March 30th, 2010

THE SOUTH PACIFIC

 

What is your imagination of the South Pacific?  Maybe sun, blue water, dolphins, the odd bird and a good sea?  Well you are wrong!  We are in big, confused grey seas, very confused crew as the wind swung 180 degrees on a continuous basis for about an hour, Genoa furling line dropped off drum and wrapped around stem head fitting, so Jonathan was playing submariner on the foredeck whilst fixing it as we shipped very green waves, the odd very large wave crashing over the yacht and sheets of rain, it is warm though so that is something.

The 'Grab Bag' has caused some concern amongst the guys, as I have put in a jug with an enema tube......one way of keeping alive if drifting for days without water is to give salt water enemas, can't think what the state of our bums would be after that - must remember to put in the KY jelly.  Allan, in his wisdom, told me about this survivial tactic, having read 'Survive the Savage Sea'! Think he is regretting it!

Yesterday was a good day even though we still haven't caught any fish, just looking forward to a really nice Tuna or Dorado.

The sun did shine on and off between rain squalls, the sea was coming in on our port beam but was predictable. During the night before when Allan was on watch we came across some red flashing lights on poles similar to dan bouys, we found out that they were fishing long lines.  During my watch 6am -9am I saw a mast in the distance so called them up it was 'Dreamcatcher' a Swan 72 which had sailed past us the following afternoon, so I asked why are you not further away from us as I thought we wouldn't see them again; they sailed all night in little wind, we were under engine so that is why we caught up. They warned us about more long lines ahead; they are the last thing you want to get wrapped up in as they are thick strong wire miles long, with lines hanging down with hooks on.  We then came across an open fishing 'day' boat, we were then 180 miles from the Galapagos and 500 miles from Equador!  They came over to us asking us for water so we gave them a gallon. We decided there must be a mothership around somewhere.  They had quite a few sharks in the bottom of their boat.

We were all up on the fore deck at one point watching the largest dolphins we have ever seen, quite a large pod of them playing around the yacht they even put on a display for us jumping and twisting in the air.

My watch was after dinner (lamb steaks with roasted veg and tiny new potatoes) last night from 9p.m. - 12mn; we were tracking along doing about 7-8 knots with the big genoa out, then I noticed on the radar chart a huge patch of pink heading towards us (pink = squalls) so decided to call Jonathan up on deck as thought we may need to take a reef in the main before it hits.  Up on deck we rolled the genoa in then the squall came, hit only just over 20 knots then somebody switched off the fan and it died, squall past us and that was it, . Sent J back to bed, then the wind came up again but this time only up to 18 knots so had a great sail average 8.5 -9 knots.  Overnight the weather deteriorated with thunderstorms and now we have this grey, rough sea. 

Looking forward to getting down to the trade winds and heading due West hopefully it will be more comfortable.  We were told there would be hardly any wind from the Galapagos until we got much further south but that is not so, no doldrums this year must be 'El Nino' although it is not a strong one this time. One of 'the crew' ,no names mentioned, left the forward shower hatch open this morning so having shipped a few waves it turned into a swimming pool, same person did a jolly good job of cleaning it up and now they have a very clean heads!

All for now from a very bonded Aqualuni crew (Jonathan & Gabbie, Allan and Charles)