Monthly Archives: March 2019

Realtime Passage to Easter Island #09

Nick Cage double feature today, still low winds and waves lasted all night. Some deep sleep by both of us, slightly different schedule than normal with longer sleeps. Slept in past breakfast today so made eggs for a brunch during “Raising Arizona”.
The wind and waves tried to return, started touching 10 knots and that pushes the boat along nicely for the second feature of “Snowden”.
Before “Snoden” finished the AIS alarms went crazy. What? Someone? Something else out here? Low and behold our second and third vessels on this journey. 2 Spanish fishing boats were out fishing, one of which zig-zagged in our direction causing multiple collision alarms. Never really was close to us, several miles away most of the time, be could see the ‘deadliest catch’ style fishing boat out running in circles.
Tonight will mark the 1/2 way point somewhere just after midnight. We still have our clocks on Chile time, just to keep consistent. At this point the time zone is at least 3 hours off. The GPS says it is 5pm, our Chile time says 8 pm. It is easier to remember one time conversion when wondering what time it is back home without changing with every time zone we cross. That and the shift times don’t change. The sunrise and sunset are where the confusion comes in. Sunrise used to be 7am, but is getting later and later on our clocks, its now 9am. 🙂
All good on board, Burgers and Pringles for dinner. Eating too many snacks on night shifts as the fruits are being consumed. Down to the last avocado, probably finish that tomorrow.
Sailing full sails now. Wind on beam but barely 10 knots of breeze. We shall see if it holds through the night.
Cheers
832 of 1624 miles left to go. [realtime]

Realtime Passage to Easter Island #07

Wednesday morning, start of day #5.
Lots of good hard sleep last night. A pretty boring, uneventful night. Just after dinner the spinnaker folded, the wind sort of returned enough to fly again. On the second fold just before dark there was no reviving the flying. Just a huge wet kleenex hanging from the mast. One of the easiest ways to take down a spinnaker is to have no wind in the sail.
Put Bertha back in its sleeping bag and turned on the engines and thats how the night went. One engine making some electricity and pushing us slowly toward the destination. Seems the forecasted wind ‘hole’ had shown up early and not expected to fill back in until Friday the 22nd.
We will try to find some way to sail but without wind it’ll probably be pretty fruitless. Looking at the jib right now its starting to show signs needing to be put away too, had some wind in it over night but just enough to keep it from flapping.
All is well, might be a double feature movie day. Any suggestions – might have to break out ‘Captain Ron’ and see how many new phrases we can pick up. “If its gonna happen its gonna happen out there” or “We’ll just pull in and ask for directions”

1610 of 1624 miles left to go. [realtime]
At 3/20/2019 @ 11:50 AM UTC Our position: 32°09.89’S, 090°32.76’W Traveling 5.0 heading 285T
Google says we are here www.google.com/maps/place/-32.16483,-90.54600

Realtime Passage to Easter Island #06

Day #4 the winds and waves finally got in synch, winds about 15 knots and the seas have come down and are rolling along in the same general direction as we are going. Started with wing on wing over night, at day break put big Bertha into service, Bertha flies from the top of the mast and can touch the water if she is not flying straight. Woke up Christine to help launch her. Flew great all day, even almost making it through an Adam Sandler movie “Do Over”, complete with popcorn, but alas Bertha was tired of being ignored and demanded some attention. Jibbed the spinnaker over to the starboard side and off we went and this time directly toward where we want to go. Yippie.
The forecast has the winds dying to zilch for 2 days, hopefully the forecasts will be off like they seem to have been lately, but our normal is that the winds will probably take a break.
Since its Tex-Mex Tuesday, migas for breakfast and fajitas were on the menu. Lots of grilled veggies for the fajita before they go past their cook by date. 🙂
Great day, no sun, but not terribly cold t-shirts and long pants weather. Couple of naps and general checking of weather. Still no sightings of other vessels, other than day one. As I type this the wind is slowing down already, down to 10 knots and coming more out of north than east. Might be taking down the spinnaker sooner than later. \
1099 of 1624 miles left to go. [realtime]
At 3/19/2019 @ 10:18 PM UTC Our position: 32°28.72’S, 089°12.95’W Traveling 6.6 heading 279T
Google says we are here www.google.com/maps/place/-32.47867,-89.21583