Last Trans Pacific Log.

Dancing Dolphins, Singing Daughters, Marie Celeste, Ghostly Sailboats.

French lessons, Farred the fleet.

DANCING DOLPHINS
Pacific Ocean May 2011

Dancing Dolphins.

Farrfly was originally delivered to the Canaries on board a ship from Sweden at the end of December 2002.  Her first sail was from Grand Canary Island to Lanzarote. Soon after slipping harbor a school of dolphins surrounded the brand new boat. There must have been 200 of them. They spent hours jumping the bow wave and dancing around the hull. It looked like they were celebrating the launch of Farrfly. On this maiden voyage I had one crewman; a Dutch executive from the builders yard who was completely fascinated by the dolphins. After a mesmerizing hour he was rather over come... and what did this businessman do, miles from anywhere? He suddenly JUMPED into the Atlantic Ocean.... When I finally fished him out, he explained he had an overpowering urge to swim with the dolphins. He could neither explain himself let alone understand what came over him.

Since that first day, where ever Farrfly goes, so go dolphins. When others traveling in the same direction at the same time report not a single sighting, we are entertained by scores of dancing dolphins. Maybe its the ‘way of the hull’ through the water that attracts them. Or maybe the dolphin bush telegraph has announced that Farrfly is in town... As I write this in a bay on the north coast of Hiva Ho, the bay is patrolled every afternoon by dolphins...

As you can see from the above and below the Pacific was no exception:

Pacific white nose dolphins launch a surprise attack 

Power diving.. under Farrfly's bows..

Marie Celeste

A unique feature of modern sailing yachts is that, nobody can do it. Here is a perfectly good example of absolutely nobody doing it. Ten knots on the clock, spinnaker up, not a soul on deck. Now one hopes they are not all swimming with the dolphins but are down below. It is rather ghostly to see the wheel turn itself this, then that way, by the hand of the spirits of the deep.

 Naturally its neither magic nor the hand of Capt’ Jack Sparrow. Its all science. GPS guided steering systems. GPS has really made navigation so easy and is indispensable on a modern yacht. 

The spinnaker is a different matter. They have yet to invent the machine to control that beast when things get out of hand. A flame thrower comes to mind!

Look; even nobody can do it.

Or maybe she is turning into a ghost ship?

French lessons;

When one looks at Farrfly quite happily sailing her-self across the Pacific, I can hear Barbara (Cullen) ask the obvious question... “what the feck do they do all day?” Well the truth is there is quite a lot of spare time. Its a bit like been in the fire brigade.. nothing to do 99% of the time then all hell breaks loose. Well Gus loves fishing and has to fix things, which keeps him half occupied. Kaja is a perfectionist in the galley and has taken to baking fresh bread with nuts and olives. She also spends time writing a lot of something in a mysterious big book. Maybe she is a psychoanalyst? Tony is on his 5th book, about his 10th movie and is now studying maritime law. 

I started reading books and then thought, no I will learn how to speak French. Now this can’t have been the sudden decision that I just presented, one must allow for poetic license. Onboard I have a number of french  learning kits, from CD’s to books to a computer course. I spend hours every very day learning french.

 Well you may well ask; how is it going? I suppose the answer lies in the fact that I am telling you this in english. I now fully understand why I dropped out of french, my only language class, before the leaving cert. 

You would be amazed how long it takes me to realize, when looking up a french word, that I am actually in the english side of the dictionary!! One would expect that as a native english speaker that I might notice that I am searching among english words for a french one.. mais allors.. non. C’est incredible. As Samina many years ago, so famously exclaimed while trying to teach me just one german sentence.. “How in ze nam of Got, did somvone so stupid make so vuch voney”. I often wonder about that my self. It must be easy if you try, I suppose most people don’t try.

Picture this for a scene of tranquility:

Here we are 2800 miles under the keel, 180 to go. My watch. Pitch dark about 8 in the evening. Alone on deck. Kite up. Humming along.. 8-10 knots. No problems. Have my torch, my epirb, my can of coke and chockie bars in case I get sleepy. On course. Wind easing. This is my last night watch of the Pacific crossing. Tomorrow we will be in Fatu Hiva late in the afternoon.

The stars are intermingled among big fluffy white clouds lit up by the moon. It is almost a full moon.  Oh what peace and calm. The farrfly hissling along in silence. Its almost dream like... Alas it became a bit too dream like and your errant scribe dozed off as he has a want to do;

Well down from the clouds, in giant format, one singing daughter, shuffling sideways, Bono style, pointing her long thin giant sized index finger (at this unfortunate sleeper), belting out, Supertramp's ‘Your a dreamer’,  into a 1960’s microphone, backed by an all girl band; all descending from the clouds, all about 50 feet tall. The song and the pointing of many index fingers pounded on... “your a dreamer... nothing but a dreamer... can you put your hands in your head...oh no.”  ....and so on.. readers of a certain generation will know the song the rest of you can buy it on itunes for a dollar or two its a classic. The experience abruptly ended as Hazel et al, shimmied back into the clouds looking back singing.. “you have it coming to you... now there’s not a lot I can do..”  

Wild awake in sheer terror, leaping to my sleepy feet, immediately checked the clouds, singers gone thank God, then 360 degrees.... all clear, was it a warning.. quick the radar... nothing, nothing at all... 

So it is a matter of record that the Farrfly crossed the Pacific ocean in May of the year 2011 and saw not a single ship, yacht or plane. The only non aquatic sighting occurred on the last night, been a troupe of lofty singers and players of doubtful subtlety.    

For those unfamiliar with the young menace here is a snap of her, once again singing, on a firmer stage, with her previous band the Rockets and also in a duet with a well known Tenner. 

Hazel and her earth based band the Pocket Rockets

Some people will do anything for a tenner.

"What, he snoozes while on watch? We'll see about that"
(O'Driscoll giving the game away)

"DREAMER... YOU HAVE IT COMING TO YOU"
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
At 50 ft tall, mid Pacific, 200 ft above deck, I will never be able to snooze on watch again.

15 DAYS to ‘FARR’ THE FLEET

In the end we arrived upon the island of Fatu Hiva before sunset on the afternoon of Sunday 15th May. It took us 15 days and 4 hours to cross. Of our group of about 12 boats on the SSB nets, we were easily the fastest. We ourselves had anticipated about 19 to 21 days. Most of the other boats took about 20/22 days. Some have not arrived yet and today is Sunday 23ad. It was a wonderful two weeks, although the sky was often cloudy at night, thus hindering my star spotting. We had fair winds all the way. Did all our own routing, very successfully by taking a dive north which really paid off.

On reflection I have none of the sense of achievement I had after the Atlantic crossing. That was far more challenging. The boat was new. I did not know her. She seemed enormous at the time. There were 7 on board, all novices. Not one had ever crossed an ocean before. The sense of adventure was crackling in the air. 

And 7 years later, what of the Pacific crossing? This time only four aboard. But all seasoned ocean sailors. Captain Kenny.. a watch leader and ocean virgin on the Atlantic has since become a full time professional sailor. Captain Clement has looked after the boat for 6 years, is her delivery skipper and skippered her for all her commercial charters. He knows the mechanics of the machine a lot better than I. Then there is little Katja, the sailing nanny. A veteran of previous Pacific exploits, including a crossing last year, the ‘wrong way’.

 And as for my-self, after 7 years Farrfly feels like a comfortable shoe. The big blue spinnaker now seems rather small. Farrfly and I have stood together on the podium of International regattas, cruised the coasts of Long Island sound, tacked under the bridges of New York City, tied up along side the quay in Quebec, crisscrossed the Caribbean, and behind us now lies the greatest Ocean on this planet. I have to say it has been plain sailing all the way.  IRL 7777 is a lucky boat with a lucky number. If ever the dolphins disappear, it will be no time to snooze on watch. As if I ever could again! Thanks Hazel.

Seaya

DC

Smelly fellows, concrete mixers and heaven.

This was the last dorado Gus caught now almost a week ago, before
we put up the spinnakers.

FARRFLY, Friday  13th May 2011. S0845  W133.50

Extract from the weekly log;

Friday 13th, all lucky so far.

So did we finally get the kites up? yep, plural. We popped up the big blue on 10th to see how it would work out, 48 hours later it was still up there. But then the various yachties keeping an eye on the tracker gadget will have figured that out already. A couple of 230 mile days and what was starting to look like a bear away to Hawaii have all the hall marks of loonies let loose in the Pacific with a spinnaker. It was a glorious 2 days and nights. It is rather cool if a little unnerving alone on deck at night on a 58 foot FARR with the kite up.

The trick is to ensure things never start to get out of control. Once trouble starts its all over you will not stop the broach single handed.  Its simple enough... must be if Tony can do it! You just have to keep the boat ‘under’ the kite.. literally chase it by steering. You don't have the hands or eyes to trim or ease any sails, so the only option left is to steer. Big gust... smell it coming, and drive down before its too late, work back up, drive down again. No snoozing on those watches. Often the wind was light and steady enough for the boat to drive itself. I have a great video of FARRFLY skimming along at 10 knots, spinnaker up, not a soul on deck. Looks very, very strange, rather Marie Celeste. But she is a great boat and despite her size is very manageable. 

Anyhow after 2 days of fun we realized that we were headed for hawaii and to bring matters under control, took down big blue and put up hot red instead. Its a gennaker and sure enough we were soon blasting towards Marquesas at 11 knots for most of the day and  that night but by the morning we saw we had been headed during the night, Hawaii again, so down it came and back to boring white sails. We got hot red up again today friday for a few hours but took it down before dark as no doubt during the night we would have driven off course with it up.

It would appear to the casual observer that Captain Kenny
and his crew have everything under control?

So where are we.. 300 miles from Marquesas. We will be there on Sunday so this is the last blog from the big crossing unless something goes horribly wrong over the next 48 hours.

I have to say that the crossing has been very uneventful. The weather has been near perfect. The 3 days with the kites up were as close to sailing heaven as one will ever get.

Bauble large stars at night, dancing clouds skimming past with ever changing faces.  Long rolling flat seas gushing us forward. In my cabin the hissing sound of the boat sliding effortlessly on top of the sea....(there is very little of farrfly under the sea). No bouncing around, no banging, no lean too, just the silent hiss of the water skimming by.

This was in stark contrast to days 8 to 10 as the seas became very confused and we were rockin’ and rollin’ all over the place. It would have been easier to sleep in a concrete mixer. 

But fortunately technology came to the rescue. Our satellite weather gadget showed  much more favorable wind conditions about 100 mile north and we went for it.. A great decision, which led to 5 days of sailing heaven.

Now we are lining up for the final run in. Its a bit bumpy tonight as we climb upwind ready to set the kite again in the morning. 

For the past two afternoons we have been visited by dolphins.. up to 50 each day. Mostly young ‘pups’ and at exactly the same time.. about 5.30pm.. it looks like they have just been let out of school and charge over to look at the boat and play in its wake.. again have a nice video and some good photos.

The quantity of visible sea life has quietened down. No more flying squid and very few flying fish on deck. We have not caught a fish for over 5 days.. usually can’t catch them with spinnakers up. However all the dolphins are a good sign that things maybe reasonably healthy down there.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

She laughed with counterfeit glee

at all his jokes

for many a joke had he.

Life on board is very harmonious. A new phenomenon that has replaced the flying fish is the flying coffee.

My watch is the the 6 to 10 watch both am and pm. Every morning 5 minutes after coming on deck I am hit with a freshly brewed cup of coffee that just flies into my hand. Katja is always up first. The coffee is quickly followed by a great breakfast.. its better than the Hilton! Just in case you think we are roughing it out here, this mornings breakfast consisted of fresh coffee, muesli garnished with apples, bananas, prunes and nuts, followed by pancakes with stewed apples and cinnamon. First lesson of Ocean sailing; bring a professional cook!

We do the night watches single handed. On the Atlantic there were 2 or even 3 on watch together. Being on your own is definitely  a bit boring. One misses the antics of the fun watch. It is also hard to stay awake. To some this will sound strange.. how could you possibly fall asleep in the middle of the ocean?, it would seem so dangerous.. truth be told there is nothing out here and we have more alarms than fort knox.

Well it is not strictly true to say there is nothing out here, there are at least 10 other yachts. It is just that we can see none, nor are they on the radar, they are all too far away. They are spread out across an area about 3 times the size of Ireland. We are in contact with them every morning. When we were in Galapagos my-self and another owner got the idea to keep in touch on the SSB (Single Side Band radio) At the beach BBQ we told some others and soon we had our own ‘net’. We called it the Isabella net, and we go on air every morning at 8.30 our time.. 14.30 UTC. All the boats call in and report their position, weather and if all is OK. Its really very social, but very hard to hear some boats.

Of the main group of 6 we left Isabella last. The first to leave was Pelagic followed by Nu Mornings... mentioned in a previous blog. Over the following 4 days all the others left then us. We left Bonair and Argentinia behind who left two days later together.. At this stage we have well and truly passed out everyone and they are all now hundreds of miles behind us with the exception of Nu Mornings who was 800 miles ahead when we started out. Yesterday they were  less than 600 miles ahead and were due to sight land fall.  They too had a fast run. There is no doubt that Farr boats are simply very fast.  We have exactly 303 miles left. I fear we will be  out of range in the morning and will not hear the net, we couldn’t hear it this morning. (update, correct we could not hear them).

Remedy (wendy) Changing spots (ross) C U L8er. (Claudia), Idle islands, Trifon (carl) Papillion, Kite, RIRI, Pelagic graham, Bonair Tim, Argentinia Marchello, Squander Gavin, 

are most of the boats in the group. There is also another net we found, the Southern Cross net, which seems to have about 6 boats in it, plus now most of our lot who joined it as soon as the word spread.. they joined our net too.. so its starting to be a bit duplicitous. 

So far only trifon has had any problems, broken roller furler, and his daughter burnt her hands on the spinnaker sheet. Some of the heavy catamarans ran out of wind south of us and had to motor for a while.

Yes it is true, the crew actually do something every once and a while.
Here Katja sews the spinnaker sock.

Smelly fellows;

And finally an interesting Ocean phenomenon that no doubt will interest my smelly nephews Jack and Tom; 

‘smell the whales’.

 If you are down wind of a whale when ‘she blows’ you can clearly smell her breath.. it is very strong and as you would imagine, smells like an Irish stony beach when the tide when is out, only a lot more fishy.  A bit like the boy’s socks! On the night of the 12th I got the strong wiff of a whale twice within 30 minutes. Got the high beam out but unfortunately saw nothing. Female mating whales are a problem for sail boats between 40 and 60 feet as the female can mistake the boat for a male and come up underneath the boat with devastating results. It is worse than going aground and has been the source of at least two good survival books, and probably many more untold fatalities. (We don’t have to worry about this as we have written in whistling 'whaleish' on the underside of the hull “hooo whooo eeeooo”... which we understand means ‘sorry darling I’m gay.’)

That all folks, next stop Marquesas.... dc.

Neighbours, Venus, and rabbits...

Son Down;
Thought it might be nice to kick off with a traditional sonset.

Our next door neighbor, flying coffee, concrete mixers and Rabbits;

South Pacific 10/5/2011.

One of the best bits of the dawn watch is that just now we see a small group of 3 bright stars followed by a lone star which rise just before the sun.. yes straight out of the east, on our stern. The group of 3 are Mercury, Neptune and Venus, the lone ranger just visible before the suns light, is Mars.  Its a pity not to be on land with my telescope. Its wonderful to see 4 of the major stars in our solar system all at the same time.

Venus, now there is an interesting place. In fact it is the most interesting planet in the whole universe.  What do we know about Venus? Well for a start it is the nearest planet to Earth and it is almost exactly the same size, although a venus year is about 8 months. It is slightly closer to the sun than earth but its proximity to earth in space terms would be as close as Kensington to Chelsea or Ballsbridge to Donnybrook (for the Dubs). So earth and Venus are so close as to more or less occupy the same area.

However venus is that bit closer to the sun and therefore it thawed out first. Venus used to be very similar to earth, and after its big thaw it had mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, and oceans. The climate warmed up to be more or less the same as earths today,  therefore was capable of supporting abundant life. That Venus had all this water is no coincidence. Earth got its water during the 2ad great bombardment, and given that Venus is next door one can safely say they got their fair share of the frozen ice meteorites. 

Now there is no reason to assume that the Venus God didn’t do a 7 day wonder there too and sprinkle the planet generously with lush vegetation and scores of different animals. Or if you prefer the evolution stuff and so as not to upset my aunt Lizzy, then the Venus God spent 7 days souping up the chemicals at the bottom of the ocean having cracked the planets surface a little to facilitate the escape of lots of venus gasses etc from the planets core. These chemicals went on to bind and ultimately formed the first living cels which went on to evolve into  bi-cels then tiny venus tadpoles and from that point there was no stopping venus evolution, as hundreds of thousands, no millions of species evolved. Just as the Venus God had planned. Life was easier in venus as the evolution gang and the god lot actually agreed on how it all came about.

Sorry, back to the facts of Venus. There is no reason to assume that life did not form on Venus. In fact there is plenty of antidotal evidence  to assume it did. How smart & intelligent were they? We don’t know, but they may have been as dumb as earthlings, if thats possible.  One thing for sure is that one of the the outer layers of the atmosphere is CARBON.

Now we all know the most likely source of carbon. Rotting plants. And what is the carbon on venus doing up in the sky and not under the ground or the ocean where nature put it?

Well for the true story on that you will have to read the piece below titled ‘Rabbits’. 

In the mean time some more boring facts.. not so boring if you are an earthling..the Russians a few years back.. in fact about 40 years ago during the early years of the space age, sent a spudzsky to Venus. They were so shocked at what they saw nobody has ever, ever sent a rocket there again... 

Quite extraordinary, 60 years of the space age and no more rockets to our nearest neighbor?. Heres why; Before the spudzsky broke down it sent back loads of information and a few holiday snaps. They did see mountains, valleys and an ocean floor.  Yes read that again carefully.. floor, an ocean floor, the ocean was .. well, missing. The seas had vanished. And where did they go and why..? 

Unfortunately something went very astray on the planet venus about a 5 cullion* years ago: All the carbon suddenly escaped into the atmosphere more or less at the same time, (say over 200 venus years, = 160 earth years). Because the carbon escaped too fast for it to be reabsorbed by the plants etc, it built up in the atmosphere, trapping in the heat from the sun. As the planet got warmer the carbon escape became faster and faster and faster.. exponential for all readers over 6. Eventually the atmosphere reached 100 degrees celsius in places, so there was no water there, obviously, as water evaporates at 100c. Then as the planet heated up the number of ‘deserts’ grew, also exponentially. Eventually the whole planet was 100c and rising. So now you know where the oceans of Venus are.

So back to life on FARRFLY....

Sorry you want me to be more specific on Venus.. ok.. eventually all the oceans evaporated into the atmosphere as the average atmospheric temperature climbed to over 100c. The ruskies sputnik found temperatures of between 250c and 400c.

So at those kind of air temperatures a lot more than the water has evaporated. The sky there is now an ugly soup of red hot chemicals and steam in which no living creature could survive. 

Oh least we forget, the conspiracy lot say that the ruskies found desolate abandoned modern cities all over the planet. But thats hard to believe. Intelligent beings would have found a way to stop the carbon escape and they would never have caused it them selves... but as I said at the beginning who said they .. or we... are intelligent...

So back to life on our oceans while we still have them... or

the venus Rabbits are far more interesting ... which will we deal with first... Rabbits..

The Rabbits of the planet Venus.

The russian sputnik might have found fossils by the million, of an animal not to be found on earth. The fossils were those of a large rabbit with a huge head and long pointed fingers on its front legs. Otherwise it was basically an earth bunny rabbit. 

The venus rabbits as the rukies might have called them, evolved to be very smart because of their big heads and very proficient with their ‘hands’. They soon became the dominant species, helped by the theory that they had few predators on venus.. ie no foxes and no humans. They were a peace loving species and there were never any wars on venus. The whole planet also had only one god, which they called the god of nature.

A number of things led to their down fall. The bunnies craved sex and adored baby bunnies beyond all logical reason. As a result they bred like .. rabbits! And it mattered not if the rabbits were rich or poor, in fact it seems that the worse their living conditions the more ‘baby bunnies’ they had. By the time the end came there were not tens of millions of them but BILLIONS of them running amok all over the planet venus. They occupied nearly every corner of the planet including the most remote islands... One has to ask why?

 Now the balance of venus nature would probably have stayed in equilibrium until they made a big discovery; cooked food tasted better than raw food. Now this seemingly innocent enough event led to their first demand for ‘fuel’ and their ultimate downfall.

The bunnies started cutting down trees to cook with. Next of course they discovered that cooking inside the burrow made it nice and dry and warm but too smokey, so they built little dry houses with chimneys. So they needed more fuel, and as luck would have it they found fossil fuel just at the right time. Oil and coal were abundant on venus having built up over tens of millions of years. Boy did those rabbits go mad for the oil. They started digging and pecking at the ground like demented chickens. And they found all the planets coal and oil so they had loads of fuel for their bunmobiles and homes, which by then were collected together in massive cities. Oh I nearly forgot to mention that somewhere along the way a really crazy but smart yellow bunny  called Mr Mad-za invented the bunmobile, a little buggy in which the whole family could ride into and out of the city and around in nice circles.

Now we already know what happened next, but how quickly it happened is interesting.

The rabbits got together every few years and elected leaders with nice smiling Bugs Bunny teeth. These bunnies looked good but  were usually exceptionally egoistical and rather dumb. Meanwhile the smart scientists rabbits with the biggest heads of all,  had been warning about carbon build up in the atmosphere, rabbits listened, and left it  to their leaders to worry about, which they didn’t, as they only worried about being re-elected.

Anyhow it seems that in the space of 100 years the venus rabbits had found and dug up 10 million years worth of fossil fuels and burnt the lot, sending billowing clouds of carbon into the venus sky.

  The scientists said stop and eventually they did.. but only when a terrible thing happened: 

The north and south poles of venus were frozen. In fact the top quarter and bottom quarter were still frozen solid. One day the venusians in the north complained that the permafrost was melting and they were up to hind hopping legs in mud. 

Worse still, huge bubbles of carbon each the size of a football stadium was leaking, of its own account into the air. The scientists rushed north but what could they do. Every day millions of stadium sized bubbles of carbon gas oozed into the sky from the melting permafrost.. and the air was getting warmer rapidly. So the rabbits  were all running about stamping on the permafrost trying to stop it.. cover it in concrete was one suggestion, until the scientists reminded them that one ton of concrete produces one ton of carbon... so they planted trees everywhere, which if given long enough might have helped but.. then trouble really started... 

Fisherabbits said they could see millions of new tiny bubbles in the sea  bubbling up from the bottom like champagne. The scientists rushed to find out what was happening. The sea bed was home to millions of years of dead seaweed, fossils and all sorts of carbon accumulations. The cold deep oceans acted like a big fridge and locked the carbon deep down for all eternity.... until the dumb rabbits came along and heated up the air which heated up the sea and now in the warm water the carbon was bubbling up to the surface. 

Meanwhile most of the bunnies partied on. They still craved sex and had as many little bunnies as possible, and  built more and more fuel guzzling cities. To ensure re-election the leaders ensured that fuel supplies would never be interrupted and that everyone had air conditioning to deal with the heat and a bunmobile.

Now some did worry about climate change and disliked the heat and worried about its effects on the climate and venus polar bears and so on, so they bought solar panels and windmills.. 

What they should have worried about and a lot sooner,  if they had thought about it at all maybe they would be still there.. was WATER. 

You might recall my mentioning the 2ad bombardment. Well that brought the water to venus.. an exact and very precise amount of water (H2O to be accurate). Planets do not ‘make’ water. There is an exact finite amount of water (H&O) on, for example earth. It was delivered here in one go millions of years ago. None has arrived since, none has left and we have made none. The existing supply simply goes around in circles. Now back on venus the air heated up and as we know warm air holds more water than cold air, so the fresh water on venus started to ‘disappear’ into the air. The resultant dryness on the ground was signaled by bush fires all over the planet and creeping desertification. 

Then the terrible thing happened.. 

The one thing that finally stopped the party, that brought the bunnies to their senses, the leaders all resigned, the scientists said we never thought of this, all of a sudden- practically over night - right across the whole planet of venus,.......... at the height of the party.....

IT STOPPED RAINING. 

A new phenomena was observed; rainfall had turned into ‘rainrise’.

Rivers and lakes started to steam at dawn and the vapors rose steadily into the sky all day.

With no water everything stopped growing, all plants died, there was no food, and within 6 months 90% of the population was dead. (The scene was ugly, the peace loving rabbits went at each other like savages for the last drops of water.) The runaway searing heat took care of the survivalists within a couple of years.

How long between the commencement of the large scale burning  by cities of fossil fuel and the day it stopped raining?  Who can be sure maybe 200 years.

And so, now you know, why venus is the most interesting planet in the universe to an earth-bunny. 

REMEMBER ITS NOT THEORY, IT HAPPENED, VENUS OUT NEAREST NEIGHBOR IS A GIANT OVEN, ENCASED IN CARBON GASSES.

Now what started me banging on about all that?.. why yes, I see venus every morning with my flying cup of coffee as I start the dawn watch. Its a sobering sight.

Now I have written this in a stye that most politicians would comprehend. So if you know one or know someone who knows one send it on... 

It won’t make any difference, the political system is part of the problem, not the solution. 

dc

Next blog.. life on the Starship FARRFLY... as long as I don’t get distracted again... more on coffee and concrete mixers.

Son set mom after sun set.
No doubt the Starship is missing its crew.

 

From Flying Squid to fast scanners,

I thought this one of our fore deck man currently missing in action
would be better than another 'sun down shot'.
Conrad aboard FARRFLY Galapagos 2011.

1000 MILE LINE

5 days out, 1150miles done 1900 to go.

We left Isabella, Galapagos on Saturday 30/4/2011 at 15.00.

We expected a couple of days motoring south to pick up the trade winds. We have been lucky and the wind has held up, ranging from 8 to 17 knots, with a generally favorable current. Therefore we are averaging 9 knots about 220 miles per day, 20% faster than our Atlantic crossing and we have not yet put up a spinnaker. Another explanation for our speed this time might lie with the fact that Fun Watch leader ‘Ocean Ryan’ has yet to rendezvous with his yacht.

And as for the Pacific Ocean? Well not too surprisingly the first thing you notice is nothing.

Correct absolutely nothing, there is nothing and nobody out here. We have not seen one boat or plane since the first day. As the song says ‘the ocean is a desert with its life under ground’. I am happy to report that the sea is teeming with life. Our first impression of the Pacific side, the doldrums, has being completely dispelled.

At night ‘flying squid’ leap onto the boat in suicidal abandon, closely followed by kamikaze  flying fish. Some of you will be familiar with flying fish from the W.I. but flying squid, I never did see before.

We have 3 fishing lines out during the day. So far we have caught two mid sized tuna, and 6 dorado (mahi-mahi). We released 3 of them back, there is no more room in the freezer. We also caught by mistake a huge Marlin that, in an understandable fit of rage, started leaping out of the water in a display of aquatic acrobatics that Circus d’Soleil would have been proud of. The beast took off with about 700 meters of our fishing line, so we had to down sails and high tail after him to get our line back. At times he seemed to be doing 20 knots. Someone should google ‘how fast can a seriously irritated giant Marlin swim’? Finally an hour later, having gone half way back to the Galapagos we regained most of our  line and set him free. Then we caught a Sailfish, its all action out here I tell you..a small one,  well by small it was about 6 feet long.. honestly... really it was.. well OK maybe 4 to 5 feet.. Any how due to pressure in the compacting, packaging and freezing department we had to let him go to.

I have never tasted fresh caught Sailfish, it is meant to be superb. It would have been a crime to kill him for a quick slice, they are magnificent animals. We have stopped fishing before we create any more carnage. When we are down to our last half dozen dorado we will set the lines again. 

OK so what else is going on? Its not actually Time Square out here. Consider my position;

I have  Grenadian yachtmaster whose preferred domain is the silence of the seas, 

an Irish yachtmaster who is keeping an active watch.... for the next pub, and 

a german sailing nanny missing ‘her’ baby.  

Needless to say Tony is very kindly trying his best to make up for her ‘longing’. He’s so sweet, but this one’s got him beat.. so far.

SPINNAKERS;

So with the wind now ‘abaft the beam’ why no spinnaker? Well it always takes a couple of days to get thru the sleep barrier. So by day 3 we might have put it up, but we had to slow down to make water, as someone had forgotten to make water while in Isabella. For the uninitiated the FARR will not make water on a port tack at over 8 knots, as a FARR it never goes under 8 knots, it is a port tack all the way across the pacific, ergo we have a problem. Now solved, full of water, then I got a tummy bug went down with ‘man bug’ for 24 hours, now feeling fine, so we may go supersonic tomorrow, watch the foot print tracker thing.. Truth is we are probably getting middle aged... a few years ago we would have flown the spinnaker out of Isabella harbor! Having said that the rig is 88feet high and there are only 3 of us and it is now blowing 20 knots and we are doing 9.5/10 knots anyway and we can’t catch fish at 15 knots and nobody has looked at the sails all day and Nick still has me doing 3 hours work a day and the water is wet and the red spinnaker will scare away the fish and babelessnanny might fall in and OK OK we are middle aged and a little afraid of the damn thing!!  Tomorrow.. maybe... But it is so relaxing the way we are.. The roll of the sea is really calming, nothing is falling about the place, the fishing is good, 9.5 knots is fast enough..

Ok so what else is happening... stargazing; a little completely useless hobby of mine, especially now that the space age is already over.. President Kennedy’s dream didn’t last long did it? Unceremoniously dumped in favor of plastic toys from China and Crusading Christian ‘religoilis’ wars. 

Anyway back to stargazing.. effectively there is nothing else to do at night when you are offshore in tropical climates. Now this differs somewhat from offshore sailing at night - off the Irish coast, where there is also only one thing to do; attempt to survive the ordeal alive... How and why did we do that for years??? Only the Crusaders God knows.

Here in the Southern Hemisphere... yes SOUTHERN we are 5.48 South... this is no time for pathetic self loathing jealously... chin up you too may, some day, hurtle along in the South Pacific... anyway where was I before my smug outburst... stargazing.. now those of you who cant tell the Moon from the Sun let alone Saturn from Venus skip this bit, or you will fall asleep and crash your chair...

The Southern Cross.. every self respecting yachtsman’s Holy Grail, is sitting right above my left shoulder as I type. From the Crux you can span out and one by one all the southern constellations appear out of the south east horizon. Right now the magnificent Scorpion has just finished rising, leaving her long stinging tail in the Milky Way. Below the S. Cross sits the Fly, to the south east the Altar and the Southern Triangle above them the Centaurus stands guard. Above me to the east stands the Maiden (Virgo) with Saturn at her heart, The Raven always pointing the way. And Antares..  I can see the red blue and gold flashing star, like a diamond ring on the scorpions tail. Meanwhile some old friends lie low in the Northern sky, as always the most obvious the big dipper or bear and Orion with his sword. It is so strange to see them skimming so low and close to the water.

Fakebook & messages.

I have to admit I am no facebooker. I see messages in my gmail account that there are loads of messages in my message box in facebook. (messages about messages!) I have been unable to open my messages page. if i open facebook i always ‘land’ on the inane page.. miles and miles of mary likes what johnny is doing, (and he’s not even doing it to her!)  johnny put the cat out, sue likes that too, sue took the kids to school, sue is ‘friends’ with johnny now... ‘friends? friends? ...god what tripe.. is this what people spend their day doing?  its easy to see those who have ‘f all’ to do all day by the amount of garbage they send to fakebooks ‘Inane Page’.

Anyhow sorry about that outburst, trouble is the inane page is a zillion megabytes long and 

we are paying about $11 per mb so I’m dreading the bill for loading that one and no sooner was it loaded when the satnav crashed out.. ‘oversized message’.

Anyhow as long as you were not slinging insults or failing miserably to hide your petty self loathing resentment thanks for the messages, I will get to open them when we hit terra firma. 

FARRFLY 6/5/11 friday.

Its already tomorrow afternoon. did we go supersonic..? did we get the big red kite up..? us macho boys??? well no and here is todays excuse.... its a goodie..... As I came off watch at 11pm our time last night the phone started ringing.. nick the son and hot heir on his way to the shower at 6am in London.. “Hi dad glad you are up,” me “what? you would have woken me if I was in bed”  him “yep, thats why I’m glad your up”  me “oh I think I ... ??”

Anyhow he is on the final closing day of a series of transactions and suddenly needs my signature after 9 months planning... hmmm.. kids.

“dad I’ll email you some documents, print them, read them, sign  them, scan them, email them back signed, and i want them all by 9am London time...” He thinks I am sitting in an office... I’m on a boat 1500 miles from an island that probably never heard of a scanner!! Anyway as it happens if stuck for cash we could open ‘The FARRFLY Serviced Office Centre’.

But try all that stuff over a satellite.. It was morning in London.. so I never got to go to bed, I was up all night our time! So no spinnaker today.. maybe tomorrow...

I’m on watch again, as it this time last night again,  and due to the lack of sleep I badly need a snooze, so good night all ...ps wake me if there is anything coming...

seaya 

dc

ps next episode.. life onboard...

And last but by no means least this blogs inclusion of our missing but 'spiritually
here' crew member, Dr Rutrecht aboard FARRFLY the Hamptons Rhode
Island USA  2006

Back to the wild life

The wilder side of Dr. Rutrecht, going out to dinner France
2008.

Wild baby sea lions under the boat.

Pick up a PPPenguin

Where is the snow? Penguins; Island Isabella

Heres looking at you Kid.

Rare sea horse, Isabella.

White tipped sharks, gave me a bit of a fright. I think the
feeling was mutual.

The tunnels, Isabella. (bridges actually).

Hanna proving not all boobies have blue feet,  with Max
Farrfly, Isabella.