This Heading sucks, you should change it - The passage , part 2

HE PASSAGE, PART TWO, THE CROSSING

First things First this is going to be my perspective and I have left quite a lot out as others want to fill you in on those things.

NOTE:  One of the reasons we left from Cabo was the angle and height it gave us.  I had watched a lot of the boats go from Puerto Vallata and Acapulco the months before and noticed most of them headed west for a week before they dropped south west.  This seemed to be because the winds were further out west.  On talking with a few of these boats over the radio while on passage and once we got to the Marquesas it became apparent that the worst sailing was the week near the Mexican coast.  We managed to miss this and hence sailed a way faster trip than if we had left from other parts of Mexico.  So thank you to all the puddle jumpers that provided us with that information. It was a great help.

On May 21st at 2200 UTC(universal time coordinated, Greenwich Mean Time, Zulu time) we left Cabo San Lucas for the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia.
The next 5 days were arguably(at the time in my mind there was no arguing, it definitely was) the most miserable 5 days of my life.  I felt like I had the worst hangover ever(for those who don't drink think food poising or a really bad case of the flu) that involved me throwing up for three days and not really eating.  The real beauty of this is you also need to combine it with a fear that I have never experienced before, a sense of feeling trapped because you really can't turn back and the fact you have to work and do your chores or else it puts too much pressure on everyone else an then the whole boat fails.  Hence, MISERY.  And misery certainly does love company and I had plenty of that.  Leslie and Carl both felt similar feelings of sickness only to a lesser degree and after a week of having every meal she made end up either burning her and/or on the floor, Lisa was right down there with me.  The only person who seemed to be enjoying himself was Donald and that only served to sprinkle more hate on the cake full of hate that was baking inside of me.  We did however pull ourselves together after 5 or 6 days and when I look back on it I am really proud of all of us for getting through that.  It also needs to be said that for all his egotistical behavior and moraly superior attitude we would probably not have gotten through that first week without Don.  He was in his element and kept us safe and up beat when all I wanted to do was tell him to FUCK OFF(I am sorry for this language but no other word seems to do it justice).  It also amazes me that neither him nor his sister ever showed any signs of sickness and were quite comfortable chatting and hanging out while I was throwing up over the side.  I am not sure where they got this ability but it sure was handy on this trip.

the second week got a little bit better.  The main reason was because it seemed that we had finally learned how to use our sails and the sail direction to our advantage.  We no longer looked for the safest option(this I learnt can be deceiving and the safe option can very quickly turn into the dangerous option) but for the one that best suited the conditions.  We finally put up our Genniker(this is a big sail that is an in-between of a spinaker(the big colorful one you see in races) and the genoa which is smaller and tighter) which allowed us to sail down wind so much better and with a lot less banging of our boom.  It also righted the boat and kept it relatively level as opposed to the 15 to 20 degrees of heel we had spent most of our time at in the previous week.  The seas mellowed a little  and we got our confidence up to sail at night with the bigger sails.  This all combined to make the second week rather pleasant.  Some of us were sleeping better(Carl probably had the most trouble here and that came into play in week three), Lisa was having a better time in the kitchen and the boat seemed to be settling into life with us as her crew.

At the end of week two we hit the ITCZ(Inter Tropical Convergence Zone -better known as the Doldrums).  What a useless little part of the world this is.  This is the area in the middle of the world where the southern and northern trade winds and currents boarder as they make their turn to circle back into their respective hemispheres.  What then this creates is a bunch of useless space for sailors and boaters alike where there are few currents or winds and what currents there are work against the winds.  the weather patterns also form to create these little systems called squalls which tend to last a very short time(the ones we had never lasted more than a couple of hours and most were about a half hour) but are very very nasty.  These little storms hounded us for 3 days but in talking with others we got off pretty lightly.

This week was also the week we got introduced to the wonder that is weather.  The sunsets were amazing.  The few nights we had that there were no clouds in the sky was ridiculous.  So many stars all over the skyline including to the horizon and so very bright.  Carl had a little program on his phone which allowed him to point his phone at the sky and it would tell him what the stars were.  It was also cool to watch the main northern hemisphere stars fall off for good and the new southern hemisphere stars arrive.  I have also developed a new love for clouds.  It was rad seeing the different formations and figuring out what weather came with what type of clouds.  It is different in the ocean than what happens on land but it is hard for me to describe.  Anywaise I like it.

And that was week two which closed with us being 164 Nauical miles from the equator.

Week three opened up with us passing through the equator.  We did this at 05:41 on June 6 UTC time(this was the middle of the night for us).  We got up for some pictures then continued our regular watches.  The next morning we pulled the boat up(we hove to properly for the first time) had some champagne, cut our hair and jumped in the water.  Everyone went in including the dog, and it was one of those things i will never forget.  As we were still moving a little(when hove too you are still moving a little) we put a line out to hold onto and one of the things Don, carl and I did was to put on a face mask and look at the bottom of the boat.  We did this to see if it needed any attention.  It didn't but then I looked down and let the boat drag me along looking out into the ocean.  I thought this would be scary as I have looked into the blue nothingness before but only when diving or snorkeling.  I think the comparison when doing this near shallower water makes the deep, deep water scary.  Doing it this time it was more beautiful than anything I have ever seen.  The water colour was a blue like nothing I had seen before and you could see forever.  It was just one of those really cool experiences.

Anyway off we went after that and the next 5 and a half days were the fastest we sailed all trip.  Really rolly but fast.  We just put our heads down and charged for the Marquesas.  The picture below is what we found when we got there.  We were very happy.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE.

- Leaving Mexico
- the first 5 days. Obviously
- the washing machine effect.  This was the first 5 days, a day or two in the doldrums and the last 5 days where the boat goes up and down and side to side all at once all day.  This was pretty sweet.
- the bird that perched itself on our mast for 2 days and left its body weight in poo on our Genniker.
- The big fish that stole all our hooks and line.
- The ITCZ,  That pace sucks.  I always envisioned the Doldrums to be perfectly flat with no wind when in reality the swell is always there and this is what makes them so crap.  With no wind to push on the sails to stabilize the boat you spend hours or even days in this vicious side to side motion.  we had an engine so we could power out of it in a few days but it must have really sucked back in the day when boats didn't have engines.
- the constant lack of sleep.  You keep surprisingly busy when you are on a passage.  I guess that makes sense when it takes two of you, 2 hours to do the dishes and this happens twice a day.  We also didn't have any automatic way to steer the boat so someone always has to be on the wheel.  The main reason for our lack of time to do anything was sleep, or lack there of.  I calculated that I personally had 11 hours a day of freetime.  Those 11 hours are split up in 4 or 5 patches of which 3 hours is the longest opportunity you get at one time.  For the first week, of those 11 hours I reckon I slept for about 2 hours per day.  The next week  it went up to 3-4 hours per day and the last week I think I peaked at 5 hours per day.  I was so tired after the first few days tat the rest of those 11 hours were spent trying to sleep.  I was to tired to do anything else.  However the ocean conspired against me and provided a number of reason not to sleep, including:  The constant pitching and rolling never let you relax as you are always bracing against it.  A number of times I woke up and my arms and legs we so sore I could barley get up.  The creaking of fiberglass and loud bangs of something falling or a door that was left open smashing against the wall.  The worrying about things that haven't happened yet(I am really good at this),  The waterboarding you get in the middle cabin when rain or a wave hit an open window(close the windows you say, well I say don't jump to conclusions before you know the whole story and read the next reason), the stifling heat and humidity when all the windows are closed(see now what do you do smarty?) And then there was the banging(as explained below)
- the last 5 days sucked.  For two main reasons. 
1)  The course we chose exposed us to the swell a little more than we liked which then created the odd slap of water against the side.  Outside it seemed like nothing, inside those odd slaps seemed like the end of the world.  I think every night in those last 5 Lisa and i wore woken up by a loud bang and in our sleep deprived states tried to figure out where the hole in the hull would be and what we were going to use to fix it.  There never was a hole but that stuff was a little scary.  By that stage though you resign yourself to whatever happens will happen and you will deal with it when it does and you go back to what little amount of sleep you have left. 
2)  The course also created this judder effect.  It is hard to describe.  What happens is a part of a wave hits the bow of the boat and then a second later another part of the same wave hits the stern.  I don't really have a good analogy for this but I am sure there is one.  It creates a motion that I really thought was going to crack open the boat down the middle.  Not a pleasant feeling.


WHAT I DID LIKE

-  The Tuna Carl caught(he will tell you more)
- The cloud formations. I really like clouds now.
- The sunrises(as seen below)

- the sunsets(as seen below)

- The Dolphins,  This needs more explaining as we had lots of dolphins during the day but we have had that the whole trip.  Its the ones at night combined with the phospheresents that were truly amazing.  I am pretty sure someone else willat this one.
- The sleepy whales of which we sore three and the last one was about 50 feet away.  Whales are cool.
- The satisfaction of the second week and how good sailing it was.  The sail(GENNIKER) and the scene below were typical

- Seeing things break or go wrong and just dealing with them.
- The Equator was really cool.  I think this meant more to me than making landfall.  I remember it a lot better
- swimming at the equator
- Learning as much as we did about sailing and starting to really be comfortable in what we are doing.
- The pacific seafarers net.  Big thank you to all involved in that.
- The satisfaction of completing a trip like that. Puts things into perspective and really made me see just how possible things are if you only try.
- Having my dad and mum to talk to on the radio and provide us with useful information and basketball scores(it was the NBA finals)
- landfall
-Seeing all of us bicker and fight and suffer but still come through and do what needed to be done.  I think we all still like each other.  At least I know I do.

Andy