 |
| 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 |
No comments:
Post a Comment