It's great to be back at sea on night shift the peace

Sowell Family's Travels on Gijima
Skipper: Tim Sowell Admiral Tracy Crew Sean & Alex
Mon 4 Oct 2010 07:44
Destination : Puerto De Sol Nicaragua
Location: 12.42:553N 87.51:531W
time to go: 6 hours
It's 1 am in the morning I have just taken over shift from Tracy, and the boys are asleep. She had 3 hours of a bit worry with "Sunsentaion" criss crossing our path and we running without RADAR (seams to be transmitting but not getting good signal back something to work on at the next port, the radar may need cleaning). This gives us two issues 1/ you cannot see other boats that well unless they have lights and many pangas do not, but again they often do not show up on radar.
2/ We cannot see squalls coming in, you can pick up the intense rain associated on radar and do something about it, since we have a had a couple of storms around us I have asked Sunsentaion to keep us informed and I have lowered the main.
We running at a slow speed of 4 knots so we do not arrive before day light, so we have the engine well back on the throttle, and the wind is only 4 to 5 knots basically on the nose. Swell and seas are a little bumpy but not bad, and Gijima is riding it well.
The challenge with buddy boating is you have another boat around that is good for comfort and support but it also means that you have to avoid each other,it made Tracy a little nervous of hitting them and have set a coarse 1 mile to their starboard and contacted them about there heading and speed so we can set up in parallel, like in most things in life communication always helps in diffusing a situation.
We have just crossed the Gulf of Fonseca a hug bay with volcanoes etc, it is clearly seen on the world maps, and it has 3 countries bordering it so we are now on the Nicaraguain side. We have 5 hours to light and then I can do a more direct coarse as we have some big reefs along this coast so we are set 6 to 7 miles off to avoid them and we get alongside the estuary entrance we will directly head in. They say this estuary can be entered at any time without a pilot, but it is a river, so we will enter in day light.
This afternoon was spent reading my book while on watch and family a sleep, except for the hourly interruption to bring in a fish, we caught 3 all went back as they are not good eating (but for Ed I have opened this seasons tally, see if you catch up). When the boys woke we took them to the bow, it is a amazing to see how much Alex has gown and developed since we were last at sea. He is walking and handling the moving deck so much better, he wants to see everything, (he saw Sunsentaion with a sail up, and asked if we had one not realizing we had a main sail up, so I took him aft and he looked up and "WOW" big sail, we had to go back and see the sail 3 more times during the next 2 hours). On the bow Alex and Sean were looking over the side and had 3 dolphins starting playing 2 feet away from them surfing off the bow wave, this is a great sight for anyone and thrill no matter how many times you have seen it, and the boys talked about it for the next 4 hours.
The water has been quite dirty crossing the Gulf of Fonseca no doubt due to rain water washing things out to see but we see logs, coconuts and even shoes.
But as I write this the breeze is cool and refreshing but I am still in shorts and no shirt, the outside is dark as we have cloud cover with the only lights being that of Sunsentaion on my port side. The bow breaks through the water and the white bow waves rolls back away but lights up with the fluorescent life within it, just as I was standing a watching these fluorescent trails like torpedoes come in a long side and play it is a set of 4 dolphins joining us, this time of night is so peaceful, and a time to just sit an absorb. We have found a good improvement on the provisioning to be barbeque chickens we have bought 6 and frozen them but they are ideal for passages as you can thaw one out and just nibble on it cold or heat it up, very easy and the waste goes over the side.
Boy it is nice to be moving again, but I have something's to fix at the next port.
Stay tuned