Girl overboard!

Hi! It's Grace again.

"Dolphins! Girls, there are dolphins!" Nora and I crawled out of our sleeping bags with our hair going everywhere and stumbled toward the cockpit. When we got to the bow, the sun had just come up, and there were ten or fifteen dolphins swimming and jumping around us. They were right in front of us and less than four feet away sometimes. We could see the cute little faces and fins of the happy creatures. It was one of the best good mornings ever.

After our breakfast of cereal, rice cakes and peanut butter, or ramen noodles, we noticed that the fishing line we had left out overnight was pretty tight. Papa pulled it in and we saw a terrifying toothy thing. It was long, silver, spiky, and just plain scary. We decided not to eat it because it didn't have a whole lot of meat on it. (Plus Mama said it was too ugly to eat, anyway.)

Later, the sun was beating down, and Mama wanted to try being dragged behind the boat to cool off. (We're going pretty slowly because the wind is light, and we just want to keep moving if possible.) As we strung a line to hang from the stern, Papa and I joked about having to circle back for a man overboard drill. We thought Mama was crazy, and it definitely looked weird, but it was really super fun to slip off the swim platform and grab the line to be dragged. Papa did a cool twisty thing to slide off the platform and I decided to try it, too. Why not? As I bounced off, the water pulling me and the sunscreen on my hands jerked the line away from me, and I was underwater, thinking, I'm not attached to the boat anymore. I popped up and saw the boat leaving me. Quickly. I was alone in the ocean. I actually wasn't scared and just enjoyed watching the boat turn around to come get me. I thought, this is the farthest I have been from those people in three whole weeks. They came and got me easily and no one seemed scared.

We swam again after that also. We took in the sails this time and jumped off the bow and swam in the clear blue water. Over five hundred miles offshore, we were enjoying the prettiest water I've ever seen.

A nice long, sunny afternoon followed and ended with the wahoo from yesterday for dinner. Actually, our day hadn't ended yet. Right after we finished dinner, we looked over to see a taut fishing line and splashing on the end. We hurried to clean up and Nora reeled in a 30-inch wahoo. Papa quickly took care of him and we watched a beautiful sunset. Now our day has ended.

Sailing stuff:

For those interested in the technical stuff about sailing, this is Jason. I could really geek out about all the various lines, halyards, sails, and rigging and then go on and on about diesel mechanics, watermakers, electrical systems, plumbing and deck maintenance, but I can save that for the up close and personal interview, if needed. All I can say is that while the LA to Honolulu route may be considered "the milk run," the North Pacific stuff from Neah Bay was not so milky...or pacific. There are days in my log where I entered apparent winds of NW 25 to 35 knots, and we were heading downwind. There are nights that we were not quite close hauled and seeing 30 knots, sails reefed to the size of handkerchiefs, and swells of 20 feet. I felt that for the first ten days, we were under assault by the seas, winds, and skies. That being said, all is wonderful now. We have cruised along all day the last two days with the huge cruising spinnaker up, the full mainsail out and prevented, and comfortably making good time in light wind and seas. The last three days have seen the NNW of 15 to 20 kts clock around to E then ESE wind of 10 to 12 knots and the swell and wind waves have really died off the last three or 4 days, too. Today was the smoothest yet, wind waves of 2 to 3 feet from the E, swell 4 feet from the NE but with something like a 15 second period and consistent gentle ESE winds around 10 knots. This is finally the kind of sailing that I think I'm qualified to do! We hope for another good day tomorrow.