The Way of the Tortoise

Distance: 78/1634 Day: 14

The ITCZ is a wonky place. So far, we have been very fortunate. We've alternated between light winds, sporadic showers, and dead calm. No nasty convection and only two lightening sightings, both at a distance. Yesterday evening when the wind died, we went swimming (not all at once of course) and then dropped the sails. We put on every light in the house and then just sat there for five hours. Not moving, no crashing thudding swishing or banging, no wind generator whine, just gentle bobbing. Four of us slept deeply, soundly, in complete recovery mode. Jaime was absolutely spooked and took watch checking the horizon every 10 minutes convinced that we were going to get run down. All good.

When the wind decided to reappear, it came light from the NE so we put up the spinnaker and have been making reasonable time all day. It's not zoom crash boom, but I can live with this. As DrC and I say to one another, better to take an extra few days and not add the stress to ourselves and the rig. A gentle 4 to 5 knots downwind in light swell is ever so much better for everyone than zooming along at 8 knots.

A shout out to Maya (age 6) of Pennsylvania who wants to know: "How big is your boat?" Maya, our boat is 38 feet long and 21 feet wide. Her mast is 56 feet tall. She is a catamaran which means she has two hulls with a bridge deck in between. She has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a kitchen which we call the galley, and two heads (which are the potties). Our boat could basically fit in your living room and kitchen.

PPJ Note #7: YEAST. Our New Zealand yeast is not particularly happy with the heat and humidity we are currently experiencing. I strongly recommend that you buy fresh yeast in a climate similar to the conditions you anticipate. We're reviving it with brewer's yeast nutrient... which is another really useful item to pack.

PPJ Note #8: DEHYDRATED FISH. Don't let your family do this. They will then insist on keeping it, eating it, and breathing the stench all over you. It's foul. This is binary, like boarders vs. skiiers, paper vs. plastic. Either you like fish jerky or you want to kill the people who do.

~ Toast
N0 45.6 W127 26.7 205T 5kts
April 30 2000 UTC

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Found the ITCZ

Distance: 152/1452 Day 13

It was inevitable, of course. If you head south long enough, eventually you run into the Intertropical Convergence Zone ... I think that's what it is. We just call it the ITCZ. It's a great lesson in thermodynamics and global weather patterns to understand the ITCZ. The short answer is that it's a section of the Puddle Jump where you can just about count on the weather, wind, and seas to not make the slightest sense. Normal trade winds and swells all but disappear leaving a boat with anything ranging from mirror calm to 35 knot squalls... within an hour.

The strategy for most PPJers is to hit the ITCZ, point the boat due south, and motor across as fast as possible. When the curtain went down on the north trades at N05 20 today, we were ready to do just that. The curtain itself consisted of about 5 miles of strong rain during which the girls and I cavorted nude on the foredeck and got ourselves clean from head to toe. As if on cue, just as we finished rinsing out the last of the cream rinse, the winds died. Utterly. We've been in 15 to 25 for nearly a week so it was at first a welcome relief. It took DrC and I an hour before the light bulb went off, "Oh! ITCZ!" and we turned on the motor for the drive south.

Unfortunately -- or maybe fortunately... hard to say -- the wind came back. Wouldn't you know it, we've got 10 knots from directly south. It's lumpy and super unpleasant. Moreover, the wind/waves are driving us further west than we really want to be. However, there is little choice. We can sail southwest or we can motor dead into the wind. Either way, we barely make 3 knots. So our fastest day (yesterday) is no doubt going to be followed today by our slowest day.

In other news, our yeast is dead. Seriously having trouble figuring out how this happened. Somewhere in the provisioning, I have another few sealed packets of yeast. No idea where to find them. In the meantime, I'm going to try tomorrow to get an active culture out of the remains of the old bottle using some of DrC's yeast nutrient. Why you might ask does the good doctor travel with yeast nutrient? It's for the wine. Yes, he is successfully making wine and yogurt, and I can't even make a decent batch of garlic rolls. Something is wrong with this picture.

PPJ Note #6: HUMIDITY. It seems obvious, but the tropics are humid. Be prepared. We are so sticky. Check the ventilation on your boat for the passage. With the portholes closed and the hatches often closed due to splash or rain, it becomes unbearably stuffy below. If you have the ability on your boat to do so, install dorades and other methods to ventilate the boat.

~ Toast
N04 27.5 W126 47.3
April 29, 1230 UTC

And Another Thing

Distance: 130/1300 Day 12

Tonight I wish to complain about the cat. The cat was not my idea, I fought her addition to the boat for years, and I capitulated only after setting many conditions and stipulations including that she must be a she named Dulcinea. We have spent oodles of money on this rotten blighter as well as imposing mercilessly and unfairly on the friendship of someone who is more important than any beast.

The beast has three problems.

1) Sand - Her litter box sand is fine and clean, straight from the beaches of La Paz. With these following winds, we get a lovely breeze straight into the cockpit and bam on to the litter box shooting fine grit sand in every direction. The cockpit looks and feels like floor of a beach front park restroom.

2) Hair - Coming as she did from Seattle, Dulcinea brought with her a coat worthy of a hibernating grizzly bear. This is, of course, hopelessly overdressed for the tropics. So our fashionista cat is taking her coat off rapidly. She moves in a nimbus of grey and black fur which, once aborn, sticks to every damp, salty surface. The interior of the boat now resembles a 70's love parlor complete with fur wall paper.

3) Hunting - To digress a bit, it is worth adding two new air born nuisances to my list of mid-oceanic nautical visitors: flying fish and flying octopi. The former are visible during the day as flitting schools of darting silver hummingbirds that scatter before the bows of the boat. The later squirt their guts to jet propel themselves out of the mouths of large fish and into the air. Apparently interpreting the hulls of Don Quixote as comparable to a beluga whale, they jet out of the water all around us.

During the day, fish and octopi manage to avoid us, scattering in all directions. However, at night, they are terminally stupid or fatalistically suicidal and routinely land on the foredeck. On their arrival, Dulci immediately goes into frantic hunter mode. While Don Quixote rockets along in 12' swells surfing down the waves at something like 8 knots, our predator leaps on the foredeck and stalks her prey. Grabbing it, she hauls it back through the mast hatches and deposits it in the middle of the salon. There she carefully removes its motility appendages -- in the case of the fish the fins are carefully excised, with the octopi she simply eats the legs. Then she merrows her triumph, and leaves the eviscerated remains for DrC to gather as fish bait in the morning. By the time my shift is over at 5am, the salon is a fish abattoir as I gingerly make my way to the galley counters to prepare breakfast. The cat, exhausted and completely replete on the salon jelly bean seat, doesn't even twitch a whisker when I scream in horror as I squish black ink between my toes.

I am ready to pitch the cat overboard.

PPJ Note #5: SOFT SCRUB. Bring lots. There is nothing quite so magical in its ability to remove coffee, wine, tea, and squid ink from white fiberglass.

~ Toast
April 28, 1230 UTC
N06 00.1 W125 55.0 210T 7.8kts

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Lost Our Squall Virginity

Day: 10 Distance: 138/1047

To celebrate our first official lightening laced squall, I panicked and stuck everything we own in the oven. All our electronics now smell vaguely like burnt lasagna. I swear this is a normal reaction. Anyone else would have done the same.

The wind is still knocking us along at 20 knots from the northeast. I know that our good friend Jamie would tell us this is perfect. We are going at a lickity split rate while the seas and wind never get so large as to make the entire expedition dodgy. However, it does have a tendency to make the seas a bit rolly and we're all going back to being super tired.

Part of the exhaustion is, of course, due to covering Jaime's watches in addition to our own. However, she is one the mend. She took her own watch tonight, and she appears to be keeping fluids down even though we are less than completely successful with the solids. It's good to have her back on the crew.

PPJ Note #3: CUSHIONS. I know most cruisers, particularly monohull cruisers, are familiar with lee cloths -- those nice little cloth curtains that keep you from rolling out of a bunk when a monohull is heeled over. I'd like to also recommend that all folks making a long passage brings lots and lots of cushions. In fact, a metric buttload of cushions would not go amiss. Since the boat never stops rocking and bouncing, going to bed is a lot like trying to fall asleep while balanced on a pilates ball. What I've been able to do is create a molded mound of cushions which encapsulates me in a fashion very similar to the way foam packaging is molded around high end electronics for shipping. As a result, I bounce back and forth in my packaging without actually rolling or jostling too much. It's a PITA rolling over as it requires a complete reorganization of the cushions, but the hassle is well worth the increase in comfort.

Loose Pointer is about 80 miles west and slightly south of us now. They have decided that when they hit N8, they are going to turn right until they see a good opportunity to cross the ITCZ. This sounds like a lovely idea until I look at the 14' rollers coming in from the north right now. Nothing on earth short of an enormous ball of lightening straight in front of me is going to get me to turn beam on to 14' seas. There has got to be a better way.

~ Toast
April 26, 12:30 UTC
N09 08.3 W122 45.4