Return of the Wind!
11 March 2018 | Pacific Ocean on route to Hawaii
Helen/Mark
Finally got a little wind thru the night, after we turned off the engine. Our clock changed to Daily Savings Time, but our log needed some help getting the right time. We are now one hour further from East Coast Time. I stayed up late again to listen to the HAM net, plus I wasn't tired. At least when I went to sleep we were sailing. The wind stayed around the beam, maybe a bit in front of the port beam. Listened to the radio, played some games and did some reading in-between my helm checks. Mark actually created some programs for Arduino while he was on watch. My 2nd sleep shift went well and it was light when I got up. The wind had decreased a lot. We were not going fast, but at least we were sailing. Mark took us off our rhumb line so we could sail and not bob around waiting for wind. It was rainy and misty and that lasted until after lunch. Charabia was happy for the deck rinse. Woke Mark up for lunch. The ocean was almost flat with little to no wind. Then the breeze filled in and we were able to sail back to our rhumb line. The wind is slightly forward of our beam, but switched to the starboard side with the jib flying on the port side. Mark hoisted the main when I was sleeping. We were sailing at 4-6 knots for the rest of the afternoon. Yeah for the winds. Someone listened to us! I spent some time patching up one of the bumper covers. Then took advantage of the not moving fast time to clean the floors. We watched two more episodes of Dead Zone with a pot of freshly made popcorn. We only have one more episode to go. Mark is putting together a Radar Reflector. This will make us more visible to other ships. No ship sightings over night. We missed reporting that Mark spotted a vessel that passed only a half mile in front of us early morning on Saturday. The ship was called Kraken and was listed on AIS as a pleasure craft. It did not show up on our radar until it was about 4 miles from us. With the steady winds now, the ocean swells are increasing in size. We are getting a little more motion onboard. We did not see the sun today, so our solar panels only got indirect light to charge with. It's totally cloud cover 360 degrees today.