Hello from the North Pacific!
[First sunrise of the passage.]
This morning, about the time that my watch was over, the wind subsided substantially, then became switchy, the petered out. We did a circle, trying to find the new wind direction, then gave up and turned on the engine. It's been on all day.
What a difference a day makes! Where yesterday the ocean was bumpy and snarly, today it was mellow. Long rollers lifted Scoots and moved on toward shore. The ocean, from horizon to horizon, was like a great plain, textured with hills and valleys, all undulating. It was as if a Kansas prairie had been animated. And painted blue.
The weather was sunny and almost warm today. A lovely day to be out sailing. Or motoring if you're in a hurry, like we are. Eric and I took turns on watch, to give the off-watch person a chance to catch up on some sleep. We were both pretty tired after yesterday's sail.
[Eric enjoying a calm day watch.]
The shearwaters are amazing! I love to watch them skim the surface of the waves. I haven't seen any of them catch a fish, so I don't know how they do it. I think I saw a black-footed albatross, too. I say *think* because I expected them to be bigger, from all the hype, but this one was like a goose-sized shearwater. And since there are no goose-sized shearwaters here, I suspect that it was an albatross. A kittiwake flew a lap around Scoots this morning, to check us out. I've seen lots of birds, but no other creatures. I'm still hoping to see a whale...
Seeing how empty of obstacles the ocean is, in the daylight, reinforces my confidence that it will be the same at night. We do, of course, keep a constant vigil for ships, day and night, both visually and with our AIS display. Our AIS is an amazing thing: if a ship comes within the range that we set, it will show up on our display, along with the calculated distance and time to us. Based on that, we can take appropriate action, if necessary, to make sure we don't get to close to each other. It's been very handy both on this trip and during our foray in the fog last August.
The wind has been trying to find itself all day. The forecast is for light winds (check), switching to a light NW, then to a strong N that we'll ride home.
I am a day behind posting these, but I'll try to catch up....