Day 9 – Trade Wind Sailing

We found the wind! Yesterday morning we put the spinnaker up soon after sunrise, in a light tailwind. It hadn’t been up more than 20 minutes before the wind also decided to join the party, rising quickly to the point where I made the decision to take the spinnaker down again. Taking that sail down in anything more than 15 knots can be “interesting” – as Rose knows from one exciting take-down off the Baja coast where we nearly lost it in the sea. It’s going to be a useful sail over the next few months, and I’m not prepared to risk losing it this early on. As we pulled it down I noticed a tear in the clew, so I fixed that up with some repair tape.

But now, we’ve no need for a light wind sail. For the last day and a half we’ve been thundering along in solid NE trades. Whoopee! Sometimes with a reef in the main and genoa, and sometimes under full sail, but never under five knots speed and often nudging sevens. It’s so tempting to charge along under maximum throttle – the conditions are perfect with a slight swell, sunny skies and great wind behind us, but we’re only just coming up to the 700 mile mark, and with 2100 to go before we next see land I really don’t want to break anything.

It was a grey start to the day, but still pretty dramatic, with clouds of all shapes, sizes and densities at every altitude, all moving in different directions. Lying on my back in the cockpit, absorbed in the performance going on above my head, I heard the unmistakable phfff-wt of dolphin just nearby! They stayed playing around the boat as the day warmed up and I supped on my coffee. Since I left the boat in January, the powdered caramel creamer has gone solid, so yesterday I took the knife to it and it’s now nicely cubed 🙂

I’ve just sent the daily position report, and am doing some writing… and hear a thrumming engine sound. Hundreds of miles from anywhere! Eva calls us up on deck to see a tiny red helicopter approaching from the south, low over the sea. It’s got floats to land on water, and clearly isn’t a long distance machine – I wonder what it’s doing out here?! It circles us a couple of times, the pilot waves, and then he’s off on his way to the north. How bizarre. Timewarp reported seeing what looked like an oil rig and helicopter last night, it must be the same one.

133 miles covered in the last 24 hours! That’s a decent distance, and our record so far, but we’ve still got a few more of them to do before our average is anywhere 100. A couple of days ago we set clocks back an hour, but today as I plot various things on the chart, I realise that we’re actually in the -8 timezone, and should have gone back another hour. The last change brought sunset forwards from 7.30 to 6.30 … I don’t like the idea of the day finishing at 5.30, so we’ll leave it a couple more days until we’re past the mid point of the timezone before changing clocks again.

1730. Woke up much refreshed after a couple of hours’ sleep, even though down below in the cabin it’s hot and humid. With the wind directly behind us, there’s no airflow through the boat even with all the hatches open. All the exposed teak in the interior has gone dark- the little scratches and dents that have removed a bit of protective varnish. Just like when we were in Matanchen bay before Christmas – a clear sign that the humidity is really high.

2100. Now sitting up on deck on my own at the start of the first watch, enjoying the amazingness of being here, finishing off a can of Mexico’s finest Pacifico cerveza, belly full of the tastiest carbonara to be found for miles around. Rafiki is charging along through the night with a full mainsail and partly rolled up jib, the sea fizzing and gurgling around us. Magic.