone off.

We are still seeing sea life. Eric saw 5 turtles and Christi saw one. Also, a bird has taken up residence in our cockpit, and Eric has made friends with it. We suspect he is injured. He has been back there an unusually long time.

Christi is feeling restless. She thinks she needed a few more days on dry land before heading out. We spent 2 days at sea getting to Nicaragua, 3 days on land in Nicaragua, and are now on a 5 day passage, so for this 10 day period will be at a 70% sea time ratio. We have more or less figured out that we are happiest when we have a 25% or less sea time ratio. The higher over 25% the number goes, the less happy we are about moving.