We have a Crew Overboard Pole on SUNRISE. It is about 14 feet long, weighted on one end with a float about 3 feet up. The other end has a flag on it. The bottom end sits in a PVC pipe lashed to the stern railing. If someone goes overboard, the first thing to be done is to pull the pole up out of its mount and toss it overboard. The pole pulls a floating strobe light off the transom and a sea anchor stowed in a bag tied to the boat. There is a tubular cloth cover for the flag tied to the boat. In the seas out here, it would be very difficult to spot a head bobbing in the water 200 feet from the boat. A flag 10 feet above the water, or a strobe at night, can be spotted a lot farther away. This morning, I go into the cockpit after getting up. I notice the flag cover is dragging in the water behind SUNRISE. I look at the pole. The bottom half is sitting in its mount. The top half has broken off and gone to Davey Jones locker. I guess I will just have to make sure that I stay onboard.
This evening, as sundown neared, the western sky was ablaze with color and the clouds were above the horizon. Lynne says, "Might be a Green Flash night". We try to remember to check every night. The setting sun is orange in color because all the blue and violet is been scattered out to the side while the sunlight is passing through many, many miles of atmosphere. That is why the sky looks blue in the daytime. If not for that scattering, the daytime sky would be black. You only get these many miles at sea or over a very, very flat terrestrial horizon. From a high mountain top or airplane looking over a flat horizon, you get double the effect. When the last sliver of orange sun still appears to be above the horizon, the sun has actually already set. The sun's light is refracted in the atmosphere because of the air pressure gradient and bends around the surface of the earth slightly. Shorter wavelengths refract more, so those colors are the last to disappear at sundown. Since the green is the shortest wavelength still being weakly transmitted through the atmosphere, there will at least be a thin layer of green and yellow above the orange. So when the last of the orange sun has set, the yellow and green is still there for an instant. We get the camera and long focal length lens out and ready. As the last of the sun starts to slip below the horizon, I start recording images. If there was a green flash, it was hard to tell. For a "good" green flash, you need a strong inversion layer. Lynne downloads the images on the computer. The bad ones are deleted and I blow up the good ones. When you get down to the pixel level, you can only see a thin band of yellow-green above the orange. Alas, tonight, there is no inversion layer. Hence, no bright "Green Flash". The same thing also happens in the morning, although rarely seen. It is easy to tell when to look with the setting sun. It is harder to tell when to start looking several seconds before the first bit of the sun rises in the morning. But I did see a great "Green Flash" in the morning on a previous voyage and am proud to have seen it. Years ago on the island Bon Aire, I looked at the setting sun with a 40-power spotting scope Lynne had brought along for bird watching. With almost all of the aperture covered to prevent my eyeball from being burned, I watched the sun start to set. There were multiple inversion layers that evening and the sun's rim looked very jagged. With that much magnification, I could barely see a tinge of blue above the green above the yellow above the orange at each one of the jagged points on the sun's disk. Unforgettable. God's creation is awesome to behold, especially when you know when and how to look. Last night, as the moon set, the horizon was cloud free. I got out a pair of binoculars to see if I could see a green flash as the moon set. With the boat rolling so much, I could not keep the moon in the field-of-view. So looking for a green flash from the moon will have to wait for another time, when I am not on a passage. OK, folks, that's your physics lesson for today.
While Barry sleeps we have a rain squall. Squalls produce gusty winds and churning seas which means Sunrise is buffeted about. Fortunately, we are both to the point where we can sleep through that kind of being tossed about and all kinds of noises. I suppose if we heard leaves rustling in the wind, it would startle us awake. After the squall passes (or we pass it) is when we have seen the most birds - 30 at one time. We continue to see birds almost every day.
Now that we are on the south side of the equator the weather EGCs on the Inmarsat come from Fiji and New Zealand rather than the US. That is a milestone signifying that we have made it to the South Pacific.
One of the most beloved pieces of equipment on this boat are the fans. It is always pleasantly cool in the cockpit with the breezes. Below, we would be miserable without our 7 Hella fans. As a result of poor pre-departure planning, we neglected to get the cowls for our two small dorades conveniently stored from their normal storage location. We did not need them in Oxnard. For now, they are still buried under the strapped down ice chest under the port settee. We will need to be at anchor before we dig them out.
I have not felt fear or anxiety for this entire trip. But now that we are approaching the day when we may have to tie up to a rough concrete dock to get fuel, when we will have to put out fore and aft anchors in a crowded rolly anchorage and when we will have to keep from toppling over when we step on stable land, I can feel the anxiety starting. Sunrise is not happy about this either. She loves the wind and going fast in the vast open spaces - it is for that life that she was created. In a confined harbor, she is kind of clumsy and out of place. She is a strong, safe, fast and beautiful boat but not agile in tight quarters like those coastal/marina type boats. She hated it when we were stuck in that windless little high (as we left CA) and she let us know it. She moaned and groaned and flogged and flopped and banged us around. So now that we are almost in the Marquesas, we promised her that we would move out of that tight anchorage in Atuona ASAP after checking in with customs and immigration and getting re-fueled. We will go to another island where she can be free and feel the wind and we can give her some well deserved TLC. Sunrise would also like you to know how much she loves Simon Willis of Kerikeri, NZ, and the sails he made for her. Simon is a great sail maker and racing sailor and all around fine Kiwi.
Toilet: counterclockwise! Sorry but I read that the characteristics of the particular toilet bowl, the way the water enters and exits has more influence than Coriolis.
Radar: quelque chose - a ship 6 miles away. Thank you, Chantal and Brenda. My French lessons say paquebot for ship but we think that is a cruise ship. What about a container ship or cargo ship?
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