I woke for my 5am shift to learn we had cleared the confused seas and winds to the south of Isabella and were now smoothly sailing albeit in light winds from the SSE. As the day progressed this presented us with a dilemma. We really wanted to make some miles south to reach the stronger and more easterly trades. To get south we had to keep our standard sails up which don’t have a great deal of power in the lighter winds. Later in the day I decided to try the Code Zero. Even though we point over 20 degrees less it does have a lot more sail area. The result was we ended up sailing due west. With the NW setting current (also preventing us making any distance south) we were making approx 6 knots in 10 knots of wind.<\/p>\n

So the dilemma was do we press SW at around 4 knots reaching the trades sooner or W at 6.5 hoping for a change in wind which we reasonably could expect to happen at some time.<\/p>\n

In the end, I figured both would make sense. Fly the Code Zero during the day to make up the miles in the light winds and fly the regular head sail at night for safety and making our way south. As luck would have it, the wind strengthened a little around dusk so when we switched sails we were able to sail SW at 6 knots. By 11pm, at the end of my last watch of the day, the winds had shifted to the SE suggesting we may be reaching the trades already.<\/p>\n

So that’s the wind. The rest of the day. Dawn revealed 360 sea\/ocean. Land was lost from sight. The wonderful picture of Isabella the previous dusk was now lost over the horizon and\/or in the haze of distance. I set the four trolling lines as soon as I could but we were to have no luck. Around 9am we made contact with a Japanese sail boat, Yaima. All was well aboard.<\/p>\n

Sea life was much less abundant. We saw the odd dolphin in the distance leaping out of the water, presumably chasing prey. One or two sea birds were seen including one which flew alongside the boat after dark. For a while it was entertaining trying to hold the laser pointer on it.<\/p>\n

The night sky is truly awesome. The moon is new, there is no light pollution at all and the humidity is reasonably low. We therefore see the sky in all it’s glory. The milky way is no longer a smudge and is now a textured band across the sky.<\/p>\n

The only other surprise for me happened during what is really day 3. During Helen’s shift I’d opened the hatch above our bed a crack to get some fresh air. I awoke to the sound of Helen in the cabin and something cold and wet on my leg. I asked Helen if she had put cold wet hands on my leg and she said no so I replied there must be a fish in the bed. She said I must have woken up in a dream so I rummaged through the sheet. At first I couldn’t find anything convincing Helen of her hypothesis. In the end I found a reasonably large flying fish nestled in the sheet, still a alive. Yuch. I threw it back out the hatch. I had to shower while Helen switched the sheets. Nasty surprise.<\/p>\n

All the thrills of being out at sea are tempered by the news that my father has had to have a series of operations with worrying discoveries. I check for emails from family fairly frequently. When I see a new email header and have to wait the extra minute for the text of the email to arrive I await in in a combination of hope and dread wondering if the news will be encouraging or not. The separation caused by distance and isolation isn’t the best thing right now.<\/p>\n

Love you Dad. Hope you get better soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I woke for my 5am shift to learn we had cleared the confused seas and winds to the south of Isabella and were now smoothly sailing albeit in light winds from the SSE. As the day progressed this presented us with a dilemma. We really wanted to make some miles south to reach the stronger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-sea","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3368,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784\/revisions\/3368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}