August 9th, 2021
Main sail back in business!
Greetings Family and Friends!
Day 19! Traveled over 2500 miles! 600 miles more to go! Position, 34N 129W. As we travel further east, the water temperature is dropping and the weather is getting colder! Water temp 80 when we left Hawaii, and currently it's 66. Pants, a light sweater, and/or a blanket pretty much anytime we are outside. At night the fleece pants come out! Good news, the sunshine is suppose to be coming out tomorrow and stay with us the rest of the week.
Good news, the mainsail is back up! We made a belt out of webbing to attach Greg to the mast so he could reach the head of the mainsail, 10' off the deck. Then he laced 1/8" dyneema through the top 2 grommets where the slugs are attached to the main, around the webbing, and back through 3 times. Made a loop at the top and attached it to our spare main halyard. Thankful for those extra halyards!! No running up to the top of the mast at sea needed. Main is up, double reefed, and holding. Dyneema, pretty amazing stuff, as well as Greg's creativity!
Yesterday the seas picked up, rain came back, and wind increased steadily. Blowing 25+ knots by last night. It's now settled down to under 20. SOG 7 knots. We should be breaking our record today for miles traveled in a 24 hour period. Roller coaster ride, as we are having to point at AWA of 65. Reading, watching for ships, trimming, and holding onto the boat is about all we are doing right now. But feels great moving along at 7+ knots. Wind will be dying down and changing directions in a few days, and we'll be putting the chute back up and hopefully be coasting into Catalina Bay Saturday morning before the wind completely dies!
Yesterday afternoon Greg and I were playing our normal afternoon game of backgammon and eating popcorn, when suddenly Nemo (that's our auto pilot) fell way off and didn't correct. We caught it, and thought that was odd, maybe a big wave just pushed us over pretty good, which happens. Well, about two minutes later it happened again, except Nemo decided to continue to turn downwind. We were right there, but boat jibed before we could correct it. That was fun, not. It was a pretty low key jibe since we had the preventer on, but still quite annoying. Turns out the fluxgate compass for the auto pilot went all wacky and was all over the place, hence confusing poor Nemo. I took over steering, and half an hour later Greg had a new compass wired in place, and we were good to go. Yay! Nemo is now doing great and kicking butt.
Yesterday evening and this morning meals were simple and more low key with the boat rock in and rolling all over. But the previous few days we ate great! Baked some of our fresh caught tuna, and made tuna melts. Yumm. Had tuna fish and crackers for an afternoon snack one day. French toast with oranges, sausage, and syrup one morning. My favorite :) Made gooey brownies and cinnamon rolls. Also had a chicken dish, stir fry, made rice, baked potatoes, and few other things. We are definitely eating well on this trip. Right at the end of our fresh stuff, but still have good food to eat the remainder of the week. And Greg is still spoiling me and doing the majority of the cooking. Thanks again for reading about our adventures!
Hugs!
Toni and Greg