Let me describe for you our world right now.

Flying the spinnaker making 6-7 knots, heading northeast toward Cape Flattery, currently located at about the same latitude as Newport, Oregon. That’s the only respectable thing about our situation right now. We have well and truly sailed into what (sadly) passes for a Pacific Northwest summer out here on the wild, grey ocean. Yesterday evening we had a dense layer of fog, our first in three years, to remind us why we will spend the money on radar before our next big trip. This morning we have a low marine layer of clouds with only an occasional breakthrough of a weak and watery sun. My beloved sunglasses sit, forgotten, on the nav station. The status of our cockpit cushions: cold, moist, salty. The status of our salon cushions: salty, moist, cold. The status of the floor: moist, salty, cold. The status of the comforter I pulled out, grateful I had the forethought to keep such things even when we had temperatures over 100 degrees in Mexico: clammy. Our skin is salty in spite of hot
showers at sea. We travel in our foul weather gear and wool socks. Only the visions of clasping our little family tightly to the old maternal breast keep me from turning this boat around and heading back to Hawaii. My tan is fading as we speak. Curses.

Yesterday we caught two albacore tuna. The first one got away as we were trying to land him. Landing a big fish on this boat is just not easy. Even if we ease the sails to slow down we are still traveling pretty fast when dragging a fish. There is a lot of stuff in the way like solar panels, the dinghy davits, and our grill, plus the rigging on the aft deck, not to mention our high freeboard. It’s an obstacle course back there and we do love to fish. So we are busy redesigning the aft deck to make it safer and easier to bring a fish on board. I have great video of the one that got away. The second one I got to reel in and Mike got video of me which is way too long but fairly amusing. We will put all these videos on a page for readers when we get back. We landed the second fish as much of the fight was already out of him before we even noticed we had one on the hook. He had taken so much line out that had he still been really fighting I probably would not have been strong enou gh to
bring him close to the boat. We hope to arrive home with a freezer full of fresh fish all neatly packaged with my handy heat sealer within 30 minutes of being caught. Mmmmm.

Can I just give a shout out to our spinnaker here? What a great sail. If you want a smooth ride a spinnaker is the way to go and we are really putting ours to the test. We do hate the spinnaker sock, however, because it almost always gets caught on the clew of the sail as it’s being hauled up, creating what we call a shit show on the fore deck as I lower the sail so Mike can sort it out again, then raise it back up. Sometimes we do this multiple times before we are successful at flying the sail. We have a lot of creative ways to express our irritation with that piece of equipment. We spent well over an hour on deck yesterday morning trying to sort that thing out. I jumped that spinnaker probably 8 times before we got it right and I have the painful shoulder to show for it. Mike’s adrenal glands took a workout as he maneuvered on a slippery foredeck with very deliberate caution. Even with our offshore vests on we don’t want to fall in this cold water. We want the sail put on a
continuous furler, which will make our lives that much better out here. Mike has that project on his new spreadsheet of boat projects.

By the way, if you have been following our gps track you will note that our track last night was wobbly and in the wrong direction. That’s because the wind shifted a bit and in order to stay the course we would have had to gybe the spinnaker in the dark. That means put the sail on the other side of the bow. This involves a lot of work on deck and running the sheet along the new side of the boat, work we won’t do in the dark unless it is absolutely necessary, which it wasn’t. So we gave up a few miles of east to have a pleasant night and stay safe. Always a good choice in my book. We gybed the sail when what passes for a sun came up this morning.

Did you notice that reference to a spreadsheet above? We now have a spreadsheet of boat projects to be accomplished before we make another voyage. Yes there are enough projects in our heads that Mike has created a document to manage them. So for now, our forward thinking is along the lines of WHEN we go again, not IF. This ocean sailing has got under our skin. In spite of being cold and moist and salty, we still love it out here. Today we hope for another tuna. There is room in the freezer. Here, fishy fishy!

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One thing I can say about this whole voyaging thing: just when you start saying things like “best passage ever!” Or “man, I could keep this up for a month easily!” the gods of cruising over hear you and take a meeting about your seeming complacency. The cruising gods, including but not limited to winds and waves, do not like to be taken for granted and so they decide you have had enough of the good times and they offer you a choice of different sufferings.

In our case we started with about a week of intense and beautiful fast tradewinds sailing. I tell you what, those are the days dreams are made of. Then we got a few days of flat seas and making way under spinnaker, still really dreamy conditions that allowed us to do simple things like sleep and bake bread and view that magnificent Neowise Comet, streaking across the night sky.

Now we have begun to make our way east toward the coast, still over 1300 miles away. The Pacific high we have been skirting continues to morph and move around, but predictably, as the winds move around the high in a clockwise direction, now that we are making a turn east the winds are directly behind us. This wouldn’t be so bad except the seas are fairly big for such light winds, about 3-5 feet. So to sail comfortably we would need to sail due east almost, keeping the waves at an angle to our stern rather than directly behind us. Doing that would certainly be a bad idea as it would sail us right into the middle of the high pressure area and there we would sit. No bueno, as we say.

So our choices of suffering are thusly: suffer through sailing slowly downwind and rolling back and forth, but still making way and in the right direction, or turn on the engine and power north.

Most people probably would turn on the engine. And honestly that’s usually what we would do. But where is the challenge in that? Where is the learning in that? So far on this passage we haven’t used our engine to make way. Not only does that give us a feeling of great satisfaction, it has offered us opportunities for deep learning as sailors. We have learned so much about our boat and our sail systems and what needs improving that using the engine feels like it would be a missed opportunity. So we choose for now to suffer through the rolling, although this morning, after a second sleepless night for us both, crew moral was to a point where I might have agreed had Mike suggested we throw in the towel. I am so glad I have a sailing partner who doesn’t give up easily. When I am feeling weak he stays the course. When he is feeling discouraged I try to stay the course for him. We are still under sail, still under way, and going in the right direction. Take that, cruising god’s!

With well over 1000 miles to miles to go there is still plenty of opportunity for us to get too tired to care, or for conditions to deteriorate to the point where it’s just stupid not to use the engine. After all, a good engine is a necessary piece of safety equipment. But we are in no real hurry. A few days here or there isn’t a big deal at this point. We can afford the luxury of sailing slowly. After all, how often in life do you get an absolutely front row seat for viewing a comet, night after night?

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to just sit in the middle of the ocean and do nothing? Just sit there surrounded by all the shades of blue the eye can hold, see deeply into clear water as gentle swells lift and lower you on the surface of the sea? No? Are we strange that way? Yesterday we had our chance to experience this first hand.

We had been sailing hard for a week, seeing sustained speeds that, while really nice, take a lot of crew of energy. As we sailed toward the high pressure system that should eventually give the Pacific Northwest its summer, our winds began to die back enough that we got out our light air sail, otherwise known as the spinnaker, otherwise known as the pretty sail. We drifted along nicely until something scraped the bottom of the hull a bit and Mike suddenly called down that we had gone over an adrift fishing buoy. What? How did that happen?

I was all on fire to go back and see it so we started up the engine, doused the sail, and went back, keeping the boat in neutral as much as possible as we eased up on a group of three large floats with a trailing line, the kind we are glad we went over without snagging anything. This was a little floating reef drifting in the current and there were literally thousands of big fish surrounding it and under our boat. Coolest thing ever! We came around to the other side of the reef of plastic and Mike dropped a fishing line in the water as I put the boat back in neutral (because I wasn’t ready to use the engine for making progress towards landfall. It was ok to use it to backtrack, but not to cover territory we had not already covered under sail). Less than a minute later we got a big hit and very shortly thereafter we had a lovely Yellowtail on deck. Whoo hooo! We could have caught so many fish right there. But we needed only one and I got the whole thing on video for later. W e
floated aimlessly while Mike cleaned the fish, then we put up the spinnaker and were on our way.

As the morning progressed our speed decreased and we were going less than 2 knots, which is about a 30 minute mile if you are walking. We got some serious napping in.

At 2:30 Mike doused the spinnaker because the winds were not enough to dry a wet finger, much less hold a sail. We had sailed into the edge of the high pressure system. We had a choice at that point. We could turn on the engine (Booooooo!) or we could take a break and wait it out. Looking at our weather we decided we could wait it out and just enjoy sitting there, even spend the night drifting on the silent sea and get some really good rest for the next leg of the trip, which will see higher winds and more effort on our part.

It was totally lovely. We played with some little jellyfish I think are called Velella, if memory without internet serves me well. Correct me in the comments if you think this is wrong. So cute, they could be mistaken for tiny bubbles on the sea. When you look closely at them they are like little discs with sails. We saw a huge and barnacle encrusted sea turtle as well, likely following the velella. Slowing down gives you am entirely different view of things you cannot possibly appreciate if you are constantly on the move.

We set our AIS alarm and went to bed. Mike slept part of the night in his own bunk. Of course we are up several times in the night, both of us, gophering up the companionway and checking the AIS for ships and doing a visual check. But overall it was a day of rest and relaxation we were happy to have.

Aside from the experience of just sitting out here doing nothing, we decided to spend the night because neither of us looked forward to motoring at night. When you motor, your propeller turns. When your propeller turns and you hit things like trashed fishing lines, things can get wrapped around the prop, causing damage. Also causing a trip into the water to get things sorted. We like to avoid that when possible but it was broad daylight when we ran over those buoys. Imagine if we had been going 6 knots in the dark. Ugh. No thanks. On those flat seas we probably could have made serious miles in the dark. But we are not in a race and the risk isn’t worth it unless we have to take it.

And we did feel it was risky because there is a lot of trash out here 1500 miles or more from the closest land. Seriously, it’s depressing. You wouldn’t believe the amount of plastic floating around out here. Humanity is asking for trouble with all this plastic and I am almost 100% certain that outlawing drinking straws is meaningless in the scheme of things. It’s one of those feel good laws that make people think they are doing something to help the environment when they really aren’t because the problem so much bigger than straws, as your last shopping trip to Costco would show you. I couldn’t help but wonder about that gentle sea turtle, hoping it knows the difference between a jellyfish and a piece of plastic. And if you are a creature that takes in large volumes of water with your food, you don’t stand a chance out here. You are going to end up with a lot of plastic in your stomach and eventually it will kill you. It makes this old ecology and animal behavior major ver y sad
to be out all this way and literally be able to count plastic pieces as they float by. If that doesn’t make you feel sad, too, you probably should think about why it doesn’t.

This morning the winds were fresher and we are once more flying the pretty sail out here. We are making the big right turn toward Neah Bay so we are getting on top of the high pressure. I had seriously hoped we might go to Alaska this trip but the weather looks best to just go straight to Washington. Looks like we will have plenty of wind from here on. Homeward bound.

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