Half Way Point
27 March 2009 | Pacific
Mary
Half Way!
Today we passed the half way point and are now closer to the Marquesas than to Mexico.
Other big news for the day, we experienced our first large tropical squall early this morning. Imagine a thunder cloud so big and scary that it actually shows up on radar, this one was an inky blob six miles long and two miles across. We have not had any rain for 4 =BD months (Sorry Seattlites) so it was a real shock to the system and we seem to have acquired several leaks again. Imagine how stinky we were getting since our last shower was back in La Cruz, so Mary handed me the soap and I lathered up in the rain. We put our plan of catching water off the biminy (canvas sun cover over the cockpit) into action and Mary had a very civilized time bathing and washing her hair with the water we collected when the sun was up and it had gotten warm. What a difference that makes for your attitude.
Conditions have calmed down today and we are having a much more comfortable sail. The down side is that we are moving much slower, so the second half of the trip may be a bit longer than the first half. We spent the morning cleaning up the boat and drying everything that had gotten soaked in the rain. After the naps, we started to do minor sail repairs on the main that turns out to be a much larger project than we expected. A close inspection shows that there is quite a bit of chafe requiring a mix of preventative work and some re-stitching. Definitely something that should have been done during our leisure time in Mexico, but that whole "manana" thing just got in the way.
Some of our friends have arrived in the islands and report that they can smell the flowers from the anchorage. We can't wait.