Day 4 - San Blas to Marqueses
08 May 2007 | 18 02.17N, 109 24.00W - time: 1915 hrs
Steen
Day 4. The day the wind turned north and almost disappeared.
Current conditions: Wind/weather - currently NNW 8 knots, Partly cloudy, 80 F (15-20 knots last night) Sea state - today: choppy NW swell, 5 to 6 ft at 4 seconds apart, calming this evening to 10 seconds Boat speed/course - 3.5 to 4.5 knots under full main and drifter. Course: 220 degrees
What a different feeling the boat has when running downwind with choppy seas; noticeably less comfortable than beating. For the last 24 hours, the boat motion has been side to side every 2 seconds. We no longer have the stable heel to port that we had yesterday. Radiance is happiest when she is beating to the wind a bit. The last two days she has been sailing like a freight train, just tracking along 40 degrees to the wind. Sailing downwind is not really her thing, especially not in light wind. Hopefully, these fickle winds will only last a few more days until the good solid north-westerlies kick in. Mileage-wise we are doing great. Even though we had a very slow 1st day, we were just short of sailing 300 miles in our first three days. A 100-mile day is our goal and that will get us to the Marqueses in 28-days.
Not a whole lot of activity on board today. Some reading, playing, baking and napping. Most cruisers making a passage say they S.E.W. all the way (Sleep Eat Watch). I guess you can say we S.P.E.W. (Sleep, Play, Eat, Watch).
We saw a lot of flying fish today, maybe we will find some on deck tomorrow morning. But besides the flying fish we have not seen a soul. Not a ship, dolphins, whale, plane, nothing.
Tomorrow is day five and we (Malou) gets to open "day-5 present" from our friends at Momo.
It is time for the night watch. We will write again tomorrow, unless Malou has completely disassembled the computer by then.