Day 27 & 28 to the Marquesas
17 April 2012 | Outbound Cabo, Inbound Marquesas, French Polynesia
Day 27 & 28 = 75 nautical miles. 336 left to go. Being in the doldrums, you can expect lots of days with little or no wind and that's what we've had. We had something else too...a broken toilet! Don is such a good husband - he didn't like seeing me using 'the bucket' so he went to work. Since we weren't sailing anyway he proceeded to take the head completely apart, all the way down to the y-valves and hoses. He cleaned everything thoroughly, especially the hoses that become completely clogged with...what is that stuff? Dried urine? Not sure. Anyway, it gets hard as a rock in there and takes a lot of effort to clear. We found a rebuild kit for the head in our spare parts and he replaced all the rings and springs and whatever else is replaceable. It just occurred to me that all you landlubbers reading this might find this subject distasteful. Well, in the boating world, everyone has a marine head, they all have issues from time to time, and they all smell occasionally. When you go to someone else's boat - if you don't know them that well it's bad form to ask to use their head. If you do know them well, it's ok to use it but they usually have to tell you the finer points of using and flushing their particular model. There's lot more on this subject but I'll leave it at that. So, after a day and a half we had a sparkling clean working toilet. Now he won't have to spend a day or two of our island time doing that particular job. We've been talking alot about how the heck we're going to get to Nuka Hiva with no wind. We decided that any time there is even a ripple, we've got to spring into action and move forward if only a mile. Don wanted to finish his book the other day but I kicked him in the butt and we got the spinnaker flying in 5-6 knots of wind for 4 hours (and that says alot because it isn't one of my favorite sails...yet!) During the day you can sail with the spinnaker and still see any squalls coming and douse it if danger is near. At night it's much harder to do that but it's something that we may have to do anyway if we want to see land any time soon. Last night would have been a good night to fly it because it was a starry night and any rain clouds caused the stars in that area to disappear. Last night however we were both so exhausted that we just put up our staysail and ghosted slowly through the night making 7 miles or so. We seem to be tired all the time now. I wanted to get a few things accomplished on this passage but after a few weeks of disrupted sleep it's hard to get serious about any endeavor except sailing the boat, feeding yourselves, and napping alot. Don was up early in the day getting the spinnaker ready to go again since we've finally made our way far enough west to have a nice point of sail to use it. We had 6 hours of spinnaker time before the rain clouds and squally conditions closed in on us again. So here we sit, no wind, no sails up, waiting. I guess it's time for a Pacifico.