To The Marquesas - April 14
01 April 2010 | La Cruz, Mexico
Joe
Well, dear friends and family, Adrienne and I are poised to leave La Cruz, Banderas Bay, Mexico, and point our barco towards 04 degrees North /130 degrees West - an intermediate waypoint, and from there probably head due South in order to cross the ITCZ (zone of rain, thunderstorms, lightning, light and variable winds - stretching thousands of miles East to West, but only about 250 miles North to South. Once across that and the Equator we will pick up the Southeast Trades, and form a course to Atuona, island of Hiva Oa, Marquesas. The South Pacific!
How it will be on this voyage is of course both known and unknown but the Southeast Trades currently have a mostly Easterly component and are blowing at a steady 12 to 15 knots. That means the vessel has the wind on the beam or a little aft of the beam, heading West of South. The Marquesas lie about 140 degrees West. Picture the boat with jib, main and mizzen up - nose pointed a little bit away from the seas - sliding along fairly across each sea as it presents itself. Perhaps the main is reefed (a panel pulled down and hidden from the breeze, so less area) and the boat is steered by the wind, thanks to the Monitor wind-vane self steering device. It's Monitor #525, a very early one, and we were lucky to buy it from Hermy and Jack of S/V IWA a year ago.
We should be able to put in 140 miles a day once in the Trades, and boats have been making their destination in 20 days! This is a big improvement on 30 days - which we expect to be our maximum passage time.
Those of you who would like to keep an eye on our progress might go to the Pacific Seafarers Net web page. They have a net every day at 0300 Zulu (UTC or GMT) and as each boat checks in with their position and weather, PacSea puts this information up on the web site within a short time. Go to the current roll call. The web site is:
http://www.pacsea.org/
We are not yet enrolled, so you won't see us there yet.
Our call sign is:
KD8KBR