Category: Voyages

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/13 18:00
LATITUDE: 10-19.61S
LONGITUDE: 134-27.25W
COURSE: 256T
SPEED: 8.3
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 20
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.8M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 30%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1013.9
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 17 – 165 nm (245 nm to go!)

Yesterday, just after dark, the ENE wind switched under a cloud and we\’ve had very nice ESE to SE winds taking us directly down our course.
The morning was quite slow with light winds, but after the shift, we\’ve had 15-22 knots at various times. It\’s one of the reasons for the slow day…..However!

I take our \”daily runs\” at a consistent time. Last night on the Pacific Sea Farer\’s net, we checked in as usual at 0330. They chart all their check in boats daily runs and they had us doing 235 nm in 24 hour! So, you can see \”Miss Piggy\” really does rock and roll, it\’s just that I never cherry pick my own \”best run\” in any 24 hour period vs. the fixed times I use. As I write, we\’re on par for another long mileage day …. if the wind holds.

The steering is behaving \”better\”. Why, we\’re not sure, but in the lighter air it seemed to need less adjustment, as the wind has picked up, I\’ve needed to do it more often. The good news is, it\’s holding together.

If the winds hold for the next 24 hours, we should be able to make landfall at Fatu Hiva late Saturday night. If so, we\’ll have been on about an 18 day 6 hour trip. We\’ll see when we get there. The rudder business has cost us about a day. In 2009, we did this trip in 16 days 6 hours with a crew of three – Mike Lonnes, Cindy and myself. We had more stable air then and we were able to press on at times where this trip has been winds really up and down which makes flying a spinnaker more problematic with just two of us aboard.

Our friends on \”Blowin Bubbles\” are now 32 days out of Panama and should arrive at Fatu Hiva 12-20 hours ahead of us.
They feel like they\’ve been at sea forever, I\’m sure. I know of a boat however that did the same trip as they did and took 62 days! Why, they\’re veritable speed demons! It will be GOOD to relax and have a glass of wine with them.

Okay, bookin\’ for the barn, we can almost smell the frangipani from here!
Scott and Nikki

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/12 18:04
LATITUDE: 10-34.33S
LONGITUDE: 131-55.48W
COURSE: 265T
SPEED: 6.5
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 17
WIND_DIR: ENE
WAVE_HT: 0.1M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: E
SWELL_HT: 3.0M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 30%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.1
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 16 – 165 nm

Housekeeping: Nikki is getting her emails on my email address from friends and family. She thanks you.

Yesterday, we got fooled (well, I did). Nikki asked me about a very wide looking squall with rain in it just after I had shaken the reef and went back to a full mainsail. I said, \”looks like rain, but not much more\”. We turned on the radar and indeed, it looked quite benign. Nikki wasn\’t so sure….
Nikki was right. The rain hit and within 30 seconds we had 40 knots of wind! We rolled up the head sail and we\’re truly sleigh riding fast, too fast hitting 15 knots briefly. This was not a good thing. I then went forward to reef, but the reefing pendant had parted in the gust. Ride the wild pony we did. After 10 minutes, the wind abated to 35 knots for another 20 minutes. Then finally back down in the mid 20\’s. Lesson learned – yet again! (Maybe never!???)

This was indeed the wind shift we\’d been expecting and we actually \”tack/gybed\”. Instead of putting our stern through the wind which is trickier in handling the mainsail, we did a 270 degree turn and headed off to the ENE from our previous heading of SW. Nikki handled the sail controls while I powered us around in a circle. We\’ve been on starboard tack (wind on our right), ever since.

Two nights ago, the steering failed and we had quite the sail drill drama as we wrote yesterday. Last night, we had a mini version of the same event, but fortunately not as bad.

With a first quarter moon, we can see the water in front of us and while I was on watch, I noted the steering was starting to slip again. We had at the time a reef in the main and our genoa poled out to starboard. I thought I would be able to wait for Nikki to come up on watch, but just then the rudder failure alarm went off and the steering packed it in again. This time, the boat did an un-intentional gybe which can be quite disastrous. The wind got on the wrong side of the mainsail and started to spin us around. I quickly called Nikki and started the port engine. I was able to power our way back on course with the now very difficult steering system all over the place. Nikki was able to fight the wheel and keep us on some sort of course while I went aft to fix the problem. This time however, it was due to the starboard ram\’s being \”locked\” against it\’s rudder stop. It was quickly cleared and we\’ve been checking the rudder ever since about every 3 hours. I will need to adjust it when done with this report.

Because of the dicey steering issue, we are sailing with reefed main only now after dark. We set the head sail in the daylight so if a failure occurs we can deal with it easier. We will furl it before dark. This will likely slow our arrival at Fatu Hiva down by around a good 1/2 to a full day. So instead of just under 18 days, we\’ll likely be somewhat under 19.

The weather is cooperating so far today, we had a lovely pleasant night after the sail/steering drill. The wind has allowed us for now to sail directly to our destination, but that will likely change a bit as the day wears on.
It all comes under the general heading of, \”Stuff Occurs\”. Just another thing to fix in Tahiti.

We\’ve 395 miles to go.
All is well despite the issues.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/12 18:04
LATITUDE: 10-34.33S
LONGITUDE: 131-55.48W
COURSE: 265T
SPEED: 6.5
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 17
WIND_DIR: ENE
WAVE_HT: 0.1M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: E
SWELL_HT: 3.0M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 30%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.1
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 16 – 165 nm

Housekeeping: Nikki is getting her emails on my email address from friends and family. She thanks you.

Yesterday, we got fooled (well, I did). Nikki asked me about a very wide looking squall with rain in it just after I had shaken the reef and went back to a full mainsail. I said, \”looks like rain, but not much more\”. We turned on the radar and indeed, it looked quite benign. Nikki wasn\’t so sure….
Nikki was right. The rain hit and within 30 seconds we had 40 knots of wind! We rolled up the head sail and we\’re truly sleigh riding fast, too fast hitting 15 knots briefly. This was not a good thing. I then went forward to reef, but the reefing pendant had parted in the gust. Ride the wild pony we did. After 10 minutes, the wind abated to 35 knots for another 20 minutes. Then finally back down in the mid 20\’s. Lesson learned – yet again! (Maybe never!???)

This was indeed the wind shift we\’d been expecting and we actually \”tack/gybed\”. Instead of putting our stern through the wind which is trickier in handling the mainsail, we did a 270 degree turn and headed off to the ENE from our previous heading of SW. Nikki handled the sail controls while I powered us around in a circle. We\’ve been on starboard tack (wind on our right), ever since.

Two nights ago, the steering failed and we had quite the sail drill drama as we wrote yesterday. Last night, we had a mini version of the same event, but fortunately not as bad.

With a first quarter moon, we can see the water in front of us and while I was on watch, I noted the steering was starting to slip again. We had at the time a reef in the main and our genoa poled out to starboard. I thought I would be able to wait for Nikki to come up on watch, but just then the rudder failure alarm went off and the steering packed it in again. This time, the boat did an un-intentional gybe which can be quite disastrous. The wind got on the wrong side of the mainsail and started to spin us around. I quickly called Nikki and started the port engine. I was able to power our way back on course with the now very difficult steering system all over the place. Nikki was able to fight the wheel and keep us on some sort of course while I went aft to fix the problem. This time however, it was due to the starboard ram\’s being \”locked\” against it\’s rudder stop. It was quickly cleared and we\’ve been checking the rudder ever since about every 3 hours. I will need to adjust it when done with this report.

Because of the dicey steering issue, we are sailing with reefed main only now after dark. We set the head sail in the daylight so if a failure occurs we can deal with it easier. We will furl it before dark. This will likely slow our arrival at Fatu Hiva down by around a good 1/2 to a full day. So instead of just under 18 days, we\’ll likely be somewhat under 19.

The weather is cooperating so far today, we had a lovely pleasant night after the sail/steering drill. The wind has allowed us for now to sail directly to our destination, but that will likely change a bit as the day wears on.
It all comes under the general heading of, \”Stuff Occurs\”. Just another thing to fix in Tahiti.

We\’ve 395 miles to go.
All is well despite the issues.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/11 18:06
LATITUDE: 10-42.18S
LONGITUDE: 129-13.80W
COURSE: 243T
SPEED: 7.9
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 22
WIND_DIR: E
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 3.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 10%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.3
AIR_TEMP: 31.1C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 15 – 190 nm (550 nm to go!)

***Housekeeping Note: Nikki\’s computer got the \”blue screen of death\” and as such her direct email is now out of commission.
You can write her at my email and she will return emails when we get internet ashore.***

Whew! Where do I begin. We were really busting the miles yesterday and got a bit fooled by our weather files. I know from experience that the GRIB Files (which are computer generated wind models of the oceans) UNDERestimate the wind speed by 3-5 knots. Two days ago however, they were exactly correct, so I got lulled into thinking maybe they\’d changed the model? NOPE! Last night, I would normally have believed we would have had 23-25 knots, but the weather said \”18-20\”. So, I kept too much sail up and we were saved by serendipity.

At 2 a.m. local time (always after mid-night!), Nikki got me up and said the wind was pumping up to 27 knots occasionally so we took in the reef. This however really wasn\’t enough and we should have taken our reacher down at sundown and gone to the smaller and far more manageable genoa. Hind sight is a wonderful thing isn\’t it?

At about 3 a.m., our hydraulic steering failed (read that as very bad!). The boat rounded up beam to the wind and sea -then the reacher sounded like it would tear itself to shreds. Temporarily, I thought I had the steering under control – NOT! Nikki and I tried to roll the reacher up, but the boat just went back to beam on instead of allowing our mainsail to blanket it. I got it half way rolled up and then the entire furler unit on the bottom became knotted up.

Nikki came forward and we began to lower the halyard (line that keeps the sail up in the air). When we got it half way down, the rest of the sail filled and it went overboard. So here\’s the picture. It\’s 3:15 a.m. no moon, pitch black, big seas, steering out and big sail in the water. Are we having fun yet?…

The good news was that the boat was extremely well behaved (Miss Piggy always saves us!). With the sail on the downwind side and blanketed, we were able to retrieve it because I had tied a \”Figure of Eight Knot\” in the halyard, which prevented the sail from going under water as the halyard didn\’t just run out of the mast. The sail, with halyard attached, was dragging along side us on the surface. We slowly got it back aboard and stuffed it down the starboard forward locker. Now we had a reefed main up and no steering. Essentially, we were \”hove too\” the wind and seas and fortunately in then pretty good shape.

Next I went to investigate the steering in the port engine room. For whatever reason, our steering ram in the big seas and waves essentially slipped. How this happened is a mystery. Hydraulics are very strong. I doubt we had air in the system as the fluid levels were normal. The steering rams are pretty new as well – replaced when we were in Florida. This caused the rudder to be hard over but have no effect on controlling the boat. We re-centered it and locked it back down, now we were back under control.

Everything behaved properly and we continued on with a single reef and no head (front) sail for the next 3 hours. At 6:30 a.m. (first light), I unrolled the genoa to windward on the pole and all has been well since. We\’ve had a few squalls and winds were up to 30 knots very briefly.

We are 550 miles from Fatu Hiva and heading somewhat south of the island. We will likely gybe (go the other direction with the sails) sometime today?

This morning, around 8 a.m. I saw a 40 foot whale 35 feet from the boat heading in the opposite direction. The Whale was going up wind, we were going downwind. I suspect it just came close to see what this big noisy thing was? I have a pamphlet that describes the whales tails and dorsal fins.
I\’m not sure of course, but it seemed it might have been a small Sperm Whale?

So, it\’s still blowy out here, we feel fortunate that no damage was done and that we got the steering fixed and the sail back aboard.

Welcome to Cruising!…
More tomorrow, Hoping for a \”Pretty Standard Day\”….:-)
Scott and Nikki

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/11 18:06
LATITUDE: 10-42.18S
LONGITUDE: 129-13.80W
COURSE: 243T
SPEED: 7.9
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 22
WIND_DIR: E
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 3.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 10%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.3
AIR_TEMP: 31.1C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 15 – 190 nm (550 nm to go!)

***Housekeeping Note: Nikki\’s computer got the \”blue screen of death\” and as such her direct email is now out of commission.
You can write her at my email and she will return emails when we get internet ashore.***

Whew! Where do I begin. We were really busting the miles yesterday and got a bit fooled by our weather files. I know from experience that the GRIB Files (which are computer generated wind models of the oceans) UNDERestimate the wind speed by 3-5 knots. Two days ago however, they were exactly correct, so I got lulled into thinking maybe they\’d changed the model? NOPE! Last night, I would normally have believed we would have had 23-25 knots, but the weather said \”18-20\”. So, I kept too much sail up and we were saved by serendipity.

At 2 a.m. local time (always after mid-night!), Nikki got me up and said the wind was pumping up to 27 knots occasionally so we took in the reef. This however really wasn\’t enough and we should have taken our reacher down at sundown and gone to the smaller and far more manageable genoa. Hind sight is a wonderful thing isn\’t it?

At about 3 a.m., our hydraulic steering failed (read that as very bad!). The boat rounded up beam to the wind and sea -then the reacher sounded like it would tear itself to shreds. Temporarily, I thought I had the steering under control – NOT! Nikki and I tried to roll the reacher up, but the boat just went back to beam on instead of allowing our mainsail to blanket it. I got it half way rolled up and then the entire furler unit on the bottom became knotted up.

Nikki came forward and we began to lower the halyard (line that keeps the sail up in the air). When we got it half way down, the rest of the sail filled and it went overboard. So here\’s the picture. It\’s 3:15 a.m. no moon, pitch black, big seas, steering out and big sail in the water. Are we having fun yet?…

The good news was that the boat was extremely well behaved (Miss Piggy always saves us!). With the sail on the downwind side and blanketed, we were able to retrieve it because I had tied a \”Figure of Eight Knot\” in the halyard, which prevented the sail from going under water as the halyard didn\’t just run out of the mast. The sail, with halyard attached, was dragging along side us on the surface. We slowly got it back aboard and stuffed it down the starboard forward locker. Now we had a reefed main up and no steering. Essentially, we were \”hove too\” the wind and seas and fortunately in then pretty good shape.

Next I went to investigate the steering in the port engine room. For whatever reason, our steering ram in the big seas and waves essentially slipped. How this happened is a mystery. Hydraulics are very strong. I doubt we had air in the system as the fluid levels were normal. The steering rams are pretty new as well – replaced when we were in Florida. This caused the rudder to be hard over but have no effect on controlling the boat. We re-centered it and locked it back down, now we were back under control.

Everything behaved properly and we continued on with a single reef and no head (front) sail for the next 3 hours. At 6:30 a.m. (first light), I unrolled the genoa to windward on the pole and all has been well since. We\’ve had a few squalls and winds were up to 30 knots very briefly.

We are 550 miles from Fatu Hiva and heading somewhat south of the island. We will likely gybe (go the other direction with the sails) sometime today?

This morning, around 8 a.m. I saw a 40 foot whale 35 feet from the boat heading in the opposite direction. The Whale was going up wind, we were going downwind. I suspect it just came close to see what this big noisy thing was? I have a pamphlet that describes the whales tails and dorsal fins.
I\’m not sure of course, but it seemed it might have been a small Sperm Whale?

So, it\’s still blowy out here, we feel fortunate that no damage was done and that we got the steering fixed and the sail back aboard.

Welcome to Cruising!…
More tomorrow, Hoping for a \”Pretty Standard Day\”….:-)
Scott and Nikki

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/10 18:00
LATITUDE: 09-49.81S
LONGITUDE: 126-07.61W
COURSE: 243T
SPEED: 8.1
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 20
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 20%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.7
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 14 – 170 nm

Many have asked how the data for the position reports is input. The program we send our email with (Airmail 2000), takes a 10 minute average of all the data it sees on our instruments. Lat/Long which is input instantaneously and everything below the Wind_Dir is manually entered.

We\’ve really had a fabulous trip so far. The sail plan we\’re using has just been so easy to deal with. Our big reacher on the pole to weather hasn\’t been touched in 4 days! If the wind comes up over 22 knots, we reef the main, if it drops to 20 for any period of time, we just raise it back to full.

Last night we expected much more wind by this morning than we have. The weather files predicted about 20-24 knots, but so far, it\’s been 17-22 and not much of the 22. We did see a 24 knot gust earlier, but it didn\’t last more than a minute or two. We did get a rain squall last night, so at 2:30 a.m. local time we put the reef in expecting the bigger wind. Nope, so far, pretty much a nice strong, but very manageable wind and sea.

On the morning radio net, many of the monohulls were telling us about the lack of rest and tough ride they\’re having. The nature of their boats is to roll much more than the multihulls and have a deeper and longer motion. They\’re are swells out here from multiple directions and as such, it can mimic a washing machine at some times. \”Beach House\” (aka: Miss Piggy) just hasn\’t had that experience this trip, our 12th of over 1500 miles. Frankly, it\’s been a breeze.

We seem to have a bit more wind than most of the other boats at the moment as we\’re somewhat south of the main group. We heard there are 34 boats in Hiva Oa! I have no idea how that many boats could possibly fit in that anchorage (I\’ve been there twice before with only 4 boats at most!).

We are likely to head directly toward Fatu Hiva (the island 45 miles south of Hiva Oa). This is the island made famous by the late anthropologist, Thor Heyerdahl who wrote a book of the same title about his experience there 60 years ago. The reasons we\’ll head there first are two fold. First, it\’s mostly because of the crowd in Hiva Oa (about 12 more boats will arrive there shortly!) and the fact that our suspect engines might make it difficult to motor back up wind to Fatu Hiva which can be a tough ride from Hiva Oa.

Mostly an un-eventful day, but believe me, we don\’t mind in the least.
We\’ve 725 miles to go. Per the instruments, just under 4 days.
That\’s it for now,
Please feel free to drop an email our way.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki,

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/10 18:00
LATITUDE: 09-49.81S
LONGITUDE: 126-07.61W
COURSE: 243T
SPEED: 8.1
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 20
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 20%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.7
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 14 – 170 nm

Many have asked how the data for the position reports is input. The program we send our email with (Airmail 2000), takes a 10 minute average of all the data it sees on our instruments. Lat/Long which is input instantaneously and everything below the Wind_Dir is manually entered.

We\’ve really had a fabulous trip so far. The sail plan we\’re using has just been so easy to deal with. Our big reacher on the pole to weather hasn\’t been touched in 4 days! If the wind comes up over 22 knots, we reef the main, if it drops to 20 for any period of time, we just raise it back to full.

Last night we expected much more wind by this morning than we have. The weather files predicted about 20-24 knots, but so far, it\’s been 17-22 and not much of the 22. We did see a 24 knot gust earlier, but it didn\’t last more than a minute or two. We did get a rain squall last night, so at 2:30 a.m. local time we put the reef in expecting the bigger wind. Nope, so far, pretty much a nice strong, but very manageable wind and sea.

On the morning radio net, many of the monohulls were telling us about the lack of rest and tough ride they\’re having. The nature of their boats is to roll much more than the multihulls and have a deeper and longer motion. They\’re are swells out here from multiple directions and as such, it can mimic a washing machine at some times. \”Beach House\” (aka: Miss Piggy) just hasn\’t had that experience this trip, our 12th of over 1500 miles. Frankly, it\’s been a breeze.

We seem to have a bit more wind than most of the other boats at the moment as we\’re somewhat south of the main group. We heard there are 34 boats in Hiva Oa! I have no idea how that many boats could possibly fit in that anchorage (I\’ve been there twice before with only 4 boats at most!).

We are likely to head directly toward Fatu Hiva (the island 45 miles south of Hiva Oa). This is the island made famous by the late anthropologist, Thor Heyerdahl who wrote a book of the same title about his experience there 60 years ago. The reasons we\’ll head there first are two fold. First, it\’s mostly because of the crowd in Hiva Oa (about 12 more boats will arrive there shortly!) and the fact that our suspect engines might make it difficult to motor back up wind to Fatu Hiva which can be a tough ride from Hiva Oa.

Mostly an un-eventful day, but believe me, we don\’t mind in the least.
We\’ve 725 miles to go. Per the instruments, just under 4 days.
That\’s it for now,
Please feel free to drop an email our way.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki,

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/09 17:58
LATITUDE: 09-13.10S
LONGITUDE: 123-22.22W
COURSE: 258T
SPEED: 8.1
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 20
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 25%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.4
AIR_TEMP: 31.1C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 13 – 176 nm

ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM! Yesterday, a very unusual occurrence happened right after our 1800 UTC report. We saw another boat about 5 miles to our south. It looked big! Ironically, it\’s the same place (more or less) I spotted s/v \”Ulliad\” on the last time I did this trip.

We hailed on VHF and Pascal Imbert of s/v \”Water Music\” came back in perfect English. He\’s a 52 foot, all carbon fiber catamaran. Think NASCAR! He has a carbon fiber mast and spectra line rigging, perhaps 50% more sail area than we do.

He goes so fast, the apparent wind never gets behind his beam (90 degrees). He goes so fast, he actually can\’t sail with the wind. He has to zig zag radically across the wind – yes even when going down wind. He passed astern of us going 14-16 knots! He says it\’s uncomfortable having to sail across the swells so much, but he loves the speed. He has a very experienced crew of only 3 and it\’s a \”hand on the main sheet at all times\” type of vessel. An awfully small crew for such a rocket for my liking, but he clearly doesn\’t want the weight!

The other day, I wrote how almost no boats ever do 200 miles/day out here even once. Pascal never does LESS than 200 miles/day. Averages 270! and has several days over 300 miles/day! Whew!

He left Costa Rica (which is 650 miles further from the Marquesas) the same day we left the Galapagos. He\’s probably sailed 1200 miles to catch up the 650 he has so far. We\’ve about 5 days to go. He\’ll be there in 3!

That was the excitement of yesterday.

The winds were soft last night, but have picked up quite a bit today – 20-24 knots. We expect that tomorrow afternoon it will really be blowing and as such at some point we\’ll likely reef the main again. We\’re not quite smelling the barn yet, but we\’re beginning the last turn for the home stretch.
895 miles to go!
KIT,
Scott and Nikki
www.svbeachhouse.com

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/09 17:58
LATITUDE: 09-13.10S
LONGITUDE: 123-22.22W
COURSE: 258T
SPEED: 8.1
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 20
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 25%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.4
AIR_TEMP: 31.1C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 13 – 176 nm

ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM! Yesterday, a very unusual occurrence happened right after our 1800 UTC report. We saw another boat about 5 miles to our south. It looked big! Ironically, it\’s the same place (more or less) I spotted s/v \”Ulliad\” on the last time I did this trip.

We hailed on VHF and Pascal Imbert of s/v \”Water Music\” came back in perfect English. He\’s a 52 foot, all carbon fiber catamaran. Think NASCAR! He has a carbon fiber mast and spectra line rigging, perhaps 50% more sail area than we do.

He goes so fast, the apparent wind never gets behind his beam (90 degrees). He goes so fast, he actually can\’t sail with the wind. He has to zig zag radically across the wind – yes even when going down wind. He passed astern of us going 14-16 knots! He says it\’s uncomfortable having to sail across the swells so much, but he loves the speed. He has a very experienced crew of only 3 and it\’s a \”hand on the main sheet at all times\” type of vessel. An awfully small crew for such a rocket for my liking, but he clearly doesn\’t want the weight!

The other day, I wrote how almost no boats ever do 200 miles/day out here even once. Pascal never does LESS than 200 miles/day. Averages 270! and has several days over 300 miles/day! Whew!

He left Costa Rica (which is 650 miles further from the Marquesas) the same day we left the Galapagos. He\’s probably sailed 1200 miles to catch up the 650 he has so far. We\’ve about 5 days to go. He\’ll be there in 3!

That was the excitement of yesterday.

The winds were soft last night, but have picked up quite a bit today – 20-24 knots. We expect that tomorrow afternoon it will really be blowing and as such at some point we\’ll likely reef the main again. We\’re not quite smelling the barn yet, but we\’re beginning the last turn for the home stretch.
895 miles to go!
KIT,
Scott and Nikki
www.svbeachhouse.com

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/08 18:10
LATITUDE: 08-31.80S
LONGITUDE: 120-33.61W
COURSE: 254T
SPEED: 7.6
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 14
WIND_DIR: 102T
WAVE_HT: 0.2M
WAVE_PER: 6
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.2M
SWELL_PER: 7
CLOUDS: 25%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1015.3
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 12 – 175 nm (7.3 knot average for the 24 hour run)

Yesterday the winds were 20 knots early in the day and with the reefed main and reacher out to windward on the pole, we were averaging almost 9.5 knots for the first 10 hours of our daily run. Then alas, the winds died off right around mid night and we slowed through the night.

This morning, we\’ve around 12-15 knots of wind and have hoisted the main back to full. Still not the blasting start we had yesterday, but the winds are supposed to pick up starting this early evening and staying strong to stronger over the next 30-40 hours. We may re-reef before dark, we\’ll check conditions then.

This hasn\’t been our fastest passage, but to date, in 12 ocean crossings of over 1500 miles, this has been by far the most comfortable.
For the most part, the swell is just at a slight angle to our stern and the winds on a broad reach (which means pretty far behind us).
The boat loves this condition and just keeps a keepin\’ on.

Nikki is enjoying the ride and with her finger still a bit out of commission doesn\’t want to do all that fussy sail work. I can\’t (and don\’t) blame her.
This is just too easy so far. (Can you hear me knocking on wood?)…

Scott and Nikki – 1065 miles to go!