SV Yohelah – Pacific Loop

It was a beautiful sunny day with light breezes as we sailed from Golfito to Drakes Bay in Costa Rica. On watch, I was startled out of a perfectly good daydream by a loud snap and a zinging sound as something under tension broke violently. Even though the sound wasn’t loud enough to be the rigging, I instinctively looked up to make sure everything was where it should be. I then looked toward the lifelines as the next logical source of the noise. I noticed a pile of blue tuna line on the side deck – seconds before it had been trailing behind us, attached to twenty feet of 120 pound monofilamment followed by a 60 pound leader and a squid fishing lure.

The bungee cord between the line and boat looked like it had exploded. All the monofilament was gone, along with my lure. At least it wasn’t my favorite cedar plug lure, which was on the other side of the boat. I disgustedly looked back and saw a huge bull dorado (mahi mahi, if you prefer) jump into the air several times, crashing back into the water with huge splashes. It was around five feet long and it was gone.

Fishing on Yohelah isn’t really a sport. We use hand lines tied to the back of the boat. Each is made from eighty feet of tuna line with several hundred pound breaking strength and monofilament between the tuna line and lure. The monofilament gets the lure away from the more visible tuna line and increases the chances of a strike. A bungee on the boat end allows some give and helps set the hook during a strike. The bungee also tells us when we have a fish on the line. There is no playing the fish with this arrangement, you end up with a line in your hand and a fish on the other end. If the fish is big enough to yank you into the water then it’s sport, otherwise the fish is dinner. Unless of course it manages to break the leader or slip the hook before we haul it onboard.

So back to the fish story. Hearing the noise on deck, Teresa pops into the campanionway to see what’s going on. As I explain the huge dorado that just got away she yells that we have a fish on the other line. Sure enough the other hand line is running out at a forty five degree angle, a sure sign of a medium to large game fish. We haul it in and discover another large dorado. I’m relieved it’s not as large as the first, remember we don’t play the fish so they’re pretty energetic when alongside. The last time we had a dorado in this situation we netted it and discovered our lovely little gatita, Maya, had assisted the fish’s escape by previously chewing the net. This time I brought the gaff and hauled the fish onboard. Dinner. And lunch. And another dinner. And another. We’ll be eating Dorado for the next week.

Maya kitty didn’t know what to make of the yellow tail tuna we caught in Panama and didn’t show a lot of interest. She’s always turned her nose up at bonita’s with their dark red meat, as do we as this quickly became a ‘catch and release’ fish for us. When we caught a Spanish Mackerel she was beside herself, pestering me for pieces as I cleaned it, chewing on the tail if I was too slow. With the Dorado she could smell it, wanted it, but couldn’t bring herself to approach a bright yellow fish that big. I wish we’d had the video camera rolling as she made several aborted attempts leaving the protection of the cockpit, each time getting closer and closer before self- preservation overrode her tummy and she ran back to the cockpit. She eventually made it to the fish and helped me clean it, eating a pound or two along the way. Maya definitely prefers white fish over darker meat. Maybe now she has a reason to leave the fishing net intact.

Today on Yohelah we’re happy the bigger one got away….

I’ll leave the mileage count and math to Teresa, just a few thoughts on our first week.

We left the Galapagos with fuel tanks bulging and jerry cans topped up – enough fuel to motor 600 miles of the 3100+ to the Marquesas. Sailing around the equator is never a joy since there are no steady winds there, in fact it’s traditionally an area of light winds. We listened with interest to the ‘nets’ on the SSB everyday, listening to each boat check in with their location and wind information. Teresa religiously downloaded the ‘grib’ files of wind information from NOAA for the area we would be traveling. As we left it looked like the best course to wind was to the southwest, so off we went expecting three days of motoring to get to wind. Leaving the same day were friends on the ‘Hello World’ and ‘Carina’.

We sailed most of the first day in local winds around the islands and over the course of the next few days managed to motor very little. We ran the spinnaker in relatively light winds and flat seas for two days, making much needed time south toward the trade winds. The problem with sailing into the trades is a little physics lesson in wind and waves. A 15-18 knot trade wind will produce 6-8 foot seas. When the trades die off toward the north, they do so rather abruptly. Unfortunately, the 6-8 foot seas continue for a very long time. Traveling south in search of the trades it was inevitable that we would have to pass through an area of light winds and big seas. We expected uncomfortable and slow, and it was. Fortunately the trades did us a favor and moved north, reducing our time rolling and pitching uncomfortably.

So here we are on our eighth day and one third of the way there. Expecting to sail the rest of the way, we’ve used 26 gallons of diesel and have 100 left so fuel shouldn’t be a problem as long as the trade winds hold. The sailing has been fabulous. There’s nothing better than sailing along at night under a full moon, sky full of stars, and the wake of the boat glowing in the dark water. Night or day, the flying fish leap from the water in large schools and flee over the waves as our boat approaches. On the rare occasion we’ve seen schools of over a hundred flying fish skimming the waves, rivalling any flock of birds for synchronous flight. Maya has discovered that flying fish make a dandy midnight snack and regularly visits the cockpit at night looking a few. They land on deck and in the cockpit regularly so she is rarely disappointed. A few nights ago a fairly large squid landed on the top of the house, dropping inside the open hatch. I found Maya and it, playing on a cushion. If Maya has a religion, it’s based on seafood falling from the sky in the dark hours of the night.

The fishing has been OK. I had doubts about fishing in 6-8 foot wind waves but the presence of so many flying fish encouraged us to try. Something must be eating them and I doubt if they lose weight when the wind is up. So far we’ve hooked two Dorado, one got away but the other was lucky enough to catch a ride on the boat! This morning we hooked something mid-sized that escaped halfway to the boat. When I pulled the lure up it looked like it had lost a fight with a razor knife.

The boat is doing well. A half day out of the Galapagos the electric auto pilot lost it’s little mind and didn’t know which way was north. It still worked to the wind and now seems to follow a course without wandering, it’s just 150 degrees off or so. A little problem with the compass module, I’ll leave it alone unless it gets worse, especially since the Monitor wind vane is doing the steering now. Aside from a few chafe problems Teresa has mentioned everything else is good with Yohelah.

This is our longest passage to date, both for distance and days. We’re both settled into our routines on board and feel rested and happy. Of course, on any passage the impatience grows as the destination gets closer so we’ll see if it exceeds the usual single day of ‘wishing we were there’ after a 25-30 day passage. There’s always Valium.

Rob

We continue on to the Marquesas and all is well on board. We just ended the thirteenth day and are on schedule to make it in 25 days or so based on our average speed for the first half of the trip. Since sailboats are limited to hull speed based on length and sailing speed based on sail plans its hard for us to go too much faster. We did have a record 166 mile day this week but were sailing for the whole 24 hours just below the limit for shortening sail; we also had a significant current boost.

The boat continues to do well. I’ve now spent a day of the first week and a day of the second week working on a recalcitrant toilet, but we won’t go into that – it’s fixed now. The wind vane has been steering for the 10 days since or 2-day spinnaker run and is doing well. Our water maker is keeping us in drinking water, the charging systems are doing ok although with overcast skies we have run the main engine a few hours to recharge. Our overnight power usage is higher than I expected but only because I didn’t do the math. Adding to the refrigeration is the radar, AIS, instruments, radio, GPS (two), auto pilot display, tri-color navigation light, fans, and other assorted lights and power draws. Our wind generator would do marvelously in 15 knots of wind, unfortunately we are sailing downwind and when you subtract our 5 knots forward speed from the wind we are only feeling 10 knots or so – not enough for the wind generator to keep up.

Fishing has been great. We were warned it would be hard to catch fish in the deep water, one every three or four days would be good. We didn’t fish while flying the spinnaker or on days the first week when our day-time speed was very slow. We don’t fish at night. Also no fishing on days when I worked on the toilet, it just doesn’t sound right, does it? So out of our 13 days so far we’ve fished 7. We’ve had 6 mahi-mahi (Dorado) on the hook, landed 4. Two slipped the hook as we lifted them out of the water but we’re getting better. Tony mentioned that mahi-mahi often strike in pairs and it’s something we’ve noticed before. We always have two hand lines out and half of our mahi strikes this year have been on both lines simultaneously.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering why we only catch mahi-mahi, it’s because we sort of target them. First of all mahi-mahi are surface feeders and we are surface fishing – no lures that dive or are excessively weighted. Also we are trolling with hand lines fairly close to the boat, certainly within 100 feet. Mahi-mahi are curious fish and will approach very close to a boat. No surprise we catch a lot of mahi, although I would expect the occasional wahoo or tuna.

We are working our way through our fish recipes, how many ways can we prepare mahi-mahi between here and the Marquesas?

Rob

Things are well here, as I write this we have a little over 500 miles to go to the Marquesas. It’s the beginning of our 21st day and we have seen nothing but water the whole three weeks. We did have the ‘Hansa Stockholm’, a container ship bound for Tahiti, pass us at eighteen knots twelve miles off our port side the other night. Too far to see even lights but it did show up on both radar and AIS, obvious since I know her name and destination. Always nice to know the AIS and radar are both working, not just consuming electricity.

The boat continues to do well. As Teresa mentioned, our Monitor wind vane steering failed the other night. Nothing will wake you up like an unexpected jibe and suddenly being 120 degrees off course. Good thing we have the pole and boom locked down in all directions, it really was a non-event.

—Begin boring details:

So the Monitor steers our boat to the wind. A wind vane is feathered into the wind and falls to one side or the other if we get off course. When the wind vane falls over it rotates a shaft that’s connected to a paddle in the water. When the paddle rotates the force of the water pushes it to one side. Lines tied to the paddle are wrapped around the ships wheel and cleverly pull it in the correct direction to once again feather the wind vane. It sounds complicated but is a wonder to watch.

Because metal doesn’t like to live in salt water the water paddle is hinged to be retracted when not in use. We broke the latch, the part that keeps it in the water. I’ve discussed it with the manufacturer via email and we both agree there is no easy jury rig – it’s difficult because the top piece consists of a stationary metal tube with a rotating inner-tube that attaches to the water paddle and any jury rig cannot attach to the upper, outer tube. I do have lots of odd parts on board including hose clamps, a banding tool, and lots of hardware. If we were forced to hand steer it would be worth it to go dead in the water for a few hours while I worked out some way of keeping the paddle in the water. With a working electric autopilot we’ll keep going and just deal with keeping the batteries charged. Makes me wonder how all the boats out here without wind vanes keep up with the electrical consumption.

—End boring details

Interesting that both our major breakdowns so far are with our automated steering systems. It’s also nice to know we’ve already ordered replacement parts that should get to Nuka Hiva before us.

I’m also not sure why there are so many cruising boats out here without spinnakers. We just finished our fourth day under spinnaker and it looks like we might use it the majority of time the rest of the way to the Marquesas. We just wouldn’t have kept the boat moving last night in 6 knots of wind without it and certainly wouldn’t be making 6.5 knots now. For us, it’s irreplaceable.

Fishing has slowed down a bit. Sunday night Teresa was on the radio with Carina, another Seattle boat that is the closest to us right now, 140 miles east of us. We had a fish hit one of the lures and I called her away from the radio to handle the net. Unfortunately this beautiful bright yellow mahi-mahi jumped in the air twice and after the second jump was off the hook. Literally. We are currently experiencing a fishing slump of three days. Can’t really complain too much, since we’ve had fresh fish about three quarters of the time over the last two weeks. Never expected to catch this much of our food and even if we stopped now we’d still be way ahead of expectations. It is nice to know we’ve figured out how to fish, and nice to know we’re out-fishing our friends who are using fishing poles, a method that should result in more hookups. If you’re going cruising, take hand lines. Email me for some recommendations, especially for books on fishing.

Twenty one days. Seems like a long time but I’ve decided the only difference between our shorter ‘long passages’ and this one is this one is just longer. Seriously, it takes two or three days to get into the swing of a watch schedule and you spend the last couple of days wishing you were there. In between, we have our routines that very little from day to day. In the case of this long passage the middle part is lasting long enough to totally lose track of days. Truthfully it doesn’t feel like we’ve been out this long. We are starting to get anxious to be there and at 500 miles to go the miles seem to be flying by.

That’s it for now. Everything is going well, we expect to arrive in the Marquesas this coming weekend.

Rob

Yesterday I mentioned AIS without explaining it. AIS stands for Automated Identification System and is installed on all large ships. It broadcasts position, course, speed and other data via a VHF radio signal. If you have the equipment you can receive the information from all ships near you and avoid being road kill.

Our Raytheon C80 radar display is a multifunction unit that is capable of showing radar, depth, charts, GPS, and engine monitoring information and will probably run the TV and flush the toilet, all with the same unit. Of course, we only use it for radar since we don’t want to lose all 5 things if a bad tube takes out the display. We even try to minimize the number of electronics on the boat that are talking to each other, never know when you’ll pass critical mass and the thing will develop intelligence, try to take over the boat ala ’2001: A Space Odyssey’.

Our Garmin GPS output was fed into the C80 so it could use the position, course, and speed info along with the radar to perform collision avoidance duties for us. While in Panama City we had a SmartRadio AIS unit shipped in. I changed the GPS output to the AIS unit and fed the AIS output into the C80. One external antenna later the C80 display had full AIS data displayed on either a chart or the radar display. Near the Panama Canal this had the comic result of displaying 100 AIS contacts. It’s nice knowing the course, speed, destination, and name of large vessels in your neighborhood. Knowing the name of the ship increases the odds of them responding to a radio call if everyone is getting too close.

And yes, I know our electronics no longer contain vacuum tubes. Does anyone else remember vacuum tubes in consumer electronics? The TV dies, you take the compressed cardboard back off the old Zenith, dust the tubes and pull the one that looks like an old, used flash bulb. Off to Radio Shack or the local drugstore where you plug it in to the tube tester and repeat the process until you find the bad one. Plug the new one in and you’re everyone’s hero. It’s harder to be a hero now that those pesky little tubes have been replaced by transistors. If you’re under 40 you only know that when the TV goes the hero is the guy that trundles off to Best Buy and brings back the new plasma TV.

So back to sailing, as Teresa’s post mentions, not much happening. It is interesting to realize the number of sail combinations we’ve used on this trip. We’ve used all sails except our two storm sails. We’re on our fifth day of flying the asymmetrical spinnaker, the last two days as a symmetrical spinnaker poled out in front of the boat. We’ve worked hard at keeping the boat heading in the right direction and just slightly north of our direct course. It’s working well, the boat continues to sail well.

And sorry for diverging into my childhood, but it’s better than describing the cloud formations that are going by. You know, the Ren and Stimpy cloud that transformed into a 3 foot tall grandmother in clown shoes with the top-hat-wearing shark pool toy around her waist? Might be getting bored, must be time to do laundry.

Rob

Hi,

All’s well on the boat today. Teresa mentioned most of the exciting stuff going on, we’re eagerly anticipating landfall Saturday morning in the Marquesas. It’s been a great passage so far with minimal bad weather, good fishing, and both boat and crew holding up very well.

We left Seattle in 2006 for Glacier Bay, Alaska then down to Mexico, points further south and then to the South Pacific. Three years later we are just making it to the South Pacific. If you’re wondering what took so long, here’s a synopsis of the geographic distances Yohelah has covered in the past three years.

Our first major destination was Glacier Bay Alaska and we arrived in summer of 2006, 900 miles north of Seattle. We then headed south to Mexico and made it to Zihuatanejo before turning north for hurricane season. The next year we headed south to Central and South America and summered over in Ecuador, 2800 miles south of Seattle. We then visited Panama, Costa Rica, and the Galapagos before pointing the boat once again southwest for the Marquesas. The distances traveled south are no surprise, but looking at the distance we traveled east-west is a little more interesting.

When we arrived in Panama City, Panama we were further east than Miami, Florida; pretty close to directly south of Charleston, South Carolina. We had to travel further near the equator to get there than if we had crossed the same distance at the more northern latitudes of the US. We journeyed to Costa Rica and then to the Galapagos. In the Galapagos we were directly south of Chicago – we started our South Pacific crossing south of the American mid-west! A few days ago we were 2100 miles out of the Galapagos and Teresa mentioned that we were once again due south of Seattle – 2600 miles off the South American coast.

So where are we now in relation to our previous travels? When we were in Glacier Bay we were at 137 degrees west. We’ll hit 137 degrees west later today and finally be back to the same longitude we were in Alaska three years ago. Of course, 137 degrees west is a shorter distance that far north, those east-west circles get much smaller as you approach the north pole. But it’s still kind of funny to think that after 3000 miles across the Pacific we are no further west than directly south of where we were in June of 2006!

So what’s taking so long? We’ll try to keep the boat pointed west from now on.

Rob

This was an interesting passage. As a friend currently in the Caribbean recently wrote us, we haven’t been having a lot of fun on South Pacific passages recently. With some twists, this one seems to have changed our luck.

Sitting in Bora Bora looking at the weather, we were all dismayed at the procession of lows and fronts coming at us from the west. Some friends of ours left four days before us, a few boats the day before, and some others were still dubious of the weather when we left. We looked at a passage forecast straight to Niue and another heading north toward Suwarrow then turning south toward Niue. The northern route looked best with maximum winds of 29 knots for a few hours, the rest pretty good. We left on the northern route.

The first couple of days we ran through some pretty stormy weather as we passed through two fronts. No surprise since we’d seen them on the New Zealand fleet codes, but the wind was in the mid-thirties for a few hours. A boat just behind us tore their mainsail and hove-to for 12 hours while the front passed. On the third day the weather seemed to settle into the mid teens, very sail-able even if the wind was further south than normal.

The rest of our passage was a standard tradewind passage with winds in the teens, clocking from south to the northeast. We jibed the sails once, somewhere around day seven. We were actually quite enjoying the sail and agreed it was one of our better passages since leaving the Marquesas.

Meanwhile, the boat that left Bora Bora four days before us, and sailed a route 150 miles further south, tore their mainsail in some more stormy weather. Another boat heading into Suwarrow met with 40 knot head winds, shredding their main. A ketch that left a few days before us also tore sails and are looking for a sail maker in Tonga. We know of two boats that had sails shipped into Bora Bora after ripping them in the Society Islands.

So what’s behind this rash of ripped sail cloth? In some cases the difference between cheap manufactured sails from Taiwan and Thailand and robust hand-made cruising sails from sail makers like Hasse are the difference – the cheaper sails don’t last as long. Of course, at a fraction of the cost you can buy several sets for what a hand-made sail costs, so the decision is a wash. But you do end up shipping more sails around with the cheaper ones. The other reason is age. Two of the boats on the passage have been cruising for around 10 years, another is on his third South Pacific loop. Ten years is about the lifespan of a sail in the tropics and the sharp wind shear we’ve had in the fronts and squalls is particularly hard on sails. Our Hasse sails pulled right through the stormy weather and we’re happy a fire drill in the middle of the night was unnecessary.

Since we arrived in the South Pacific we have realized the number one priority in safe sailing for us is to be able to shorten sail quickly. Especially at night with one person sleeping. Our roller furling jib has been getting a real workout since it’s much faster and easier to roll in the jib than go forward and drop the hank-on staysail. We are seriously considering converting the staysail to roller furling so we are using our all our sail combinations in various wind strengths as intended. Just need to talk to our sail maker and rigger to see what our options are for our hank-on storm jib.

So that’s it. Out of the four boats we kept in contact with on this passage we seemed to have had the best of it. While I’d like to claim superior weather knowledge, it just wouldn’t be true – they’ve all been cruising for 10 years or more and have the same weather tools we have. I think we were just lucky, for a change.

And one last thing, I seem to remember Teresa reporting an Epiphany in her log the other day about watch schedules. I can only say, if you get awakened twice during the night, it’s because you had two times you were asleep. If you only get awakened once, it’s because you only slept once. Whiner >

Today on Yohelah we are rolling around in the anchorage at Niue.

We arrived shortly after noon for the Tongan feast. We wondered through the village with our hostess, Fa’aki, and several of her children. Ben, her husband, met us half way, apologizing for not greeting us. Ben and Fa’aki were the host family for today’s feast and were busily preparing and organizing food. We continued wandering through the village, a series of houses, public buildings, and churches. Nicer buildings were concrete, houses were a combination of brick walls, wood slats, and corrugated tin, sometimes all on the same house. Most houses were surrounded by extensive gardens, both food and flowers. No need for a landscaper here, the locals did a beautiful job. Dogs, pigs, and even horses run free. Most of the houses were fenced, with a section of low wall to allow people to cross into the yard. I initially thought it was to keep the dogs out, and was amused when they hopped over with ease. I don’t think I’d ever actually seen a pig stile before but I remember them from childhood stories. They work well keeping the pigs out of yards, and nobody ever has to yell at the kids to shut the gate.

The six of us from Nine-of-Cups, Gannet, and Yohelah were the only non-villagers there. We arrived at the community center, a large, empty shell of a house built from concrete with a few broken windows and flopping doors. The weather is mild enough here that few of the buildings have working windows and doors. Often fabric does the job well. You’d look at the community center and most of the houses and think, “hmm, could use a little paint…”, but while there isn’t always spare glass to fix broken panes or spare money to buy enough paint to do the whole village, everything is clean. As we walked in I noticed the woven mats on the floor and the beginnings of the food spread, placed down the middle of a forty foot run of mats laid end-for-end. David and John headed for the back porch, I followed.

There were a dozen men on the porch, sitting cross legged in a rough circle. They opened up the circle, allowing us to join them. At one end of the circle was a large wooden bowl with legs carved from the same piece of wood as the bowl. Two of the legs were broken and had been replaced with sections of PVC pipe. The liquid in the bowl looked like weak coffee with milk. There was a metal ladle clinging to the edge of the bowl. As I sat I noticed two things about the circle of men drinking kava. The first was that the three of us palangis were the only ones actually sitting on the ground, everyone else was sitting on one-piece plastic chairs with the metal legs removed. The other was the head of the circle wasn’t the kava bowl. While the bowl may have been the focal point, the head of the circle was at the other end, where the village chief sat.

Tongan men wear western style shirts and a ta’ovala, or plaited mat, around the waist, over a longer kilt called a vala or tupenu. The social standing of elders is shown by the style and richness of the ta’ovala. In our circle, all men were wearing collared shirts of brightly colored fabrics; most of the ta’ovalas were basic tan woven mats. The village chief was wearing a brighter ta’ovala of purple fabric over a tupenu of dark blue. His look was finished off by a pair of very dark sunglasses. He was bracketed by two of the five church ministers in the village, equally well dressed but with plainer ta’ovalas. You could have plopped the three of them down on a red carpet in LA, added a few gold accessories, and passed them off as a famous rapper and his retinue. I’m sure the thought would appall them all.

One last thing about the circle, the men were seated in order of social standing. The older men were around the chief, at the other end were the younger men. When we asked how the server was chosen, expecting some complicated selection process based on an ancient reward system, we were told it was whoever got there first and wanted to sit in front of the bowl. The cups were half-coconut shells. A round of drinking was started by the chief, who would throw his cup across the middle of the circle, sliding it up to the bowl. This would prompt everyone else to toss their cup into the circle and up to the bowl. Everyone knew which coconut half belonged to whom, with the cups filled and passed back in order. Kava is not sipped, but rather gulped, most cups emptied in one swift motion. Having heard so many stories about the awful taste of kava, I did take an experimental sip before I committed to upending my coconut shell. It wasn’t bad. It tasted a bit like a slightly bitter tea. After upending the cup it took a few short minutes for my mouth and throat to feel numb. Strange but I felt like I was ready for the dentist. Having never tried kava before, I have no idea how a day of drinking would feel; I managed three rounds and did not proceed past the numbing of mouth and throat. The locals seemed a little unsteady as they came and went, but none acted overtly intoxicated.

Communication was slow. The older gentleman to my right would only nod politely but not actually speak to me. Actually I didn’t hear him speak English to anyone, so perhaps my lack of Tongan was the problem. On my other side was one of the church ministers. He looked a bit like Eddie Murphy and our conversation was a series of brief mumbled comments spaced out over enough time I’d forget we were having a conversation. If I had to ask more than twice for him to repeat himself I’d resort to nodding politely and pretending I knew what he’d said. I did learn his church was very similar to our Methodists. He asked me if I was Christian, or… after a long pause, a heathen. His mischievous grin gave him away, but I was still happy to report I wasn’t heathen.

Most of our conversation and information came from Moses, a local school teacher who David had helped the day before with the solar panels on his house. Moses was young and outgoing with a giggling laugh. He was a lot of fun and very informative. He answered many questions about Tongan society and the people of his village. He also let us know the kava ‘ceremony’ had started at 9 that morning. We joined about half past one. I think that explained a few things, including the slow pace of conversation.

We sat on the porch for a couple of hours, watching platter after platter of food go by. Since our levels of narcotic-induced euphoria did not match that of our hosts, us three palangis had a lot of time between conversational lapses to watch the food deliveries and ponder solutions to the world’s woes. At one point the kava bowl arrived at an alarmingly low level, a situation rectified by a youngster showing up with a bucket of kava which was strained into our bowl. Whew! Disaster averted.

The dinner bell soon rang and everyone headed into the hall for the feast that had been meticulously laid out for us while we were lounging on the porch. Not a bad life, especially when you consider this was a weekday and no one seemed to have needed an excuse for the boss to get away from work.

Rob
Yohelah is here at Matamaka

After the storms of the first week, the second week was pretty boring. We continued to sail more easterly than we wanted in order to avoid low pressure systems. We thought we’d turn north once we crossed 160*E, but a big low kept us going east some more. The net effect of all this travel east is that we’ve added miles to the trip. The shortest distance between two points on a sphere is a great circle route. From Japan the great circle route would have taken us north of the Aleutians and then south again to Seattle. As we’ve traveled due east we have traveled greater distance to get home. Our total miles currently stand at 4700, up from 4300 when we left. Our shortest distance to Seattle right now is still to head north, but not nearly as far as the Gulf of Alaska. We should hit our halfway point in another 500 miles or so. This will also put us on the edge of the stationary North Pacific high. Once there we simply sail over the top of it and then home. Sounds simple. We’ll see.

The other big news actually belonged to our third week, but we’ll cover it here. Teresa reported the incident with the tanker in a previous blog. We have reported the incident to the US Coast Guard in Hawaii since the PacSea Net reported it to them already. We received a very nice email back from the US Coast Guard Joint Rescue Coordination Center stating that they were passing the report on to their Investigative Unit. We just want the incident on record in case this tanker is involved in similar incidents in the future. I can think of no innocent explanation for the convoluted course changes of this commercial ship. Actually, we’d really like to know what was happening on the tanker’s bridge, but I fear we’ll never find out. What were they doing with the first pass and whistle blast? Why did they turn back toward us? Were they monitoring the PacSea net and broke off after they were publicly identified? Even though Teresa posted about the ‘psycho tanker’, we continue to get email asking about the incident so I will post our report to the Coast Guard.

One last item. You may have noticed that our blog posts used to identify the author to the left of the posting. This is done by email address, Teresa’s come in via sailmail and mine come in via my HAM call sign on Winlink. The software identifies the poster by the email address. Unfortunately there are no HAM winlink stations within range of the North Pacific so all our postings come through sailmail. I’ll sign the bottom but until we have an internet connection to fix it, the blogging software will identify all posts as from Teresa.

Today on Yohelah we’re still nervous about psycho tankers…

Rob