Mexico to Marquesas, Day 4

A huge storm is sitting on the distant horizon, it’s menacing dark cloud rising across the sky, marking out the boundary between two different air masses. It’s 7am, near the end of my second night watch, and the sun is supposed to be rising any minute. It’s going to be a while yet before it appears behind the storm clouds though. We’re powering along at nearly 7 knots, and have done loads of miles overnight. Put in a reef at 0130. The wind is coming from the west, I think being sucked into the storm, which is well behind us over the mainland nearly 300 miles away. We’re still hard on the wind, heading further south than planned but with great speed. Yesterday we had an email from a boat still waiting to depart from Mexico, saying that they were due a storm on Sunday night – I think they might be getting it early. We left at just the right time!

Day 3 passed easily, with clear skies and sunshine, and a little motoring in the morning when the wind dropped off completely. At about lunch time, the breeze kicked in and we were off. And before I knew it, it was the end of the day. Evenings seem to come around without me having done much – even the two tasks I set myself yesterday were only half completed. I lashed the diesel tanks properly, got half way through re-lashing the kayaks, discovered the line was too long, and then never got round to finding shorter line. So that’s today’s grand task. I’m still spending lots of time thinking, preparing mentally for all kinds of situations that might crop up. Even though conditions are benign at the moment, it’s not going to be like this all the way and we mustn’t get too casual.

At about 5am the bilge pump alarm sounded. It’s pretty loud and piercing, rudely disturbing me from listening to a splendidly English BBC podcast on the History of Britain at Sea (David you’d like it, remind me to give you a copy). Normally the alarm turns off after a few seconds, having pumped out the small amount of water that accumulates after a few days from the prop shaft seal. Not this time. It kept going, so I jumped into action. David and Eva stumbled out of their cabin, even more rudely disturbed from their deep sleep. I pulled up the floor board above the bilge and it looked dry – all OK, we don’t have a leak. That’s good. The siren still sounding, I pulled up a second floor board above the float switch to see that, due to our angle of heel, it had slipped sideways and jammed itself on. Knocking it back into place the alarm went quiet, and all was back to normal. I think David and Eva were a bit shocked to be woken by a shrill alarm! Glad I added it though – otherwise the pump would have been running dry for hours, not doing it any good at all.

From the latest YOTREPs summary, it looks like there are about 5 or 6 boats out here at the moment, with Timewarp being within 50 miles of us yesterday. Received them loud and clear on the evening SSB net, but got no reply when I tried them later on the VHF radio. Kept a lookout for a masthead light in the night, but nothing seen.

Last night as the sun was setting we had a number of birds flying round the mast – some kind of booby, I’m not sure what type. They circled cautiously, but didn’t look like they were interested in landing. And then to finish off the evening we had a visit from dolphin. Around 30 of them skipping over the sea to come and check us out. A couple of acrobats in the distance we jumping high out of the water, spinning and flipping with amazing force. We’ve seen a couple of turtles in the last few days, making their ponderous way along the surface. It’s amazing to think they spend all their time out here, and incredible how they find their way back to land to lay eggs. We saw a whale spray, but other than a couple of nearby whale sightings back in Banderas Bay, that’s been it for wildlife. Oh, and a load of what might be shark eggs, the first day offshore when the sea was calm and glassy. Gelatinous blobs with a yolk-like centre, floating along like huge frog spawn.

Here comes the sun, time to put the coffee on.