Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

What did we see today? Sea, sky, clouds, sun, flying fish. Familiar? A certain sense of deja vu here. And with confidence I shall predict more of the same ahead.

There were a few milestones today. We exceeded our maximum passage distance beating the run from Costa Rica to the Galapagos. We also passed the mark whereby we have less than 2,000nm to go. It feels like progress.

Thought I’d also touch on the subject of bruises. On a moving boat one always needs to make three points of contact to remain stable. When standing and using two hands one ends up putting ones hip against the counter top. It’s the same point every time. It’s the same point that you bump when walking around and losing balance then bumping into the counter. Even though we have rounded edges (a must for a cruising boat) the continuous knocks are bringing out gradual bruising which is slowly getting painful. The first few days I was not aware but now I am I have become more careful.

We also finally decided to move the dining table inside. As the wind has clocked around to aft of our beam, eating outside became problematical with the wind blowing food around and cups over. On a catamaran we delight in being able to sit at the table reasonably decently. Inside it’s a whole new experience. I wonder why we didn’t do it earlier.

So far I’ve been pretty good at staying on track during my watches. In previous trips I’ve tended to go off my own way thinking that the boat sails better in that direction or that it looks quicker that way. Since then I’ve learnt better and realised that Steve has calculated these tracks based on current, wind direction and potentiality wind speed. Although it may look like its a longer route, it is in fact the quickest way to our destination. Still whenever John takes over from me, he looks in trepidation at the chart fearing how far we’ve wondered off. Today to his relief it was only twenty feet!

The wind has been consistently in the late teens and from the south east, so we continue to make good progress.

No special visitors today although we see lots and lot and lots of flying fish, sometimes providing amazing formations and patterns as they skim over the waves.

We caught four fish today. Three got away and one was too small to keep. Fishing is definitely a male thing. I haven’t met one female on all the other boats we’ve become acquainted with who has any real interest in the fishing process. We certainly like cooking and eating the catch and even get quite excited when a fish is being caught. However men can spend hours talking about fishing gears, making lures and playing with their tackles!!!!

My night watch was dark and tedious.

If we weren’t numbering them the days would now be all a bit of a blur as the amount of distinction between one and the other is rather narrow.

I did do an analysis of our track yesterday and discovered that our best 24 hour run so far ended at 7am on day 6 covering 172nm. That included a light night and quite a few hours of regen.

At one point we saw a school of small mahi mahi on the go. Off the hook we only see them when they torpedo through the air. Within moments we had three on the lures. Two got away but we managed to get one in. It was too small to eat so we let it go. There was a fourth one on the lines when we pulled them in in the evening but it too escaped before reaching the boat.

We continue our course along the rhumb line to Fatu Hiva. The miles are slowly going by. We passed the quarter distance mark today which didn’t get much fanfare – certainly not as much as half way will bring. As the first two days were pretty slow there’s a good chance the remaining 3/4 of the trip will be less than three times as long as the first 1/4.

Hundreds of miles from anywhere and thousands from most places we feel very safe in our little bubble of human life out here in the Pacific. Dignity is doing her side of the job very well. On the net we hear of other boats with odd issues (radio problems, freezer problems, etc.) causing them to consider returning to their port of departure. The Galapagos is not the best place for repairing boat parts but then nor are the islands this side of Tahiti. On that front our replacement light air sale is now fully ordered and due to arrive in Tahiti late May, a couple of weeks before our likely arrival.