Hiva Oa

We are here at Hiva Oa. It is a public holiday so there is no way to check in, nothing is open, no nothing. We'll take a nap, relax, and tidy up a bit before moving on tomorrow to more remote islands of the Marquesas Islands. (This was by stratos mail so hopefully we will get a more detailed blog entry by SailMail or land-based internet when they have it available.) 

Our view of the Marquesas

Almost there!

Sailmail has been out of commission so no blog updates. Last I heard was that SvSunrise was 17mi from their first destination!


Position :  9 43.28' S, 138 37.00' W
Speed : 7.0 knots,  Course : 237 degree
Time of position : 28-MAY-12 15:28

May 22 & 23

Tuesday, 22 May 2012  Today was spent either sailing slowly on a close reach or motoring into light wind and seas.  Despite the time and money spent in the last year replacing the acoustic insulation in most of the engine compartment, it is still unpleasantly noisy with the diesel engine and exhaust blower running.  Tonight the wind velocity finally came back up enough to allow the motor to be turned off and the boat to sail with reasonable boat speed.  So here I am,  standing in the cockpit holding on and relishing the cool breeze, the sound of rushing water, the sight of dimly lit white foam with speckles of phosphorescence racing past the hull and the dark starry night.  Looking ahead as SUNRISE relentlessly plows through the unseen water going due south toward the equator, the night sky is unfamiliar.  It will become very familiar to us over the next 5 months.  Life is good again.  Then again, having a good and reliable, though noisy, motor and blower and fuel to spare and making good progress toward good wind sure beats wallowing around with slatting sails, banging metal and rigging, no cooling breeze and going nowhere.

The boat is healed over 15 degrees.  But it is easier to move around because we are going upwind and the angle of heal only varies a couple of degrees one way or the other.  The boat pitches more than rolls.  We are not wallowing around and lurching as we do going downwind, but only because the waves are small.  The sails are sheeted in tight and the centerboard is down.  Both are foils in a flowing fluid environment.  If a wave tries to increase the healing angle, the sails see a lowering of angle of attack and the amount of lift drops.  So the ballast tries to make the boat more upright, countering the wave.  If a wave tries to reduce the healing, the angle of attack of the sails increases, the lift increases and the boat tries to heal more.  The situation is reversed for the centerboard.  But the change in force is synchronized with that of the sails  You may remember this from your high school physics class.  It is called positive stability.  They say that gentlemen don't sail to weather.  Actually, sailing to weather with low wind speed is not bad.  The boat speed adds to the true wind speed, allowing you to sail faster upwind than downwind.  What is really unpleasant going upwind is plowing into significant seas.  When you go the same direction as the seas, the frequency that you go up and down is determined by the difference in true speeds of the waves and boat.  When you go into the seas, the frequency that you go up and down is the sum of the true speeds.  You may remember Mr. Doppler's train whistle observations from your high school physics class.  The accelerations that you experience are proportional to the square of the frequency.  That is why no one enjoys plowing into significant seas.  You may be thinking, "Do we have to get a physics lesson every day?"  Sorry folks, that is just the way that my brain functions and how I experience the world.  From Lynne: I read it and think it's interesting. Guess that's why I married him.

In the evening, the winds back around to the east and we are heading south but now gradually going east as well.  The Marquesas are southwest of us.  I ease the mainsheet and traveller to allow the boom to move farther away from the center of the boat, ease the genoa sheet to let that sail move outboard and adjust the Monitor wind vane that is doing the steering to keep the wind farther off the nose.  Never-the-less, the compass course does not change significantly.  I ease the sheets some more, but same compass course.  The sails are not rigid anymore, but soft and flopping a bit.  The mainsail is more powerful than the genoa headsail and tries to make the boat head up into the wind.  This is called weather helm.  The windvane controlled rudder is constantly trying to turn the boat away from the wind, but all is stable.  I could reef the mainsail, reducing its size and power, but that is a big to do and requires waking Lynne up from her beauty sleep.  Eventually, the boat does fall off, but by 45 degrees.  With that course, we will sail to the west of the Marquesas and miss them.  After an hour, I give up, sheet in and figure tomorrow or the next day, it will be prudent to turn right 45 degrees.  I go to bed tired and let Lynne take a turn.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012 From L: My watch is 2 am until 9 am.  I'm thinking today we cross the equator. (I have clothes at hand this time for the pictures.) 7 am: What a great day!  Pure blue water, bright blue sky with a few fairweather cumulus, good wind E 15k.  Smooth fast 6 kt ride. I can hardly wait to email you our photos.  We SO appreciate your emails which Sheryl forwards via Sailmail. Barry awakes 9 am and the following is from him.  
By  mid morning, the wind has increased a couple of more knots, the boat is going a knot faster and seas are up matching the higher wind speed.  Now, the ride is less comfortable.  The boat is pitching fore and aft more in the bigger waves and each time the bow hits a wave, the boat slows.  The driving power of the sails to force the boat to go toward the wind causes the boat to lurch forward until the bow hits the next wave.  This happens about every two seconds.  It is like driving a car,  cruising along at constant speed versus stop-and-go bumper-to-bumper traffic.  This is what I wake up to in the morning.  When I haul the plastic trash up to its storage bag in the anchor locker, I get repeatedly doused by the water splashing across the deck.  Marine road kill report:  3 flying fish.  I go back to the cockpit and get out the bug sprayer.  Lynne puts a quart of luke-warm water in it, I pump it up and rinse the salt water off my body.  I use the remaining water to wash down part of the cockpit.  We are in the middle of the ocean, and the cockpit still gets dirty very fast. Hair, lint, food, fish scales, dirt etc.  I put the bug sprayer away, dry off and turn toward the companionway to go below.  That is when I get doused again on the back.  [Editors note:  Since this is a family-oriented report, the expletives uttered at this time have been deleted].

Reefing the Main Sail

 
 This evening before dark, we put one reef in the mainsail. That means that we pulled the sail down about four feet.  There are rings in the sail at that level to secure to the front and rear of the boom.  The  #2 and #3 reef points are further up the sail.  I re-tension the sail by tightening the halyard.  Then we turn right 20 degrees, easily falling off.  We are headed for the Marqueses.  The boat slows down ½ knot, but is now almost level and the ride is much smoother.  We are so busy dealing with many issues before Lynne goes to bed that before we know it we have crossed the equator.  We don't take the time to celebrate.  There are 660 nautical miles to go.


Position :  1 15.56' N, 134 00.44' W
Speed : 5.6 knots,  Course : 165 degree

Position Reports Thus Far

There have been some requests for position reports to tract sailing progress. Lynne posted the first couple days, and here are the rest, to date. The positions given with the blog posts are one of the positions from the day of the journal, so not useful in tracking actual 12 hour progress.  

0326 arrives at 830 pm. 1528 arrives at 0830 am Pacific Time

The first report arrived at 858 pm on May 6 Pacific time

Position :  30 27.84' N, 120 11.08' W
Speed : 5.8 knots,  Course : 220 degree
Time of position : 07-MAY-12 03:56

Position :  28 34.60' N, 121 40.28' W
Speed : 5.8 knots,  Course : 221 degree
Time of position : 08-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  27 56.88' N, 122 05.00' W
Speed : 5.8 knots,  Course : 188 degree
Time of position : 08-MAY-12 10:16

Position :  27 56.64' N, 122 05.08' W
Speed : 6.2 knots,  Course : 189 degree
Time of position : 08-MAY-12 10:18

Position :  27 31.32' N, 122 24.00' W
Speed : 7.0 knots,  Course : 219 degree
Time of position : 08-MAY-12 15:26

Position :  26 30.80' N, 123 01.72' W
Speed : 7.0 knots,  Course : 200 degree
Time of position : 09-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  25 43.48' N, 123 40.56' W
Speed : 4.6 knots,  Course : 260 degree
Time of position : 09-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  25 15.72' N, 124 46.96' W
Speed : 6.6 knots,  Course : 268 degree
Time of position : 10-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  24 38.64' N, 125 44.68' W
Speed : 6.4 knots,  Course : 238 degree
Time of position : 10-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  24 02.04' N, 126 28.24' W
Speed : 3.8 knots,  Course : 210 degree
Time of position : 11-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  23 15.48' N, 127 03.96' W
Speed : 5.4 knots,  Course : 209 degree
Time of position : 11-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  22 27.76' N, 127 33.12' W
Speed : 6.6 knots,  Course : 192 degree
Time of position : 12-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  21 53.44' N, 128 05.24' W
Speed : 4.4 knots,  Course : 219 degree
Time of position : 12-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  20 59.20' N, 128 30.40' W
Speed : 5.6 knots,  Course : 198 degree
Time of position : 13-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  20 02.68' N, 129 03.40' W
Speed : 4.6 knots,  Course : 224 degree
Time of position : 13-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  18 50.08' N, 129 13.76' W
Speed : 7.8 knots,  Course : 205 degree
Time of position : 14-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  17 32.60' N, 129 31.92' W
Speed : 4.0 knots,  Course : 194 degree
Time of position : 14-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  16 25.88' N, 129 35.04' W
Speed : 6.4 knots,  Course : 161 degree
Time of position : 15-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  15 21.92' N, 129 47.52' W
Speed : 6.4 knots,  Course : 177 degree
Time of position : 15-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  14 11.64' N, 130 05.64' W
Speed : 7.4 knots,  Course : 199 degree
Time of position : 16-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  13 12.76' N, 130 33.48' W
Speed : 4.2 knots,  Course : 202 degree
Time of position : 16-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  12 53.28' N, 131 36.08' W
Speed : 6.2 knots,  Course : 237 degree
Time of position : 17-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  12 03.28' N, 132 06.64' W
Speed : 4.8 knots,  Course : 220 degree
Time of position : 17-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  11 05.68' N, 132 18.08' W
Speed : 5.6 knots,  Course : 187 degree
Time of position : 18-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  10 05.16' N, 132 30.56' W
Speed : 5.4 knots,  Course : 196 degree
Time of position : 18-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  9 13.16' N, 132 46.28' W
Speed : 5.0 knots,  Course : 207 degree
Time of position : 19-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  8 19.16' N, 132 45.28' W
Speed : 4.0 knots,  Course : 177 degree
Time of position : 19-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  7 18.16' N, 132 48.08' W
Speed : 6.0 knots,  Course : 196 degree
Time of position : 20-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  6 19.28' N, 133 04.52' W
Speed : 5.4 knots,  Course : 205 degree
Time of position : 20-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  5 26.80' N, 133 17.36' W
Speed : 5.6 knots,  Course : 184 degree
Time of position : 21-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  4 50.72' N, 133 43.52' W
Speed : 5.0 knots,  Course : 180 degree
Time of position : 21-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  4 07.44' N, 133 50.96' W
Speed : 4.0 knots,  Course : 171 degree
Time of position : 22-MAY-12 03:28

Position :  3 14.72' N, 133 57.52' W
Speed : 4.6 knots,  Course : 197 degree
Time of position : 22-MAY-12 15:28

Position :  2 22.72' N, 134 02.40' W
Speed : 4.8 knots,  Course : 194 degree
Time of position : 2

May 20

We are in the doldrums/ Intertropical Convection Zone/ ITCZ now.  Lots of convection with rain clouds everywhere last night and today with frequent sprinkles.  No heavy rain yet, but we have washed most of the salt off the boat.  Although the winds are not strong, we have had 8-10 knots most of the time.  Not being in a hurry, we have not had to resort to motoring.  The boat continues to plod along averaging 4 knots of speed.  The seas are gentle, but enough to keep the boat rolling, sometimes more and sometimes less.  The boat's resonant frequency for rolling is slightly different from the frequency of the waves.  So the boat will be flat and calm and quiet for a bit, then starts rolling and groaning and banging with the mainsail slatting, then it all damps out again.  We rolled up the headsail two days ago, trading off some boat speed for quietness and sail longevity.  There was not enough pressure on the sail from the wind to keep the sail full and rigid.  It would periodically collapse, then refill with a bang causing the boat to shudder.  The temperature of the air outside the boat has been pleasant.  Inside, it is 85 to 90 degrees but we have many Hella fans that cool us.  Marine road kill report: one small flying fish and 1 small squid. Radar: numerous benign squalls surrounding us.

Late this afternoon, we had an Audubon's Shearwater flying close around the boat, pass after pass after pass.  Sometimes, only 10 feet away.  I tossed the small fish and squid up in the air to see if the bird was interested.  It was not.  Occasionally, it would grab some small bit out of the water on the fly, or land and grab something several inches below the surface or dive below the surface.  Its eyes, the image processing part of its brain and its flight reaction times are awesome.  There was ample opportunity to take photos.  We have a Canon Rebel T2i digital SLR camera with auto focusing and image stabilizing lenses.  It is incredibly good.  In the "Sport" mode, I can try to track the bird around the boat. It takes several shots a second continuously.  With the equivalent of a 500 mm lens on a 35 mm film camera, holding the camera with only one hand while desperately hanging onto the rolling, lurching boat with the other hand, "It ain't easy, folks". There are visual obstructions all around the cockpit, but I don't worry about that.  I can just delete the 95% of the pictures that are "trash".  We are left with quite a number of good images and a few awesome ones. 

It has taken us two weeks of around-the-clock sailing to get to this particular place in the Pacific Ocean this afternoon.  We live for these kinds of experiences and memories.  And we couldn't care less about what Snooki did today.  We are so grateful that we share so many similar interests and values.  And where we differ, we enrich each other's life. We are ever so thankful for each other, God's awesome creation and the family and friends who support and help us being out here.

This evening, our radar shows just a few rain clouds.  More than half of the sky is cloud free.  Lots of stars to see. Venus was bright in the western sky early in the evening.  The Big Dipper is very bright looking over the transom, but Polaris is barely visible just above the horizon.  We may not see Polaris again until after we fly back to California in November.  But tonight is a night to savor while sitting in the cockpit in the dark.

From Lynne: When I went to bed at 6:30 pm Marquesas time it was dark and the shearwaters were about 5 ft away from the cockpit, their calls sounding like an ooga ooga horn. I guess the ooga ooga tells others to come.  We do feel like Moses as we cross the ITCZ at this very narrow, quiet and calm section of it.  The ITCZ undulates and moves like a very long snake just above or below the equator depending on the season.  There can be breaks in the snake and we found one. 

For a while it looked as though there would be a divorce on our boat. We knew Pacific Daylight Time, UTC and what time it is in the Marquesas (UTC minus 9 hrs 30 mins) but what time was it on the boat and what time should be written in the log? Matters weren't helped by our modern electronic marvels which balked at this weird unknown time zone shift.  While Barry slept I changed all the clocks to the Hawaii Time Zone then I made them all "wrong" by half an hour. It is Marquesas time on our boat now and we signed a peace accord. 

I finally got the Night Sky app and Navionics Australasian chart plotting app to utilize the GPS and quit looking for an internet connection.  You do this by turning ON internet and location services. It tells you it can't connect and you tell it to quit whining and get to work. Success. Go figure.

Position :  5 26.80' N, 133 17.36' W
Speed : 5.6 knots,  Course : 184 degree

Birds and Road Kill

Our photo

Bird report:  Red-tailed tropic birds.  Marine road kill report: 1 flying fish, 1 squid.  Wind is up a bit.  Not plodding along, but not smoking either.  We'll take it and we are grateful.  Life is good.  Lynne even ate 2 brussel sprouts and they were good. Pressure cooker.

Most boats have a very high frequency (VHF) radio for relatively short range communications, out to about 20 miles, including distress messages.  SUNRISE came with a VHF radio when we bought her that worked well even though it was now 26 years old.  The problem is that it lacked all the modern bells and whistles that the latest VHF radios have.  The new radios connect to a GPS system and displays your location, course and speed on its display.  They also have a distress button that automatically sends a distress message to the Coast Guard and all vessels.  The distress message includes your GPS-derived location, identifies your boat by name and activates an alarm on all modern VHF radios that are turned on.  With the new VHF radios, each radio has a unique number, just like a telephone.  When I mentioned to my sailing friend Brad that I needed a new VHF radio, he said, "Come and see the great new radio that I just installed on my boat."  We bought the same Standard Horizon unit a few months later after checking out all the radios at the Seattle Boat Show last year.  All you ham enthusiasts know this manufacturer as Yaesu.

The Automatic Identification System has been required on commercial shipping for at least 10 years now.  Each vessel has a transceiver that broadcasts a short data burst at intervals between ½  to 6 seconds on a specific frequency in the VHF band.  The data burst contains the name of the vessel, its "call number", what type of vessel,  length, beam, location, speed, course, turning rate, destination, etc.  Fast moving and turning vessels transmit every ½ second while static vessels only transmit about every 6 seconds.  The transceiver also listens to other ships' data reports and calculates the closest point of approach and time to closest point of approach.  Very handy information to have when vessels are trying to avoid hitting each other and prioritize which encounters to be most concerned with.

US-flagged yachts are now being permitted to have a scaled-down version of the commercial AIS transceivers.  The rest of the world did this 10 years ago while our government took its sweet time deciding what the detailed requirements should be for a non-required system.  We had planned to install one for our upcoming voyage and were monitoring what was finally coming on the market in the US.  The new transceivers were a bit complicated and were a hassle to run silent, which I thought appropriate most of the time for yachts.  Our new VHF radio contains a built-in AIS  receiver (but not transmitter), which means we did not have to find the room for an additional transceiver, display, VHF antenna, GPS antenna, circuit breaker/switch and interconnecting cables.  On our boat, the antenna farm real estate, nav station real estate, cable runs and electrical panels are already maxed out.  We can live with being "AIS-silent" all the time.

Sierra Guardian

This morning, a target showed up on our radar screen at 17 miles range on the starboard quarter. A surprise, since or radar usually initially detects ships at 10 - 12 miles range.  It was going roughly the same direction as we were, but gradually closing with us. Over time, it got closer and we were able to visually identify the ship at about 8 miles.  There it was, indicated on the display of our new VHF radio.  We push a few buttons, get the name of the ship, SIERRA GUARDIAN, and its call number.  We watched as it closed with us and at 4 miles pushed the "CALL" button.  Not only do we automatically hail their specific radio, but both radios automatically switch to a different frequency from the hailing frequency.  "SIERRA, SIERRA, SIERRA.  This is the yacht SUNRISE, four miles off your port bow.  Are you aware of our location?"  A cheery and understandable voice came back, "SUNRISE, this is SIERRA.  We have you in sight and will cross about ½ mile in front of you.  Are you comfortable with that?"  "SIERRA, this is SUNRISE.  We just wanted to make sure that you were aware of us."  Soon, instead of looking at the port side of the ship, we were looking at it head on, then the right side.  It was making a major course change, eventually passing over a mile astern of us.  That was very nice of them.  BIG tanker.  Riding high in the water.  Going 20 knots.  A VHF radio with integrated AIS receiver paired with a great radar.  Sweet!  REALLY SWEET!!!

In the tropics, you expect to see lots of squalls/thunderstorms at night.  So far this trip, only three very small blips on the radar, total.  Our boat is covered with salt crystals.  Not quite as bad as the lake bed in Death Valley, but we do need a good rain to wash off the salt.  This afternoon, a rain cloud came over and we got a four inch rain.  That's desert count, like we use in Ridgecrest.  The drops were four inches apart.  SUNRISE is still covered with salt crystals.  It is a good thing that our reverse-osmosis water maker is working.  We could not survive on the rain water that we catch.

In the early evening there have been patches of rain clouds all over the sky.  But we are on Moses' boat.  The rain clouds pass on either side of SUNRISE and we get no rain on the boat.  Later in the night, Mrs Moses went to bed and we have one rain cloud after another sprinkle the boat.  The rain is gentle and winds are light, but that is OK.  On other trips, the squalls have had high winds and heavy rain and I have to be out in it shortening canvas.  Life is good.
One of Lynne's college dorm mates, Marilyn, is also sailing toward the Marquesas from Panama, by way of the Galapagos Islands, with Sam.  There was a brief introduction of them, also mentioning us, on page 88 of the May issue of Latitude 38, a Northern California sailing magazine.  The magazine can also be viewed online at latitude38.com. Marilyn introduced Barry to Lynne in 1963, they were in our wedding, she came to our Cursillo and she googled to find our names and our boat. We were new parents together.


Position :  4 50.72' N, 133 43.52' W
Speed : 5.0 knots,  Course : 180 degree

May 17 & 18

A whisker pole
on the front sail 

No sooner had Chantal taught us the word "rien" (nothing) when we looked at the radar and there was something.  Now we need the word for something.  We think the blip on the radar was a big ship, 15 miles away, going to the Panama Canal. It was too far away for us to see it with our eyes.  

Lots of to-do Wednesday with wing and wing, whisker pole, back to broad reach, Barry discovering loose bolts holding the Monitor together and to the boat causing him to climb OUT of the boat again to tighten everything  up.  Oh, my.  I think we saw 30 birds yesterday, petrel types.  Thanks for your emails!!

Thursday afternoon: Radar: rien.  Toilet: counterclockwise.  Pressure cooker: way better than a microwave and maybe better than my iPad.  Angels: forecasters Wally & DGS & Formosa who faithfully and conscientiously put out Nat'l Weather Service, Nat'l Hurricane Center, Climate Prediction Center, Hurricane Predication Center bulletins for us and for everyone on the sea courtesy of US government/our taxes.  Thank you very much!

Friday: It is 32c = 89f in the boat and 90% humidity. HOT! It is better outside because of trade wind breezes.  Apparently, the sun spots are inactive or too much skip, too little bounce or problems with the ionosphere because the SSB can't connect to the land station.  We use San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Watsonville or Honolulu and none will connect.  We are at 9 degrees N latitude which means we are S of that boiling caldron off Central America thus out of harm's way. We are approaching the ITCZ where it is narrow and relatively inactive. That's good for us. Less problems with squalls and thunderstorms which occur in the ITCZ. A few days to the ITCZ, another few to the equator and Barry guesses in all 9 days to get to Hiva Oa. We are faster than last time so far, I think because we sail better. Yesterday was the day to fish if you wanted.  Barry said Vince would love it and would be fishing.  There were other, bigger fish jumping out of the water besides the flying fish.  The squid come to the surface at night so we never see them jump.  Today, rien.

Brad&Debra - The Inmarsat-C sends our position, speed & course to our children 2x/day. Sheryl puts it on the blog as near as I can tell but it took her a bit until she figured out how (we didn’t receive reports until 2 days after their departure).  I don't know what time Stratos/Inmarsat sends it (0830 & 2030).  When I connect to Inmarsat it is polling our position about every 30 seconds.  No noonsite for us. Just have the equipment and knowledge about how to use it in case of emergency.  I'll give you the entry for noon + - for the first 3 days: May5 33d40N, 119d 17W; May6 31d09N, 119d40W; May7 29d19N, 121d12W. (I posted on the blog the locations which usually corresponded with their posts. I’ll post all the daily locations, as that makes more sense for tracking than the blog locations.)

Fri eve: wind speed down to 10 knots and boat speed cut in half (3.5 knots) - bleh!  We agree with Bill Lee, the designer and builder of Santa Cruz brand yachts and legendary race boat MERLIN  - Faster is Funner.  We are plodding along under sail alone, saving our fuel for our crossing of the doldrums/Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), where the wind speed will probably be even lower.

Re: birds. It is fun to be the birdwatchee or birdwatched rather than the bird watcher. The Tropicbirds and boobies (not sure which, as it was dark) especially circle the boat to get a good look, maybe sizing up the perch possibilities. The albatrosses, petrels and storm petrels will occasionally give us a second look. 

Re: food. The kale and broccoli have lasted all this time.  Now we are down to the brussel sprouts.  I guess I will hold my nose and cook them for Barry but NOT eat them. We still have carrots, beets, yams, apples and oranges - all in good shape.

Position :  10 05.16' N, 132 30.56' W
Speed : 5.4 knots,  Course : 196 degree

May 17

No sooner had Chantal taught us the word "rien" (nothing) when we looked at the radar and there was something.  Now we need the word for something.  We think the blip on the radar was a big ship, 15 miles away,  going to the Panama Canal. It was too far away for us to see it with our eyes. And then there was the little fishing boat with orange lights on the horizon that turned out to be the rising moon. It did NOT show up on the radar.  Lots of to-do Wednesday with wing and wing, whisker pole, back to broad reach, Barry discovering loose bolts holding the Monitor together and to the boat causing him to climb OUT of the boat again to tighten everything  up.  Oh, my.  I think we saw 30 birds yesterday, petrel types, storm petrels and 2 tropic birds.  Thanks for your emails!!

Night Sky App

Before we left California we put the iPhone on Airplane mode to be sure the Night Sky star finder app still worked without an internet or cellular phone connection and, sure enough, it did. We thought it used GPS satellites.  Now, out here, no worky. Ditto iPad. Would you please explain.


Oh, my gosh, I just went up (the companionway into the cockpit) and checked and there was a flock! or petrels fishing. When Barry wakes up he will give you a report of the road kill on the deck. If there are birds, there must be squid or something that draws them.


This email won't get sent for another hour when the propagation is better. Sailmail includes a program which tells how well the radio waves will travel at various times of the day for each land station you might try to reach.


Position :  12 03.28' N, 132 06.64' WSpeed : 4.8 knots,  Course : 220 degree 

May 16

From Lynne: What a wonderful birdy, fishy, squidy morning. Took a photo of the squid because they are so pretty.The squid and flying fish were dead on the deck but we also saw "flocks" of fish flying in beautiful synchrony over the water.

Deck squid

Trottiers and Sheryl got us set up with news on VoA. Frankly,the world news is not much different from 12 years ago - troubles in the mid East, people unhappy with their government, etc. but this time more worries about economy.

I will now spend an hour or so with my 3 books trying to figure out the birds. Learning French on computer - fun! Must learn "nobody & nothing" in French for next time's radar report.

I took a photo of Barry doing his laundry - by tossing his dirty clothes into the deep blue sea. I should have brought my ragged clothes for the same purpose.

Wing and wing sails

Sunrise now sailing "dead down wind" wing & wing trying to get west in order to avoid another Low. Tropical Storm Aletta to east will never get this far west. We should be crossing the equator in about one week.

Position : 12 53.28' N, 131 36.08' W

Speed : 6.2 knots, Course : 237 degree

Thanks for the Emails

(For those of you who sent emails to Lynne and Barry, I compiled them into one email and sent it to them by sailmail. Also, I didn't receive position reports the first 2 days of their journey. After they started coming, I started getting the position reports every 12 hours. I post one position for every blog entry. If you want to know the positions every 12 hours since their departure, send an email and I'll forward the positions to you. Until later, Sheryl)

May 14 & 15

From Lynne

Cook's Petrel

I hope you appreciate the 2 or 3 hours I have spent trying to identify yesterday's bird.  I'm guessing Cook's Petrel because it flew fast, strong & zigzag like a bat. It was all dark from a distance, did not follow ships, not graceful and no loop d loops. However, the illustrations show white under the wings which we could not say. Or Hawaiian Petrel because the distribution map looks better but flight pattern not so much. For some of these open ocean species where no one ever is except us, how do they know?  I can tell you for sure there is no shipping or other traffic out here!  We think only three boats went to French Polynesia from California this year and we were one of them.

After careful consideration we have determined that we are not too old for this.  Yay! On the same subject, we are now wearing standard tropical cruising attire. Old, but suits us well. It is hot enough for fans.

Tuesday, May 15 0130.  Oh, dandy! That PSBL TROP CYCLONE/TD (tropical depression) we have been watching over to the East of us for 3 or 4 days,  now has a name!  Aletta was born in that huge pool of hot water West of Central America. We are in cold water, so by the time Aletta reaches us her energy will have been sucked out by the cold water. She is at 10d N moving W, we are at 15d N moving S but if we are fast enough and she is slow enough we won't collide. The weatherfax has turned itself on and in 3 minutes we'll have a sheet of paper with the tropical surface analysis in map form.  The inmarsat delivers the same thing in written form.  Plus the single side band can deliver animated forecasts with colors to our computer.
Another tropic bird today.  You should google Red-tailed Tropic Bird; it is really a beautiful bird! (a picture in previous post).  The first one was close enough to us that we could see the sun shining through the pure white feathers, the hard-to-see thin long tail and the black around the eye - stunning.

Every 10 min we check the radar and can confirm that there still ain't nobody out here but us 2 old chickens!

Barry is going to send an explanation of how Sailmail works but I read it and I don't understand it even though I know what he is talking about.  My explanation: Our computer is connected to a modem which is connected to our  SSB (single side band) radio (which is also a ham radio). The radio waves travel to a land station which turns it back into something a computer gets as email. We send our email to Sheryl who posts it to you - all using Sailmail.  You can write back to us at our email and she will condense it and send on to us.  So please write to us! She says her friends love the blog but so far, of our friends, only Diane and Mim have responded.  We need those XXX & OOOs from Felice!  And you, too.

14 May 2012 by Barry:  We are sending and receiving email from our children and a few other trusted businesses using a high frequency radio operating in the 5 to 23 MHz frequency band, depending on distance and time of day.  We compose the emails on our computer.  The computer is connected to a sophisticated modem which switches the phase of audio tones depending on whether the digital bit is a 1 or a 0.  A program on the computer controls the modem and radio.  We transmit a packet of information to a similar radio and modem connected to a computer shoreside somewhere.  The two radio/modem combinations exchange the necessary data with each other until they are done sending the emails to each other.  The amazing part of the modem involves error detecting methods to determine how much of the received data is error free, how much data needs to be resent, and telling the other modem which data to resend.  The system is amazingly robust in transferring the data perfectly even though the signal to noise ratios are not very high.  The shoreside facility is connected to a network of 20 similar facilities located around the world through the internet.  Any email to be sent to us over the radio is available at each facility. Once we receive the email from any facility, it is removed from the outbox of all of the facilities.  The shoreside facilities forward through the internet emails we send and similarly receive emails intended to be sent to us.  The software and methods were conceived by a small group of ham radio operators.  They have their own network of stations provided and maintained by volunteers.  Marine users do not need to be licensed hams.  Their cooperative association, Sailmail, is lead by one of the ham wizards and his wife who circumnavigated in their sailboat and a world-class sailboat racing navigator and his wife.  Their desire and need to communicate by email on the seas provided the impetus to find a solution.  Combine that with their technical abilities and organizational skills and we and other cruisers and long distance racers now have been provided this useful capability and service.

Sailmail Station Locations

We have to be very protective of our address to prevent it from being disclosed to spammers.  The bandwidth of our radio-based system is very limited and we can only transfer a small number of messages each day, including incoming weather information.    Our children forward to us only what we need to know.  But that is sufficient for our need and we are very grateful that this capability has been made available to us.  When we get shoreside again and can directly connect to the internet, we will review our regular email accounts to get up to date on all that you have sent to us.  So please keep us informed about what is going on in your lives that is important to you and makes your life special to us.

We have been crossing the trade winds for 3 full days and nights now.  The tradewinds blow continuously with little variation in velocity or direction throughout the day or from day to day.  The self-steering system on SUNRISE is set to have the boat sail a fixed angle to the wind.  So 24 hours a day for three days now, SUNRISE  has been going in a straight line.  Just like being on a straight railroad track to infinity.  Never even considered touching the sail trim or steering today.  And it may be like this for the next 4 days and nights.  It is a big ocean out here.  At 6 knots of boat speed, it is a huge ocean out here.  No, more than that.  Its HUMONGUS.  Never-the-less, we need to look around and check the radar every 10 minutes.  You only need to get run over by one ship to ruin the rest of your life. Yet despite all of our looking, there has been no sign of another vessel for a week now.  Ain't nobody here but us Chickens! In November, we will fly from New Zealand back to Los Angeles. Some people say that that 12 hour flight on a 747 is brutal, but to us, it is heavenly.

   
From Barry: 15 May 2012  To make sure we don't collide with the remnant of Aletta,  we have throttled up by unrolling the genoa headsail and adding an extra knot of boat speed.  That makes it noisier and jerkier for us and more strain on the boat and genoa, but we thought it the prudent thing to do.

Genoa Sail

 
The ocean must be more fertile here.  I removed 5 small squid and one flying fish from the deck this morning.  Marine road kill.  We have had as many bird sightings this morning as the previous few days combined. Lynne thinks petrels.


Position :  14 11.64' N, 130 05.64' W    
Speed : 7.4 knots,  Course : 199 degree

May 13

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

From Barry:  We have had 4 days of low wind speed and have either been motoring or sailing slowly with the sails noisily flopping around.  Wind or no wind, the seas overtake the boat and it rocks from side to side and fore and aft.  With low wind speed, the sails flog back and forth as the boat rocks. Not only do the sails noisily flap and snap in the wind, but the sheets holding onto the sails snap and flog and the sheaves, blocks and other hardware that the lines pass through jerk back and forth. The overall sound effect is that of various types of hammers pounding on the boat.

We have moved out of a high pressure area and the wind speed is up.  We have good wind, 16 knots coming over the port side of the boat just aft of beam.  We are broad reaching with six and a half knots of boat speed.  The boat is rocking from side to side as it does when broad reaching and pitching fore and aft a bit as the faster waves from the rear quarter overtake us.  The wind is putting enough pressure on the sails that they are nearly rigid despite the rocking of the boat, which changes the speed and direction of wind that the sails see.  The boat is steering itself with a Monitor wind vane, a vertical plywood blade edge-on to the wind.  If the blade gets blown to one side or the other, it causes a small rudder in the water to rotate one way or the other.  The water flow moves this small rudder to one side or the other as it rotates, pulling lines connected to the boats steering wheel, which turns and changes the direction the boat is going, to keep the wind edge-on to the blade.  We did a lot of work on the boat's rudder system last year to give this self-steering system a good chance to work and it is working amazingly well for the first time since we bought SUNRISE 12 years ago.  This simple wood blade is steering us across an ocean. Simple but beautifully engineered. 
It is a half hour after midnight.  I am standing in the cockpit in the dark, hanging on to the leather-covered railing attached to the back of the canvas spray shield.  I had spent a whole day last year sewing the leather onto the rails.  Now, I thank myself for the soft, sure, comforting grip.  The only sound is that of the water as it quickly rushes by.  It is comforting to hear.  The moon is not up yet and most of the sky is covered with clouds, incredibly black with just a few stars showing through gaps.  All you can see of the ocean is the dimly-lit white foam on the water streaming past the hull along side the cockpit.  More than 5 feet beyond the hull, the water is as black as the sky.  It always seems that the boat is going a lot faster on dark nights like this than in the daytime.  There is a dim glow from the red light on in the cabin and the green glow from the compass light.  The wind is driving 13 tons of rocking and rolling boat through the water relentlessly on a steady course.  No electronics. No motors.  No human input.  The boat is alive!  To me, it is a magical moment. 


13 May2012  Today, the wind crept up into the low 20s.  In nautical terms, it is called a "fresh breeze".  The seas are accordingly up too.  Gnarly.  SUNRISE is rocking and rolling even more than she was yesterday and everything is creaking and groaning from the strain.  Something even sounds like a bleating lamb.  Boat speed is up in the high sixes and into the sevens, with occasionally low eights.  The deck is wet and occasionally the cockpit gets splashed.  The companionway is closed up to prevent salt water from an occasional splash finding its way below.  I am not savoring the experience like I was last night.  Today, we are just hanging on.  It is Mister Toad's wild ride.  Later, at midnight, I realize that I should have reefed the mainsail before Lynne went to bed after dinner.  Now it is dark and the wind is up to 24 knots and SUNRISE is "smoking" through the water.  We are definitely overpowered, from a prudence standpoint, but still riding relatively flat.  I roll up all of the headsail, leaving SUNRISE with a very unbalanced sail plan.  Never-the-less, we slow down a knot, the boat is a lot quieter inside, and the self-steering system continues to handle the situation as well as before.  Definitely, a case of lucking out.
   
Although the sky was covered with a layer of clouds and a bit dreary today, sundown is bringing a brief pinkish cast to the clouds and seas.  No green flash (when the last bit of orange sun disappears below the horizon) for today.  So far on this voyage, we have seen the green flash on two evenings and captured one with the camera.
We keep a chart spread out on the salon table that covers the east Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to the Marquesas Islands.  I plot our current position on the chart twice a day.  Each day we get an inch closer to a tropical paradise.  We are well past the 1/3 point already.


Position :  17 32.60' N, 129 31.92' W  Speed : 4.0 knots,  Course : 194 degree