Real Food

We're all feeling quite a bit better today. Thanks to our former marina neighbor, Marie, we had some real food -- beef burritos -- for dinner last night, which seemed to lift everyone's spirits. Our diet of crackers and more crackers with an occasional apple was getting tiresome.

We've been having strong winds, about 27-30 knots, and big, unpredictable swells, up to 15ft or so, which are a big factors in our shared seasickness. I was hit the worst by it, but everyone felt it this time. Last time, Nora and Jason were pretty much immune to it. We're all getting better now. It only took four days! It has definitely been warmer than last time, so at least we were sick in swimsuits instead of multiple layers of ski clothes. Today it was around 95 degrees most of the day.

Because of the strong winds, we've ben making what we consider to be really good time, averaging about 6 knots. That feels fast on our boat, but I know a lot of my friends could easily outrun us. I try not to spend too much time thinking about that.

We saw a lot more flying fish (Jason found one this morning that tried to fly over the boat and didn't make it) and a couple of frigate birds. No garbage so far. We did encounter another boat, though, a Japanese fishing vessel. We managed to avoid it.

We have a handy-dandy new gadget on the boat now, a windvane. It's sort of like a manual autopilot. You set it to hold to a constant angle of wind to water flow, and you tie it to the steering wheel, and it just keeps turning the wheel as needed to stay on the course you've set. That's MY explanation. It's very basic. Jason can explain in much greater detail. The electronic autopilot used a ton of our limited power, so we're happy to have this as a different option. It seems to be working perfectly. We're expecting the wind to die off a little tomorrow, which will make for more comfortable conditions.

We're getting closer to the ITCZ (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, also known as the doldrums), where we should expect to get a little bit of every type of weather every day. We've heard stories of boats lingering there for a month of more due to a lack of wind, so we're not going to hesitate to use our engine a little. Call us cheaters if you want. We're okay with it.

What we ate today:
Breakfast: Saltines and apples!
Lunch: Bean burritos (one can of refried beans, spread out onto tortillas and passed around
Supper: macaroni and cheese with peppers and pepperoni

I can't get the little map to show up at the top any more. What worked last year isn't working now, so we're just going to have to give our coordinates here and you can plot them if you want.

Latitude: 13.9372 N
Longitude: 156.666 W


https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?zoom=4&size=600x300&markers=color:purple%7C13.9372,-156.666