Life of Riley...

Rollin, rollin, rollin......get this sailboat rollin....Rawhide! We are directly downwind now and Artemo is rocking back and forth. You can hear everything in the cupboards crash to one side and then to the other. Anything left out is rocketed across the boat. So far no major injuries just a few bruises. I had another bath today and as I am leaned over with my head in the bucket we had a huge rock and I ploughed my head into the bottom. Lovely! Regardless, I am clean again and feel so much better.

The day was beautiful. The air is warmer now. It feels like we moved from Spring to Summer in a few days. The swell is back to normal height and the winds are only 8 to 12 knots. I feel so happy. I stood for quite awhile today in the cockpit with my head up over the bimini watching us sail across the ocean. I love it when Mother (being the ocean) is happy. We blasted the tunes and soaked in the day. I came to the realization that I am actually enjoying sailing. Can you believe it? Not only am I actually sailing the boat now but I am also liking it!!! Somebody slap me! Millie was laughing at me as I was yelling with tears in my eyes and my arms spread wide open......"I love you Mother ocean".

Graham realized today that I am actually getting about 10 hours of sleep a day. The kids have been staying up til 11 pm with me and I snooze in the cockpit and then they go to bed and Graham gets up at about 12:30 and I go back to bed til 8! Ha. I even manage to sneak in an afternoon nap most days. Life of Riley I tell ya. Graham has a bit more trouble sleeping than I do. I never go wake him up but he still seems not to sleep for long stretches. He goes to his berth from about 8 pm to 12:30 and then from 9am til 1pm. Not enough sleep in my books but he seems ok.....aside for the grumpy behavior.....but it's hard to decipher normal grumpy from over tired grumpy. ha

I think the kids have thought of just about everything and anything you can play over the vhf radio. They have done battleship, X&O's, 20 Questions, "if you had a super power what would it be", made up personalities, worked through recipes together making cookies and cakes, read school assignments, talked giberish, reviewed books......and I think that is about it. If you can think of anything else they can do I am sure they would love to hear it. At the end of every conversation they say, "Standing by on 6". The other night Amelia came up to the cockpit to say good night to me and then she says, "Standing by on 6"! LOL. Total habit. I laughed.

We are still eating really well. Tonight we had open faced hot pork sandwiches with gravy, mash potatoes and peas. Total Alberta meal. YUMMY. I thought Alex needed a bit of Alberta in his life. He just finished reading Anne Frank in about 4 days. It has made him sad and left him feeling a bit homesick. We had a few good discussions about the book. I am shocked by how much he picked up from the novel. He talked about how Anne's moods were reflected in how she addressed her diary and how creative her mind was. He spoke about what an amazing and unique person Anne was and how she would never have settled for an ordinary life. I feel really lucky to have this time out here to be able to work through and discuss all of these things with him. I have to wonder if I would of even realized he was reading the book if we were back home in our regular routine.

Amelia completed her first knitting project today and I am wearing it proudly around my head. It is a beautiful yellow and white headband. Nanny Judith gave Amelia a knitting book, yarn and needles for xmas. It took us a few goes but finally we got the hang of it. Amelia is now teaching her Dad and Alex the techniques......I am sure you can just imagine how this is going.

Well we have about 490 nms to go. I am thinking we will arrive on June 30th or maybe even Canada Day. The kids are on target for finishing school! Well it is time for my evening snooze.

Miss you
Julie

Detox - Day 14

LOL. Day 14 of no happy hour gin and tonics .....no red wine.....no coffee....no internet.....hmmmmmm I wonder if this has anything to do with how good I feel? I hope not :-).

Today the seas were.....hmmm what is bigger than gigantic and monstrous??? HUMONGOUS!!! Seriously. It was enough to make you want to run for cover. It continues to shock us all that Artemo just rides up and down, no matter what side she is hit on. We had to change our course today though so that the seas were pushing behind us. It was just to dangerous to have them coming at us on our side and really uncomfortable.

I was sitting in the cockpit facing backwards watching in awe as the waves form behind us and coming charging at us and then whoooshhh us down. On one of the waves I noticed something in the water and then all of a sudden the waves were filled with them...."Dolphins"! It was mind blowing. To see the dolphins just beneath the surface torpedo'ing down the wave towards Artemo was WAY COOL. They all swam in sync. I got the most amazing pic of it and the cool thing is that finally since the dolphins are in the water it gives the wave some perspective and you might be able to get an idea of how huge they really were from this picture. For the next 1/2 hour we watched as the dolphins performed their show for us. They were jumping and diving all over the place. Imagine Amelia yelling, "Oh My God" over and over again......I have created a monster. Ha. Alex was yelling at his Dad because he went back down below to tend to his cooking. He couldn't believe he could leave during such an event. Given the size of the seas we were all tethered in. The size of the waves finally got to Amelia though and she said she was to nervous to stay up on deck anymore. I couldn't blame her, I was wishing I didn't have to either!

Finally at about 8pm tonight the seas have become more calm. I am so grateful for the calm. It looks like we should only have about 6 more days out here if our speed continues as it has. I might need to slow us down so the kids can finish their home schooling.

Yesterday Amelia was the SSB net controller for the Pacific Crossing net. The net is a SSB radio station that vessels crossing the Pacific tune into and give their position and just let everyone know how they are doing. It is very structured. Everyone takes their turn talking and the net controller orchestrates everything. She practiced the day before with the script and the morning of she got on the radio and did beautifully. She sounded like an old pro...."Any underway vessels for the Pacific Puddle Jump net wanting to check in, come now"...."Roger That"...."I have your position at 7 45 S and 112 35W...is this correct" "next check in come now"....She was really good. We took a video of it. It was alot of fun. Our days are Tuesday and Saturday and we do it twice a day. There are about 7 other boats crossing right now. Alex says he wants to do Saturday's net.

Ok, my shift is over time for bed. Here is the link to our position reports so that it opens in a big window.

http://www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/PositionreportsDetail.aspx?callsign=va3pry

Night Watch - Deep Thoughts....

I know.....yet another blog. Forgive me, I have nothing but time out here :-)!

This South Pacific passage is like the gateway to the world for me. I feel like we have finally been given the key to the locked door we have been knocking on for so long. There are moments out here when it all hits me and I am overwhelmed with emotion. We are finally here! I am so happy to have 20 some days to reflect on this fact, rather than running to the next goal. It feels good to revel in it for a while.

I feel this sense of power. I find myself wondering what else there is that I can do with my life that I haven't even imagined yet. Is it really as easy as setting a goal, making a list and forging ahead through thick and thin? If this is true that opens a whole different door! hmmmm possibilities fill my head out here at sea and nothing but time to explore and think through each one.

Enough of my night watch "deep thoughts"......We had another day of squalls yesterday. Artemo handles them beautifully. At one point the wind was blasting at 28 knots and it was pouring rain. I cracked opened the door just a pinch and peeked below to see what was going on. A warm blast of heat hit me from the cooking. It looked cozy down there with the soft glow of our lights on. Graham was just finishing up making dinner and telling Alex how to play solitaire. Alex was on the computer at the navigation station. Amelia's fresh baked cookies were cooling on the non skid on the table. Graham yelled out, "Amelia dinner time" and I heard her from the back call out, "coming".

I got my warm fuzzy feeling and quietly closed the door. Nice to be able to peek in on normal every once in a while when "crazy" is blasting around you. Not to long after that I heard a knock on the door and I opened it up and out comes my yummy spaghetti dinner.

We finished our 4 baths today. I feel glorious. We each heated up a pot of water today for the occasion. (good idea Theresa) This added an extra step but so totally worth it!

12 days out and we haven't had to run our engine yet. We truly are a sailboat. We are also almost making enough power from our wind generators and solar panels to stay topped up. Every few days Graham runs our Honda generator to bring us back to 100%. We have gone through 2 tanks of water so far, so we are making water to fill them back up. It is so cool to have everything we need to survive on board.

As far as garbage goes we have about 1/2 a bag now. All our paper, food scraps, tin cans and bottles go over board. We have a bit of fresh fruit and veggies left. Probably enough for another 4 days. After that we will be onto dried fruit and canned fruits and veggies. We have tons of potatoes, onions and garlic though. Freezer still has lots of meat in it. We have been cautiously moving through it. We are making our own bread and yogurt. We have a ton of cheese. As far as food goes we are doing well.

The kids are working hard to get through their home schooling year. Amelia finished math and tossed her book to the sea. Boy was she happy. I promised Graham they would be done by the time we get to Marquesas. What was I thinking! I have told the kids they better not let me down.

Well I better run....the sun is just setting and I don't want to miss it.

Gigantic Monstorous Waves

Yesterday the waves and wind built and built to an all new high. It is so strange to ride up so high on a huge wave and then plunged down deep into the trough and be staring up at the next massive wave. It seems impossible that they won't overtake you but right as rain Artemo slides back up and finds a sweet spot to belly surf down. This isn't to say that there isn't the odd "BANG" or "CRASH" against the boat and then a huge "SPLASH". I hate these noises. Sounds like the world is coming apart but luckily it doesn't. We are really lucky that our confidence is building in rhythm with the increase in the weather. We are handling it in stride and fear doesn't grip me like it use to. Although when I spot the breaking waves and can look through the top of the waves and see the beautiful blue green color of the sea as they form their roll......this scares me a bit! I can't remember if I ever told you how I use to shake with fear when things got chaotic, like actually shake and I couldn't seem to stop myself. I may have been to embarrassed to mention it but we are way past that now :-). The good news is that the sky is blue. It always seem worse in 25 knot wind and huge seas when the sky is ominous. I am grateful for the blue sky!

Well this morning just after Graham had gone to bed following his shift and just after I had finished writing the above paragraph.....we began our day of squalls. The beautiful blue sky filled in with dark clouds and you could see weather systems all around us. The squalls moved much faster than I was expecting. I had just spotted the extra dark spot off my port side and I noticed that there was a line of frothy water coming towards us. I managed to get the computer down below and slide the door in its place just as the rain and crazy wind began. I knew I had to furl in the Genoa, so I release the line and tried to hold it as it flailed madly, with the other hand I tried to pull in (furl) the sail up. There was so much pressure from the wind it was hard. The kids were yelling to me, "Dad is coming. Dad is coming". I managed to get the winch handle on and start to bring the sail in as Graham came up on deck and helped me out. Winds blasted up past 30 knots and the seas built even bigger than I wrote about above. Pictures do not do the size of the seas justice. I did get a picture of the wind speed indicator at 30 and also the radar showing the massive squall moving at Gromit and Artemo. Now even through all this chaos we still were in good humor, if you can believe it. I remember at one point Graham and I are standing in the cockpit soaking wet. I had my full rain gear on. My hair is sticking to my face. We are braced against the missen and tethered in. Graham only has his rain jacket and underwear on because he got woken up from his sleep and he was shivering. We stood there hugging each other and I said, "Living the dream baby!" We both laughed.

During the day we had 4 more squalls hit us. Graham went to bed after the 3rd and I handled the last 2 on my own. It was a good drill to do over and over. Once you feel confident that you know what to do in these circumstances, that you have a plan.....all you do is execute the plan. I was really proud of myself. I even managed to do the last 2 squalls with the hydrovane steering us. I have finally mastered the hydrovane and feel as good about it as I did about the auto pilot. The best part is that it uses no power though! The kids weren't as confident in my skill as I was though. For both of the squalls they still asked over and over, "Should we wake up Dad". ha. It may have taken me longer to furl etc. but I got the job done!

In between the squalls I was making buns and pizza dough for our halfway party. At about 8pm we reach it. We celebrated by eating pizza and all four of us singing the Gromits a song we had written for them. It went over really well and there were lots of cheers coming across the radio. We also pulled out the cream soda in celebration.

So Alex got his wish. The day after the big one got away he was out on deck at sunset and voila......he landed a beautiful 5lb tuna, that was just the perfect size for dinner and lunch! He cooked up a storm and the fish was his best yet! My rule is that he can't fish until we eat the fish we have, so tomorrow he should be able to begin again. He is excited. He might even be getting a tad bit cocky :-)! Oh I have to mention that it was 150lb test that broke. Alex was horrified that I got that wrong! ha

Right now we are wing on wing downwind sailing. We are averaging about 6 knots an hour and only 1420 nautical miles to go!

The one that got away

I am sure or at least I am pretty sure, that nearing the end of the 3 weeks at sea, you will see a blog post titled something like, "Get me the heck off this boat", but for right now we are all really enjoying our time out here. Seriously! Weird eh?

Each day gets easier and easier. You take the pros with the cons and eventually it just becomes life. You get use to the movement on board, high gusty winds, the odd rogue wave or two in the cockpit, holding on all the time, reading, talking, lounging, star gazing, bird watching, squalls, rainbow sightings, cooking, eating, wave riding, speed watching.......I am really surprised. Today as we sped along at over 7 knots, I actually cleaned the bathroom and washed the floors in the boat and then scrubbed down the cockpit. Life goes on.

We are all still super hungry all the time. Graham made two really fantastic meals today. The first was fresh fish sticks made with Alex's first fish of the trip. A small Mahi Mahi that he caught yesterday. He double breaded the fish fillets into sticks and did a fry. OMG it was good. The second meal was a dish called, "doubles". It is our favorite meal but it takes him quite a bit of work. It is basically a chickpea curry sandwich. He makes the curry a day ahead so it sits and gets really flavorful. Today he made up the curry bread and then fried up the bread and made up the doubles. Now they will never be as good as Mama Thackoories (say Hi to your mom for us Brian) but man did they hit the spot!

At 4 pm today we hit 1000 nms and our 1 week out mark! Very exciting. We sailed side by side with Gromit in celebration. They were so close we could talk back and forth. Probably closer than the captain would of liked :-). It was a lot of fun. It was so great to see them all up close and not just speak on the radio. I got some great pictures of them. The kids got out the air horn and fired off a couple shots.

It has been a great learning experience budding boat on such a big ocean. I don't think any of us realized how much work it would be to try and stay together. Gromits boat is 47 feet and ours is 43 feet. Our boats sail very differently and go faster based on different points of sail. Given Gromits size they could beat us in most races though. This means that we have to work at adjusting sail plans to maximize our speed and also set up their sails to match us. We check in with each other every few hours and see what our average speeds are and they try to match. When weather kicks up we reef and we check back in to see speeds etc. The first 4 days or so, there was the steep learning curve. We did a lot of cat and mouse which was a bit tiring. One night Gromit ran on only their main waiting for us and then the next night we even got way ahead and had to run on only our main. Artemo for some reason goes really fast when the wind is behind her. Anyway by day 5 I thing we had the hang of it and now we are both steering via our windvanes and we set our course based on the wind and the boats just do the rest! I am constantly surprised that Artemo is totally on the rum line to Marquesas. No matter what the wind does. It is freaky. She definitely knows the way.

Tonight as the sun was setting Graham and I were down below on the SSB radio net. Other boats that are underway to Marquesas check in and give their coordinates. As we were listening the kids start yelling they have a fish. I look up just as they lose it and then all of a sudden we see the other handline start unraveling at a crazy rate. Amelia grabs the line and almost cuts her fingers. Alex grabs the hand reel and can barely hold on as Graham scrambles up the stairs. He grabs hold and is in shock at the load on the line. Well you can just imagine the frenzy that picks up on board. We realize it is huge so I go to grab the Tequilla (still have a bit left! thanks Martha) and the gaf. I fasten the harness on Graham and the headlamp. Alex gets his harness on. We relay the play by play to Gromit and then finally the fish is close enough to the back of the boat to see it. Graham and Alex are yelling and the smiles and excitement on their faces was better than anything. They said it was at least 5 feet long and looks like a wahoo. Just as they are bracing themselves to pull it in the 300 pound test snaps and they watch as the massive fish takes a final leap in the air and is gone. SO SAD!! Unbelievably SAD. You can not imagine how hard it was to lose this fish. We spent the next hour re-living the course of events and examining the line and dreaming of the one that got away.

Tomorrow at sunset you will catch Alex out on deck fishing, convinced that he will catch that BIG ONE! Stay tuned....