Day 3 - Becalmed - a Blessing in Disguise?

As frustrating as it can be, having no wind on a sailboat can be a good thing.

Yesterday - our third day out - saw very light airs for us and the other boats nearby that are also crossing to the Marquesas. We motored for two hours in the morning to steady the boat and look for wind, but gave up around mid-morning, figuring the swell was down enough that we could take down our sails and lie a-hull ('park the boat' - as our friends on Buena Vista put it). We swam in the indigo waters under cloudless skies, watching Ladybug roll alarmingly, even in the gentle northerly swell. It had been a week since our last proper shower in La Paz and rinsing off the grime of multiple night watches felt fantastic. Rani also took the vegetables out of their locker to allow them to air out - a daily chore now. I adjusted the propeller shaft stuffing box, which was leaking a little, and tightened some hose clamps on the muffler.

Despite the rolling boat, we decided to tackle a problem with Ladybug's structure. For the past two seasons, there has been a lot of noise - squeaks and the sound of wood flexing and rubbing against wood from the starboard center bulkhead area. The bulkhead here is what backs up the galley and the nav station, running across the boat. I finally traced the issue with a flashlight on the night watch because the sound was driving me nuts. After removing trim and panels from around the bulkhead, I found a fillet of epoxy that had cracked and no longer bonded the plywood bulkhead to the cabin sides. After chipping out the old epoxy, Rani helped me mix up some thickened epoxy and we injected this and worked it into the gap. It seems to have cured the noise from that area.

We sighted no shipping last night, but sailed through some heavy cloud and drizzle for much of the night, with a light north east wind on our beam. We actually sailed south east, 90 degrees off our desire course, in order to keep the sails filled and the boat moving. The radar alarm went off whenever a particularly thick shower came near us. The showers were too light to clean off our salty decks.

Our position this morning at 1430 Zulu (about 07:30 local time) was 19 56 N 112 02 W. We ran only 84 nautical miles in the last 24 hours, but the wind has picked up and we hope to reach or break 100 in the next 24 hours. At our current rate we will likely reach Clarion island sometime early Sunday morning.

Close Encounters of the Cargo Ship Kind

Here we are on our third morning at sea, having survived our second exciting night on the ocean blue. It is no coincidence in my mind that Chris and I had just read the chapter on "Preventing Collisions" in Earl Hinz's "Landafalls of Paradise" when we spied a large cargo ship about 8 miles to port. Hinz cites that we may think we are roaming unfettered on these vast oceans but there are hazards out here too and it is not surprising that boats are reported missing each year. We have to be aware of and cautious when crossing the shipping lanes of major trade routes. It so happened that we were in the direct path of ships coming from the Panama Canal to the Orient or heading north to the USA.

The sun had not yet set so I was pleased that we saw our nemesis or MV Antipolis in the daylight. We quickly switched on the radar and watched it's track. The fickle wind from the southwest was merely 3-4 knots and Ladybug was making little progress at 3.5K average while the mammoth motor vessel was cutting through the water at 20 Knots plus. Not having had a working radar over the last 3 years in Mexico, it is still a new gadget to us and we took out the manual to verify bearings and distances. We altered course to port, so it could pass in front of us at a safe distance.

The ship's angle did not seem to be changing and it was closing in on us fairly rapidly and I was growing anxious. Despite Hinz's note that not many ships monitor their radar or keep reliable watch when far from land, I was hopeful that they had seen us too. To allay my fear, despite Chris's advice, I called "oil tanker, oil tanker at position x, this is the sailing vessel Ladybug at position y " on VHF 16. After a second call and a long delay, I heard a heavily accented voice returning my hail. I asked if they had seen us on radar and he confirmed that they had picked us up at 10 miles and altered their course to port. I thanked them and found out they were heading for Los Angeles. He asked me about our destination and chuckled when I said "The Marquesas, eventually" and we ended on "Bon Voyage". As we looked at Antipolis back-lit by the setting sun, they blew their horn in adieu.

Phew!, I thought, we must have seen our fair share of shipping for this night. Not so. On my watch at 0250 local time, I saw a triangle of lights off our port beam. Through binoculars, I could see a red port light and maybe a green starboard light which meant he was coming straight for us. Our speed was only 3.5K and he seemed very close. On radar he was at 9 miles and a huge target. I did not hesitate in waking up Chris as the last ship only took about 20 minutes to get within a mile of us. We watched and tried to convince ourselves that the angle was changing but his relative bearing on the radar remained the same. I tried hailing on VHF 16 but there was no response. We had no idea if he had seen us on his radar. Should we alter our course or had he already made his move? When he was 2 miles away, we decided to take action. We rolled in the jib and turned on the motor to steer due south. After 10 minutes when we were 3 miles apart, we put up the sails again and watched his track as we headed on the same course but well ahead, no doubt to Japan or China.

So, all that made me wonder how many close calls did Chris have when he fell asleep every night on his solo passage to Hawaii and then Canada. I am glad I did not know of this at the time, otherwise I would have been a nervous wreck!

Our 24 hour position at 1400 Zulu (0730 local )today was North 21 deg 11 mins, West 111 deg 44 mins with 98 miles made good in the last 24 hours. During our second day at sea, the wind was light and variable from northwest to west. We had decent night sailing as it changed to 6-7 Knots from the west. This morning it's frustratingly light again. We tried to fly the spinnaker but the slow 6 foot nw swell prevented it from setting properly, so we are running the iron jenny (engine) for a few hours.

The Pacific Ocean seems justly named.

Day 1 - Slow and Bouncy

Well - we have survived our first 24 hours at sea. Both of us are on board and still on speaking terms!

We left Los Frailes (pos 23 40 N 109 30 W) at 7:30 yesterday (March 20) with a very nice following breeze of 12-18 knots. We polled out the jib and for a few hours ran south in the company of Xe (pronounced Jay but with a soft 'J' almost like Che Guevera). This large aluminum French yacht has twin head sails set on roller furlers and twin poles to hold them out. She started after us but after a couple of hours was abeam moving at about 7 knts to our 5.5 to 6. The wind then died down and the seas began to lump up, running from opposite directions as we neared Cabo San Lucas and the open Pacific. Xe took down her sails and motored off into the hazy distance while we tightened in our sails and continued for a couple of hours at about 3 kts. We saw a full grown humpback whale spy hopping repeatedly and others swimming in the distance. Eventually the wind died down almost completely and we took down the sails and motored into a very rough and confused sea. The motor is running much more smoothly, so it looks like our re-alignment, while not perfect, has fixed the major vibration issue. Our 'new' autopilot, which we assembled from parts of an old broken ST 1000 and another unreliable ST 2000 donated by a friend, was able to handle the confused seas with no issues. It is really nice to have self steering now when the wind dies out (for the last 3 years we have had only wind vane self-steering).

Around supper time, the winds came up from the south west and were able to hoist full sail and beat south again. Position reports on the Pacific Puddle Jump radio net from boats further ahead of us mentioned higher westerly winds, and sure enough as the night wore on the wind began to clock around into the west and then the north west, where it remains now. The seas were very lumpy all night with the boat rolling every few seconds through 20 degrees or so.

We kept 3+ hour watches last night with Rani doing 10-1:20, I did 1:20 to 4:45 and Rani 4:45 to 6:45. Rani is now trying to catch up on lost sleep.

At 7:30 am (24 hours out) our position was 22 03 N 110 25 W (degrees and minutes - 60 minutes in a degree). You can read our previous blog entry for a way to plot our progress on paper if you are interested. We made ran 106 nautical miles in this period with an average speed of about 4.4 knots. We had 5 hours of decent winds over 10 knots, 5 of near calm, 8 of light (5 knots or less) winds, and 6 of slightly less light 6-8 knot winds. Swells have been between 4 and 6 feet.

Following our progress

In all our passage reports we will give lat/long in degrees and minutes. If you would like to follow our progress, you can do what we have done and mark of a sheet of regular blank paper as follows:

Using a ruler or one side of an envelope, draw a grid of lines at 2 cm intervals and starting from the first line left of the top right corner, moving left, label the vertical lines 95, 100, 105, and so on - these are meridians of longitude (West). Each line represented 5 degrees of 'westing'.

Starting at the first line below the top right corner and moving down, label the horizontal lines 25, 20, 15, 10, 5, 0, 5S, 10S, 15S, 20S where S means south of the equator. Now Put an X at a position just below and to the right of the intersection of 25 deg North and 110 deg west. This is our starting position. For reference, Cabo San Lucas at the bottom of the Baja peninsula can be marked about a third of the way down from 25 deg N and just to the left of 110 deg W. Next you can put a mark at our first possible destination - Clarion Island - just to the right of 115 W and just below 20 N. This is an interesting place where we hope to sea sharks, whales, and giant mantas. Finally you can mark our ultimate passage destination at Hiva Oa in the Marquesas at 10 deg South and 138 deg West near the bottom left corner of your paper.

I know that being a computer geek I should have set up some sort of online chart to show our progress, but this is more interactive and a good boy scout or girl guide project - Get your badge in ocean navigation.

We're Off!

Rani tells me we should call this post "Night of Nerves". She had a restless night worrying about the trip - invisible coral reefs, long watches, food running out, sea-sickness, etc. On the positive side, she tells me that despite reading Typee, she did not worry about being eaten once we arrive :)

Yesterday we managed to take down the broken wind indicator, epoxy it back together and put it back up at the mast head despite a rolling anchorage. We were also successful (we think) in re-aligning the engine, which runs much more smoothly now. We rigged new preventer blocks for the main and a fore guy block and line to hold the whisker pole steady as we run downwind.

The wind was up all night but has settled down now around dawn. We are drinking mugs of steaming sweet chai and will leave in a few minutes, taking our departure from sunny Los Frailes at 23 deg 23 mins North, 109 deg 25 mins West.

Spirits of Cerralvo Island

Unlike my better half, I am not normally a superstitious person, but...

We had spent a restful day yesterday in our little anchorage just north of the southeast tip of Cerralvo Island. I scrubbed the propeller and shaft, scraping off barnacles and other growth, hoping this would 'cure' the roughness and vibration we were experiencing at certain RPMs. Rani preserved ginger in alcohol and made a hot lime pickle for the voyage.

We went ashore in the early afternoon and walked the mile of sand beach in both directions. At the south end of the beach we climbed up onto the rocks - uplifted seabed full of fossil shells and corals. There are two light towers at the point - one abandoned to an osprey nest and the other functional. There is also a memorial with a cross and a heart made of stones. Near the osprey's nest we found some worked stone fragments including what could possibly be a quartz arrow head. Magpie Rani added the quartz to her pocketful of shells.

We returned to the boat and after supper an osprey tried to land on the wind indicator at the top of our mast. I stepped into the cockpit just as something fell rapidly in front of me causing me to jump back and curse. Rani thought I had knocked over her racks of drying ginger, but what had happened was that the osprey had broken off the wind indicator vane, which fell into the cockpit, its arrow head breaking off. Later I was able to repair the vane, but restoring it to the top of the mast and replacing the starboard 45 degree indicator, which was also lost, will have to wait for a calm anchorage.

This morning, the wind came up to an unforecasted 25 knots and we awoke around 6 am to a big chop rolling into the anchorage. We started up the engine, but the noise I had thought would go away with cleaning was still there - possibly indicating engine misalignment. As we beat out of the anchorage, the dinghy slipped in its lashings, gouging the hand rails. I lashed it back down. It seems that our luck has left us. Perhaps we offended the spirit of the person who made the quartz arrow head?

And the arrow head? - it rests in the shallow waters off the point where Rani threw it, with a plea to any offended spirits, as we departed.

A rest stop at Cerralvo Island

We finally left La Paz yesterday around 4:30 pm after filling the tanks and spare cans with diesel and water. We dropped the hook in Lobos in the dark after a somewhat tricky entry, dodging fish farm pens near the mouth of the bay. Our final evening amongst society was spent with John from 'Time Piece' and Tom and Jeannie from 'Eagle' playing the dice game, 'Farkle' and chatting. We both won a round of Farkle - a good omen perhaps?

We departed around 8 am this morning under sail with light winds. Tom sounded a horn from Eagle, waking up the bay, and we were off. We made it through the San Lorenzo channel until the wind died completely and a sickening NE swell made motoring the best option. Later, a south east wind came up and we managed to sail for an hour or so in the Cerralvo channel. After much discussion, we opted to anchor off a small sand spit at the south west corner of the island. Tonight we hope to get a good night's sleep and tomorrow will do various tasks that are harder to do underway, such as cleaning the bottom, the propeller, and shaft, and making rotis and curries for the passage.

Last Post - before we leave for the Marquesas

Well it finally feels like we are leaving. Ladybug is heavily loaded - the waterline barely showing - the salon filled with fruit in hammocks and fresh vegetables bulging from the quarter berth locker. We made three shopping runs yesterday to the market and to two grocery stores. We still need to buy our eggs (9 dozen) and another dozen grapefruit today.

As I post this last picture blog from Mexico, Rani is getting ready to take her last shower and skype with her family. She is feeling quite emotional about leaving and the long crossing ahead. We will both miss Mexico, but are excited about seeing new lands (we have been cruising in Mexico since 2008 - hard to believe it has been more than three years).

We will update the blog during our passage as long as we can access HAM land stations from our radio. Should something go wrong with the electronics - radio, tuner, modem, or batteries - we may not be able to update the blog until we reach Polynesia. Our target arrival date is April 20 as we plan to visit a few more places in Mexico including Isla Clarion (about 300 miles southwest of Cabo) en route. The passage is about 2800 miles and we hope to average better than 100 miles a day. If we experience many calms or contrary winds we may be late by a week or two...

Chris and Rani photographing a heron colony. Thanks to Tom of S/V Eagle for this excellent picture.

Jim and Karen leave La Paz for the Marquesas on 'Sockdolager'. The little Dana 24  is showing no waterline, she is so loaded with provisions. You can follow their blog here

A 'Safety Meeting' at Marina Palmira.

Mary Lee provides the entertainment - she is a fantastic Jazz singer and pianist.

Chris joined Mary Lee for a few numbers with his uke and recorder. 

Chris cleans the bottom - note the new lycra hoody made locally.

Chris admires the new autopilot cover - made by Rani.

Enjoying a last quiet anchorage before the final provisioning run.

Rani at coral viewing height - the ratlines were described in a previous post.

Climbing the new rat lines.

John Spicher takes us for a sail on Time Piece - another Coast 34.

Captain Spicher at the helm.

Rani tries to find a place for everything after our last major day of provisioning. She cut her hair short to make it easier to look after on the passage.

Safety Preparations and More Boat Projects

Ladybug is currently anchored in a small cove just north of La Paz. We had our friend off 'Time Piece', John, over the other day to share his wisdom on safety at sea and how we should prepare for the crossing in this department. John has degrees and decades of experience in this area, working in military and commercial marine safety. We discussed what items to put in our ditch bag (in case we have to abandon ship), how to deploy the life raft, how to use fire extinquishers effectively.

Here are a few tips he gave us:

- Towing a line behind the boat. Don't bother - if your boat is traveling at more than a coupl of knots, it will be impossible to hold onto a trailing line, even if knotted.
- Completely empty your extinguisher when fighting a fire at sea - even though the foam can ruin your interior and electronics, this is preferable to a burning boat.
- Bring shoes into the life raft in case you end up drifting onto an island where coral could lacerate your feet.

With John's input We also rigged a webbing jack line that will allow us to move easily fore and aft, with our safety tether running along this line. We also rigged a web strap borrowed from our camera bag for the galley, so that the chef is secured opposite the stove in case of rolling. Finally, John came up with a good simple idea for securing one of our closet doors that has a tendency to swing open when at sea - we lashed a small line from inside the closet, through the thumb hole catch, and seized a loop in the end which just fits over the monkey's fist pull handle. This prevents the door from opening more than a few inches if the light plastic catch pops open at sea.

Rani has been a stern task-master the last few days and in addition to daily pot-lucks on 'Time Piece' and 'Eagle', plus a bit of swimming and hiking, we have carried out a number of projects. We have sewn cushion covers for two square cushions using left-over 4" upholstery foam. These will be used as comfortable cockpit cushions. Rani has fashioned some fruit/veggie hammocks from netting given to us by our friends Karen and Jim on 'Socdologer'.

The latest project is the addition of rat lines that will allow us to climb up the shrouds, pirate ship style, in order to scout or coral heads. Normally these lines are made by splicing and seizing 3 strand line between the two lower shrouds, on one or both sides of the boat, much like the rungs on a rope ladder. In addition, one needs to 'serve' the shrouds where each step will be tied, by lashing small twine around and around the shroud. This is required to prevent slippage because the steel shrouds are thin and slippery. We are trying out a simpler system that uses a knotted line, looped over the spreaders (and protected by fire hose where it loops to protect from chafing). This line serves as the two sides of the ladder and all we need to do for the rungs is to tie lines across and around the knotted side lines and the shrouds - one line for each knot. This method does create more windage, but requires no seizing or splicing, and can be easily removed or adjusted. Pictures to follow when we are back in port.

More Boat Projects and Provisioning

A few more pictures from recent provisioning and boat projects. Both activities are going well and we are on schedule to depart in a few days. However, we have just realized that if we get to French Polynesia too early, we will not be there for Bastille Day (July 14) due to Chris only having a 90 day visa (Rani has EU citizenship and no restrictions on her stay). So we now plan to leave La Paz around March 15, stopping en route a few times so as to arrive in Polynesia on April 20 or so.

Two carts loaded with groceries - about $600 worth. One of the Mega grocery store employees drove us across town in his own car with this load because it would not fit in a taxi!

We are using some of the bilge to store wine and other liquids. We found some excellent Spanish Rioja for about $6 a bottle at the Mega.

Sorting things out in the cockpit. The bottles Chris is holding are Jamaica concentrate and each of these will make about 6 liters of refreshing hibiscus flower juice.

For provisioning, we will carry enough non-perishable goods to last us until New Zealand (6 months away!)  This is a serious amount of food and we have already made 2 substantial trips ($1000 total) and a few lighter ones. We still have one more heavy one for all the perishable items and a couple of lighter runs for miscellaneous. We have made a provision plan for the boat and tried to allocate entire lockers to specific food types (e.g., dry goods such as flours, oats, granolas, rice, tea, coffee, and noodles go under the starboard V berth locker, long term can storage in the port V-berth locker). So far we have found a place for everything, but marvel at our neighbors on a 24 foot Pacific Sea Craft Dana who have stowed similar stores neatly in their much smaller boat.

Chris is spray painting our slightly rusty chain with enamel. He will mark every 25 feet with orange bands to help us when anchoring.

The solar panels were zip tied to the lifelines (pretty tenuous) but are now attached via u-bolts and aluminum cross pieces to 1 inch dowels that are in turn lashed to the stanchions and the pushpit rail.

Completed autopilot cantilever bracket

Slip covers are finished for the settee. We still need to make covers for the dinette. The cushions are more blue than the purple shown in this picture.