It's Sunday and all is well.
09 February 2014 | South China Sea
Bill
Well, it's Sunday afternoon and all is well. We just had a lunch of a deconstructed Chimichanga. Cook hamburger, onion, garlic, fried flour tortilla strips and enchilada sauce. A great way to have a lunch. Oh, it was topped with melted grated cheese. It was all served on paper plates so they can be torn into small pieces and thrown overboard. Uses less water to have clean dishes and the fish get what's left on the plates(not much). The morning was quiet with only a ship or two crossing either in front of behind us. All a good distance away from us. Nothing like last night. Strange that the excitement happens at night when it's most difficult to see what's going on out in the black. One ship just passed behind us, a good 6 miles off our stern. The weather is sunny and downright hot with hot teak decks to walk on. About 1100, the wind died off to next to nothing and by 1300, we rolled in our genoa sail and started the engine again. We're doing 4.2 knots with the main and forestaysail up but not doing much in the light breeze. Supposed to be in the low teens by now. Maybe later. I have the water maker purring away in the bow making about 8 gallons per hours. The tanks are only about half full at best so when the motor is running, so is the water maker. Better too much in the tanks than not enough. I'd hate to run out out here in the middle of no where. Hopefully we will have more wind later in the afternoon and we can turn off the motor. Meanwhile, the batteries get a good charging, the bottom gets a good cleaning as water washes over it and the prop also gets a good cleaning as it spins.
It's now Monday morning and the Sun is shinning. A nice partly cloudy day. Today will be the hardest day of the crossing as we will be heading across one of the major shipping lanes of the world. It's a freeway out there and the last time we checked, 83 ships showed up on our AIS report. Last night, for a change, we had no ships coming at us from any directions. We ended up motoring till about 1600 and then the winds took over and we sailed through the night. At 0700 this morning they came to a stop and we put on the engine again. It was such a slow day that we did only about 90 miles. Our slowest day by far. Now traveling at about 5 knots Southwest toward the shipping lanes. We will stay outside of them till we see a decent break in the ships and then go straight across the shipping channel as fast as we can. One cruiser told us to pick a spot and when you see a break, head for the stern transom of the ship you want to pass behind and just keep on going.
I think today will make up for the quiet night we had last night during this passage.