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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You know that phrase “never have I ever”? Sure you do. Well never have I ever cut a naked man’s hair in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Until. This. Day. I had no idea this was on my bucket list but the day arrived and I seized it. It was a perfect day for wielding sharp instruments over my husband’s body in relative safety. Winds are softer today and the seas are gentle. We are heeled about 10 degrees without any of the big waves that hit the boat like thunder claps. So I grabbed my bag of scissors, a towel, and a rat tailed comb and set up shop in the cockpit.

Mike has been growing his hair out since the Covid 19 hit and he had to stop going to Mexican barber shops. I haven’t seen it this long since the early 1980s. We have been moving well into man bun territory with his hair and while I do love me a nice man bun on the right person, I felt like since we are moving home to find jobs for awhile he would be misleading employers if he showed up with his hair in a topknot, regardless how tidy. He doesn’t do enough yoga or meditation to rock the look without question. I mean, what if his potential employer wants to go for a burger and the assumption is that Mike is a vegetarian? That could lead to all kinds of unpleasantness. In order to transition slowly into civilized culture where people are expected to at least wear pants, I convinced him to let me have a go at that hair. Hair first. Pants later.

I have hair cutting scissors because I used to wear bangs and had to trim them about every week. What I also have are my grandmother’s thinning sheers. She used to cut her own hair with them and I imagine the last time they were sharpened was 1967. I got to work with my implements of destruction and happily snipped away. The thing about Mike’s hair is that there is a lot of it and it both curls and waves, as well as growing in all different directions like it can’t decide which way to go. So even though I have zero haircut training, I have watched hair being cut many times and I figure I inherited haircut knowledge from my grandmother. Plus I am pretty good at acting like I know what I am doing even if I am clueless. Confidence is half the battle won. Between my confidence and his hair which hides all kinds of disastrous cuts with its curls, it doesn’t look half bad. After the cut he bounced and behaved all the way to the aft deck shower to rinse off. It was so cute. He couldn’t stop touching his hair.

When he gets his hair cut for real back home someone’s surely going to ask, in a tone that here means ‘oh my god who did this to you’, where he got his hair cut last. I encourage him to say ‘In the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a boat going 5.5 knots at a 10 degree heel by an overly confident woman with no training using dull scissors. Any further questions there, pardner?’. Then I will jump out and photograph the look on the barber’s face and it will be hilarious.

Also we caught a Dorado today but also our fridge is acting up for the first time in 3 years. That figures because it did the same thing on the way out of Puget Sound when we started the trip. So now I have to go hold tools for Mike and admire his new haircut while we check the freon level.

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