PPJ Day 3 - into the groove, keep those comments coming
05 April 2016 | The Pacific Ocean
Vandy
First of all, thank you to everyone who's been commenting on our blog. Through the magic of Sailmail, we can now enjoy reading your comments on board, even out here in the middle of the ocean. We can't reply, though, so please don't think we're ignoring you.
By Monday, our third day at sea, we were both feeling much more chipper, having shaken free of our "first days at sea" malaise. We're getting into a groove now, life as usual, on a randomly-moving surface. We took hot showers this morning, communicated with some friends on another boat and with Kelly using our DeLorme InReach, and even played a few games of Spite & Malice in the cockpit in the afternoon. Eric won 4 out of 5 games; the Force was strong in him today.
Eric was net controller for the morning PPJ radio net, and as soon as he was done, we unpacked our spinnaker and let it fly. That turned out to be a good call, as the wind stayed between 8 and 12 knots all day, from nearly behind us, and the chute pulled us along quite nicely. We took it down before sunset, though, not wanting to fly it at night. It does a good job, but it's still a tweaky sail that you have to keep an eye on.
Eric had a good time chatting with people on the single sideband radio during his first watch.
Here's a goofy thing: Every morning so far, at about 6 am - in fact this just happened again - when I scan the horizon, I am startled by the presence of a bright orange light that has suddenly appeared since my last scan. A second later, I realize that it's not a ship about to run us down but just the moon, beginning to peek above the horizon. Phew.
A flying fish made a bold move today, flying in through the starboard side of our stern pulpit, continuing across the cockpit, glancing off one of our canvas chairs, and exiting through the port side stern pulpit. I happened to be looking toward the back of the boat when the fish zipped across, otherwise we would have been perplexed at the origin of the wet spot and the few stray scales on the fabric of our chair.
Some dolphins came by during my first watch, around midnight. I couldn't see them, but I could hear them exhaling - "PFFFFFFFT!" - as they swam nearby.
Deck Check: one squid, no fish
At 7 am our position was 17 33'N, 111 03'W which means that we traveled 130 miles since yesterday morning.