Mexico to Marquesas, Day 7

3am, March 18th. I’m on the 0000-0400 watch tonight, and it’s dark. Really dark. There’s full cloud cover, and no moon. Not a speck of light. A stark contrast from last night- the sky was clear and rammed full to bursting with stars. The moon rises late, and small, which means until moonrise the stars are the only view. Last night it was so calm that I could see a reflection of the sky in the water. So still, so quiet.

“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion,
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean”
– The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (I don’t have the whole poem, can someone send it to me?)

Possibly the most magical deep ocean moment of the passage so far, it felt pretty special, and for once I wasn’t wanting to drowse off. With both sails down and not enough swell to rock the boat, even the clanky galley cupboard was having a night of rest. Shining a bright torch into the water I saw hundreds of clumps of eggs- the same ones we’ve been seeing for a few days. Leaving the light on for a while, more creatures arrived. One crazy looking beast I’d never seen before was something part lizard, part eel and part fish, with a huge paddle of a tail. The trailing edge of the tail was reflecting the torch light in all kinds of crazy colours.

We’ve had some wind today, not a lot, but enough to give us a run of 74 miles noon to noon. I did the route planning with 100 mile days as the average, so we’re behind on miles, but as we left Mexico a week earlier than expected, we’re doing OK. I wonder if the other boats waiting for a weather window are actually going to get one … or whether they’ll just get tired of waiting and head out anyway, into the same light winds. Just after noon, we set ships clocks back an hour as we’ve crossed into a new time zone. None of the marine charts I have show time zones, strangely, so I had to dig out Rose’s tiny school atlas and guesstimate the longitude where we change from -6 hours to -7 hours.

We’ve had the spinnaker up most of today, with the mainsail taking a break, wrapped tidily on the boom. Just before dusk we took it down, as it’s probably not the best thing to be flying on a dark night with a crew that’s not used it for more than a few hours. So we’re being pushed gently along under a poled out genoa, not doing more than 3 knots, but at least getting somewhere! There’s a slight rolling motion, so the usual light-wind squeaks and creaks are doing their thing, but nothing uncomfortable. Received an email from Timewarp- the boat nearby. I’m pretty sure I saw their masthead light while I was on watch last night, but it disappeared after a few minutes, and I didn’t want to try them on the radio as it was so peaceful. They’ve been having conditions similar to us, also just drifting with the current, which for some reason makes me feel better. Someone else making the same decision in the same conditions always helps.

Making the most of the gentle motion of the boat I managed to get some exercise done today- some push ups, sit ups and stretching on the foredeck in the hot late afternoon sun. I’m looking forward to going for a walk or run. I’m going to be so unfit for biking when I eventually get back on two wheels! Then cooled off with a few buckets of saltwater over the head. The instruments say that the water is 35.5 degrees here… not sure it’s that warm but it’s definitely not cold.

This evening as the sun was setting, as we were tucking into our fajita dinner, there was a squawk, a flapping of wings and a bird appeared on the solar panels just above our heads. He wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, and sat there tamely with a curious look on his face as I poked around with a camera. We (I) soon nicknamed him Bob. Bob the Bird. Eva thought it was a girl-bird, but really, I couldn’t tell. He let me tickle his feet, but when I poked him with a fork he squawked again and flew off. But after a circuit of the boat he was back. His buddies saw there was some action to be had, and we soon had four or five trying to find a place to perch, in the rigging, on the solar panels, or at the top of the mast. Not wanting to lose the masthead wind instruments to the webbed claws of a seabird, I took my rum’n’coke up on deck and spent the last few minutes before sunset slapping the mast when one looked like it was approaching too closely. Then as it got dark, we turned the masthead light on, which put everybody off landing.

Cleaned the fridge, checked our fresh food inventory, started a new book… all is well on board Rafiki as we come up to nearly a week at sea. Thanks for all your emails, and comments on the blog. We use an Iridium satellite phone to send and receive emails, and while it’s tempting to keep checking, I’ve restricted use to once a day to send our noon position report, and perhaps once in the evening to get a GRIB file (weather report). Over the past couple of days I’ve figured out the best times and frequencies to get the best weather from the SSB (short wave) radio, so the GRIBs have been supplemented by surface analysis charts and other useful stuff. Looks like light wind to the S and SW of us for the next few days, so I’m going to keep heading west to see if we can find stronger winds out that-a-way.