Another great day of sailing on this big blue lagoon. Nothing much happened, Very un-eventful. A little struggle during the previous night with the port chart plotter, I pressed ‘display off’ and it would kindly remind me to to press a button to enable the display in bright white letters. Its pitch black out, I wanted to turn off the display to preserve night vision, but every 2 minutes, a bright message would say press here to turn on the screen.. Who designs this stuff? So next I tried, stand by mode, at least that standby mode lasted around 5 minutes before coming back on? B&G can do better, The starboard one had a different issue months ago, but worked through that one with support, now need to remember or contact support again to figure out the magical reset sequence.. The new NEON based chart potters do not compare with the previous versions. Enough there back to sailing.
Tried our hand and trolling today, after news that friends just landed a Mahi, the elusive fish that mostly escapes me. I even had fresh new lures the guy at the shop said were good for Mahi Mahi.. No such lock so it was a trolling day, not a fishing day. To be fair, it’s going to have to be a fast Mahi to see and catch the lures at 8+ knots, like today.. Should have put the larger lures in, but didn’t want to catch a tuna that dives deep then clean it. So just sailed along peacefully.
With no excitement from the trolling lines, We resorted to working, or more correctly volunteering Christine’s copious time. She signed us up to study the world one droplet of sea water at a time. We toss a torpedo looking weapon off the back of the boat and tow it for a bit, hope that a shark doesn’t mistake it for lunch, then pul it in to see what lurks in the waters around us. I have asked If I can paint the torpedo to look like a giant lure to attract and serve as a flasher / teaser and get reminded this torpedo is for science, my toys are just toys. I do as I’m told, occasionally. Christine does all the work of collecting the samples and logging them to the Citizens of the Sea app, and when we arrive we will turn over the samples for the real scientists to make discoveries of what lies beneath or within our oceans. This is part of our daily routine on passage.
Picture of part of the process as we left New Caledonia
And Yes, we do play Tom Petty on the stereo during this process.
All in all another good uneventful day. Few miles closer to the destination, 300 or so, looks like 2 more sleeps out here on the ocean. Tomorrow is shaping up to be an engine day, but before we get there a frontal band has to cross our path. Possibly rain and 30kts gale force winds.
Sausage / Egg / Bagel for breakfast and another crowd favorite Pulled Pork quesadillas for dinner.
