New leg on this trip 06.16S 119.49W
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Thu 30 May 2013 22:11
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What do you do at sea when you cannot seek shelter
if bad weather hits you?
You either live with it or you run. Now we are
running. Instead of aiming for Marquesas from 7S where we have been tha last
days, we are now aiming North West to 5S. We should be there in about 36 hours
if the wind does not give up.
We went down to 7S to get wind since the trade ´has
collapsed, due to a storm in the 40S (Oh yeah, heard abouth the screaming 40s
and the roaring 50s?). That storm is moving Northeast towards South America. We
will most probably not be hit by it but since the Pacific is a vast area of
plain water without any interference things move a long way. The waves around
the storm are about 14 meter high and they will travel away from the storm to
our lattitudes. As they approach below 5S they will have decreased to about 5
meter. That is still very uncomfortable.According to our weather program and
Passageweather the waves will come down to 3 meters above 5S.
So our plan is to go up there, hopefully the
forecast is right and we can sail along westward as the trade picks up. Then we
will aim for 10S where Marquesas is. Well weather is ... weather, so we will
follow the patterns very close. This is going to cost us about 1 day extra
sailing or maybe more, but it is worth it. So far we have chased the wind quite
well, lot's of other boats have been motoring for 80 hours and more.
Yesterday Ellinor made fish balls from our never
ending Mahe Mahe, and yes! Andreas liked them!
The kids have been fighting quite a lot, we think
it is a problem now when Erika is growing up and se wants to read and
write.
We gave her an assignment, since she is complaining
on how we handle Andreas when he does not behave, write an essay on the subject:
This is how I would rase my brother.
Food is a big subject now, not only do we have fish
in the fridge but a lot of vegetables are geting to a point where we HAVE to eat
them.
Especially squash and tomatoes etc.
The heat and the humidity in the boat is not the
best for them (keep them cool, dark and dry is the advice)
We have now sailed 1891nM and have not seen one
boat!
We get emails from the boats that started one week
ahead of us, they are making landfall, and are they Happy?
They "scream" out how beautiful it is, how green
etc. The Marquesas are very young islands, meaning they are still mountains of
lava with intense vegetation. As the islands "sink" they end up being a pile of
sand (with a coconut tree) with a corall reeef around them.
Enjoy summer in Sweden and elsewhere in
Europe!
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