Category Archives: Q&A

Questions from comments and our answers.

Oman to Egypt – Days 5 & 6

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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 →

Male to Port Salalah Days 7-9

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On Sunday, we realized we can see AIS targets 50 miles out on the radar screen, when normally they only appear 8-12 miles out. VHF range around here is absolutely insane. The chatter on the radio is incessant, both legit and screwing around. The monkey boy was still coming in loud and clear, and he was getting progressively harder to take. While he is by far the worst, he was not the only one screwing around on the radio. Over the course of the entire day, we got 6 more distress calls, all from weird MMSI numbers such as 111111111 and with no coordinates. All presumed fake. It is really upsetting that these guys are abusing the radio waves. The wind died for a few hours and came back as only very light head winds. The seas also flattened out, which we are ecstatic about. It was smooth and wonderful. We hoped it would last.

Yesterday we had four more fake GMDSS emergency calls, and, in general, the radio chatter continued to drive us crazy. The winds have gotten even lighter and the seas smoother. It has been a fantastic ride today. There is no wind chop at all, just glassy seas with a small swell. It has gotten significantly cooler and drier as we head north. The weather is a nice change of pace, and certainly makes it more comfortable inside the boat.

Today, in the early hours of the morning, we heard Continue reading →

Celebrating a Milestone – Male to Port Salalah – Days 5 & 6

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Yesterday the wind dropped a little more, down to 12 16 knots, still on the nose. Every day the ride gets a little bit better. Hopefully, this trend will last! For days we have seen no one, but now we are starting to see quite a few freighters, presumably on their way to/from the Red Sea. When we left Singapore, there was an obnoxious guy abusing channel 16. He was singing, whistling, making clicking noises and saying random things. Not only was he annoying, he was tying up the communication line so no one else could use it. When people would tell him to stop, he would attack the commenter, calling them monkeys with small bananas, as well as using obscene racial slanders. Well, guess what? He is back today. Same guy, same shenanigans. At one point someone told him to stop, and he responded by singing that Peter Gabriel “Monkey” song and improvising some of the words, then went off on a foul mouthed racial tirade. He was on the air for pretty much the whole day, so they are probably paralleling us. They would have been out of range sooner if they were going the opposite way.

Today we achieved a milestone. We are very excited to report that at 0310, we made it to the halfway point around the world! We are really proud of ourselves. Our marina in San Diego that we left from is Continue reading →

Male, Maldives to Port Salalah, Oman Day 1-4

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We left on Sunday evening. On Monday, early in the morning, winds were light and seas were pretty nice overall, despite the fact it was head winds and head seas. By mid-morning, the first of many squalls rolled through. With each squall, there has been a lot of rain and wind, with gusts as high as 38 knots. The squalls sometimes come from the forward port or forward starboard (an angle that hits us in the front right or left corner). In between squalls, winds drop to about 10 12 apparent knots on the nose. Needless to say, as the day has progressed, the seas got progressively bigger, lumpier and confused. Conditions were in the uncomfortable category and we were definitely feeling the washing machine effect. Given that it was almost as uncomfortable in the anchorage, we still think we were better off out here, making forward progress towards calmer weather, than back in the anchorage, waiting for the weather to cooperate.

On Tuesday morning, we found out that a storm has formed Continue reading →