How do you top whales? well I can’t think of anything bigger.

However today we are still rolling along, slow and steady wins the race. Or at least that was the story from the turtle and rabbit story. We have lots of sail choices onboard, and so far on this journey we have used all but one. Our biggest spinnaker is for really light air and since it is so big it needs to have relatively calm seas which we do not have currently and I doubt we will in the next couple of days.

Today we put up the middle sized spinnaker, and I might have been too eager as there will still squall clouds around. We flew it for little over an hour before one of those said squalls got too close and brought enough more wind, that i decided to take it down. Oh well, best effort for day break.

Back to jib only and it’s making decent boat speed, but there has to be more.. so lets try wing on wing. Get it all set up and its just slightly better boat speed. That ran for several hours, then the winds appeared to be slowing down .. so intently watch the gauges for an hour and looking at history on the instruments. .. Oh Okay put the big boy pants on and put the spinnaker up again.

Yeah, its flying and nice speed .. 20% faster then the wing on wing setup for roughly same condition.. of course by now the day is about to become night. And at dark you cannot see the impending dark doom clouds well enough to know which ones have ‘an extra’ little wind hiding behind them so the spinnaker comes down for the night.. daybreak it’ll go back up.. well if the conditions are good enough.

It’s exercise, its math, its fun? Masochistic? Whatever it is, it keeps the boat rolling and passes the time since we can’t just pull into a KOA, La Quinta or even Best Western for the night when we get tired. I guess we could put the anchor out, except I don’t think that it would reach the bottom or anywhere close since its around 5000 meters deep here.

Another great day, miles keep ticking off and the sun was nice no rain.

660 miles to Fiji.

Trinidad Chicken Roti for dinner on the veranda watching the sunset. Of course while going 6 knots up and down over the large swell, another good day on the water.

Picture of medium size spinnaker (150 m2 – square meters – thats almost 1400 sq feet)

Ps. A few hours later, a crystal clear sky with mostly full moon and not a squall once – could have left the spinnaker up … Doh!

[tag Live,Passage,underway]