Here we go again. Day 5

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Getting closer and closer with every mile traveled, amazing how that works. It’s like math or something that’s just hard to explain. Another night done, we are still looking good for 2 more sleeps till officialdom.

A great day out on the blue highway, not a bit of traffic in sight, nary a cloud in the sky, nor a breeze to be found.

At daybreak changed over to running the port engine, giving starboard a much needed rest.

Sunrise

Another of those must finish foods breakfast lunch and dinner kind of days. Calories don’t count on passage, or at least that what the ubiquitous “they” have said. Last bit bacon gone, good thing they have more in NZ.

Lack of wind, did a proper flake of the mainsail, getting it all nice and tidy, knowing full well if the wind comes up that effort would be wasted. Started water maker, making some water. Some minutes later the engine room alarm was going off. The water maker burst a high pressure compression fitting. Tried to once to simply re-use the ferule, but it had seen better days, and fails as spectacular as the first time. A glorious water feature that would be a feature in a Las Vegas hotel. So had to locate the spares on board. Of course on passage, things get stowed, so this involved moving the toys around a bunch to get to the spares. And voila, just like that another accomplishment for the day. Made water for most of the day. With engines being run, there was plenty of warm water for nice outside shower and no further water feature.

Christine made more of special little army as we were running low, those little gingerbread men have ensured a safe comfortable passage.

So productive we are on calm sea days.

Friends on the boats behind us, took advantage of the calm weather to go swimming in the bottomless pool. Meanwhile around our boat were 100s if not 1000s of blue bottles floating on the surface. Since the water was glass they were easy to spot. I just hoping they wouldn’t get sucked up in the citizens of the sea torpedo. Blue bottles are what I would call Portuguese Man-o-War jelly fish, just much smaller. They still pop like bubble wrap when to step on them, but their will sting like crazy. So better to stay away and keep on trucking.

Blue bottle, zoom from a moving boat ain’t the the greatest picture

Drug the lines in the water after another report of a Mahi Mahi being landed. Ours must not be tasty, we did manage to get a big eye tuna close to the boat, had taken the lure on the hand line, but spit the hook with one last effort within 2 meters from the boat. 🙁

As the wind changed so did the temperature, we must be getting close. Was t-shirt and shorts all day till the sun about 4pm, Thats when the chill started.

Sunset, starboard must be going south.

150 more miles, arriving in the dark or early morning. Last remaining beers added to fridge for reward at destination.

Bacon 🥓 , sausage and bacon for breakfast, kitchen sink pasta with every fresh vegetable we have onboard and very last jalapeño sausage too.

Here we go again. Day 4

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Another great day of sailing on this big blue lagoon. Nothing much happened, Very un-eventful. A little struggle during the previous night with the port chart plotter, I pressed ‘display off’ and it would kindly remind me to to press a button to enable the display in bright white letters. Its pitch black out, I wanted to turn off the display to preserve night vision, but every 2 minutes, a bright message would say press here to turn on the screen.. Who designs this stuff? So next I tried, stand by mode, at least that standby mode lasted around 5 minutes before coming back on? B&G can do better, The starboard one had a different issue months ago, but worked through that one with support, now need to remember or contact support again to figure out the magical reset sequence.. The new NEON based chart potters do not compare with the previous versions. Enough there back to sailing.

Tried our hand and trolling today, after news that friends just landed a Mahi, the elusive fish that mostly escapes me. I even had fresh new lures the guy at the shop said were good for Mahi Mahi.. No such lock so it was a trolling day, not a fishing day. To be fair, it’s going to have to be a fast Mahi to see and catch the lures at 8+ knots, like today.. Should have put the larger lures in, but didn’t want to catch a tuna that dives deep then clean it. So just sailed along peacefully.

With no excitement from the trolling lines, We resorted to working, or more correctly volunteering Christine’s copious time. She signed us up to study the world one droplet of sea water at a time. We toss a torpedo looking weapon off the back of the boat and tow it for a bit, hope that a shark doesn’t mistake it for lunch, then pul it in to see what lurks in the waters around us. I have asked If I can paint the torpedo to look like a giant lure to attract and serve as a flasher / teaser and get reminded this torpedo is for science, my toys are just toys. I do as I’m told, occasionally. Christine does all the work of collecting the samples and logging them to the Citizens of the Sea app, and when we arrive we will turn over the samples for the real scientists to make discoveries of what lies beneath or within our oceans. This is part of our daily routine on passage.

Picture of part of the process as we left New Caledonia

Damn the TORPeDNA! Launching the Citizens of the Sea collection unit.

And Yes, we do play Tom Petty on the stereo during this process.

All in all another good uneventful day. Few miles closer to the destination, 300 or so, looks like 2 more sleeps out here on the ocean. Tomorrow is shaping up to be an engine day, but before we get there a frontal band has to cross our path. Possibly rain and 30kts gale force winds.

Sausage / Egg / Bagel for breakfast and another crowd favorite Pulled Pork quesadillas for dinner.

Here we go again. Day 3

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Another night another motoring night. Winds fell off again, they must have had a party to attend else where, say 30 miles behind us our 2 boats we left Noumea with made up some ground on us over night. We can’t have that. Hopefully daybreak will be different.

Into the darkness with our spreadsheets we go

Switching into night mode, the newly drafted quaterback wasn’t sure what he was in for. I changed the screen brightness which for unknown reasons rebooted the screen, the autopilot got upset that his playbook was changed from white to red and stated He simply didn’t know what to do so sat down. A few wise words like, it will be okay, or red light is the new white, and even a you got this, and he jumped right back into actions .

Well makes you wonder where the fault is, something is still not quite right with the auto pilot. We keep our track shoes on so either one of us is ready to jump in at moments notice and take over, should the beeping of sound terror starts. No spring actions were needed this evening he played well all game.

Daybreak and, sails up and it was off to the races. Well really just happy to turn the engine off, and splash splash along. Making comfortable speed, under a gray day, no rain, but just really overcast. Then somewhere around 2pm, I finally realized the sails were not well trimmed. So a tweak here, a tweak there and 8kts was our standard. Great sailing, just needed some blue skies to go with it.

The wind steadily increasing decided to take some canvas down before going into the night, had checked the radar and Norfolk island and there was some rain going to be crossing our path. So prudent to take a reef.

All well on board
Crossed the 1/2 mark, 430 miles left
jambon wrap for lunch, and pulled pork quesadilla for dinner

ps. Feels like this should be day 4, it maybe or just looking track.