Spinnakers, sushi, and suicidal squid

The wind and wave direction has finally merged enough for us to be in perfect conditions for downwind sailing. We busted out our spinnaker, which, for those of you not really familiar with sailing, is a monstrous three story tall kite that we lash to the very front of the boat. While using this bad boy, we can essentially kite surf our way to Hawaii over the next 9 days or so.
Of course, this would be the case if it weren't for all the pesky details!
Firstly, I've never used a spinnaker before. Jon has in his racing days, but always in a group. So what better environment to test out Shenanigans' downwind set-up than 1000 miles offshore? Getting the whole system to work out properly took a few hours, since we were a little rusty at first. This kind of put a damper on our daily mileage of around 130 that we were hitting consistently. But once we finally got the kite to cooperate, we were surfing at about 7.5 knots! And as a bonus, the ride feels like a city bus instead of a heeling crazy boat in the swells; we are still moving around, but at least you can cook without holding on for dear life!
The only issue now is that we cheated a bit too close to the Pacific high pressure "parking lot." We can only run the kite for a couple hours before the wind fizzles out. So unfortunately, we are currently motoring south in search of a good 12-20 knots that can push us straight into Hilo. Thank goodness for our 157 gallon fuel tank capacity with the trusty Perkins that would rather sip than guzzle!
The other day we spooked a school of squid that panicked and jetted out of our way. A couple must have misjudged their aim, because they ended up on our deck! However, we only noticed this a few hours later, so that when we found them, they were pretty much squid jerky glued to the deck. Mmmm!
So, while scraping squid cement off our pretty blue deck, we turned around to see something flopping and splashing wildly behind the boat. We caught a fish! And not just any fish: a scrumptious albacore tuna. After subduing him, he weighed in at 12 pounds. Not too shabby for our first catch of the passage. We had amazing sushi that night, then used some for curry last night. We still have more to get through, so needless to say, we stopped fishing until we run out of all this fresh meat. Waste not, want not.
Thanks to Michael for the handlines and lures, and thanks to Bill and Brenna for the filleting tips!
Today is just about the halfway mark, so I think we will bake a cake or brownies to celebrate.
Happy Mother's Day to Vicki and Judy, and any other moms that are reading!
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Trade winds and paranoia

Ah, the trade winds! Sunny clear days, and 15-20 knots of a steady breeze at our back. Only very rarely do we have to turn on the engine and motor for a bit, if the wind fizzles out at night. Conditions right now would be absolutely perfect if only the swell could finally assimilate behind us; we could pretty much just surf our way to Hawaii. Hot days while sailing guarantee that our laundry load to wash while in port will be slightly smaller than anticipated, as those days are clothing optional! Ha!
So, we have an AIS system on board, which receives signals from boats over 60 feet that are required to transmit their location, heading, and speed. One night we heard the AIS alarm go off, so for the first time in a week we knew we were within 10 miles of another vessel. We scanned the horizon and thought we saw it way off in the distance, even though it was hard to know for certain due to the swell. About a minute later, the vessel changed their heading to come straight at us, and at 19 knots no less. This would easily outrun our 6 knot cruising speed. Well, I'm not sure if sleep deprivation was kicking in, or just our paranoia of being hundreds of miles from help in the middle of nowhere, but Jon and I freaked out!
Thoughts like "why would pirates have an AIS aboard?!" or "aren't we too far from Mexico to worry about those drug boats!?" or "where did I put my spear gun?" shot back and forth. We stared at the AIS and the horizon, trying to figure out what this guy was going to do. Eventually, he just ended up going parallel to our course. It turns out, he must of had radar aboard, saw our heading, and figured that was probably the best course of action to get through the swells somewhat comfortably. Let this be a lesson kids: get your sleep, or you may talk yourself into a panic for a totally absurd reason!
Speaking of sleep, we gave our autopilot too heavy of a load while we were trying to catch up on some. It turns out that Brizo couldn't handle the direction of the swells along with the amount of wind that night, so a few of her gears were pretty much chewed up. Luckily, Jon still had the old wheel-drive unit that came on our boat originally. We switched it out yesterday, and are back with a functional "3rd person" on the watch cycle. Brizo II will be looked after a bit more carefully.
We've been trying some fishing, but no luck so far!
Only 1300 nautical miles to go...assuming we head in a straight line. We are hoping to be in Hilo in 10-11 days. Everybody take care, we miss you all back home!

Getting the hang of it

Today is the fifth day of our passage, and things are finally starting to feel "normal." The days just kind of roll along...if you're a Pink Floyd fan, it's kind of like the mellow riff of the song "Pigs," with the same mildly ominous undertones. With only about 1600 nm to go, the daily routine is pretty much like this:
Morning snack, steer for a few hours, nap for a few hours, lunch, steer, nap, dinner, steer, nap.
That last part is tricky. Nobody wants to be outside, wet and cold when the wind is howling and it's pitch black. We were spoiled the night of our second day, as the conditions were perfect for letting our autopilot, Brizo, do all the work. (Brizo is named after the Greek goddess who overlooked the safety of sailors and navigators--we figured it fit pretty well.) It ends up that many nights out here are too tough for Brizo to tackle alone, so Jon and I alternate hours of sleeping and freezing our buns off. C'est la vie, this is all a part of the ocean crossing experience, and I'm still glad to be a part of it!
There is, however, one redeeming point about the nights out here. Once your eyes adjust, it feels like you can see every single star in the universe. Just CLOUDS of them. It's amazingly humbling: our insignificant speck of a boat, the infinite sky, and the infinite water that cradles us.
My favorite part so far is laying on the deck in the sun, swaying along with the big 10 foot rollers, and staring up into the sky. Some days you can literally watch clouds being born. Little patches of what looks like fog will lazily rise up into the sky from the water, then expand into massive white cotton balls.
We haven't heard chatter on the radio in at least 3 days. It's quite the contrast to our first day, when it felt like we were being hailed non-stop by the Navy and a cargo vessel asking us what our planned itinerary was. The captain must have been bored, and wondered what a little sailboat was doing so far from land.

Better weather, plus some visitors

I wish I could post a picture of the water color out here. As I type, we are 312 nautical miles into our trip, with 1816 nm remaining. The deep, dark navy blue that we are used to seeing in our home waters has lightened to a shade approaching turquoise. The sun is shining brilliantly, with some slight haze on the horizon. The wind is only 15-18 knots out of the west, and keeping us moving at a steady 6 knots. Best of all, the swells have decreased to only a couple feet from the north, with a long duration between.
Needless to say, Jon and I feel much better! It's nice to finally be able to eat without wanting to vomit afterwards. Which, by the way, if anybody wants a sure way to lose weight, just hop on a sailboat to Hawaii and let the magic begin. Plus, we've been catching up on sleep lost that first horrible night out. Luckily, the worst conditions we will encounter on this journey will probably be just those first 50 miles from home. It's all mellow from here on out.
We've had a few visitors lately. A pod of two or three whales cruised by, with spouts and dorsal fins that look similar to blue whales. However, they were much smaller and more of a silver color than what we've seen on blues...maybe it was a group of their smaller cousins, Minke whales?
Also, we have spotted a few sea birds with a huge wingspan, like 5 or 6 feet across. I would say they were albatross, but they are a dark brown color, with a hooked black beak, so I'm not sure. They make flying look so effortless, as they literally just glide along the sea breezes without barely moving a muscle.
The most interesting visitor we had was a teeny tiny sparrow or finch that had no earthly reason for being out on the ocean. This poor little bird, which was barely the size of the palm of my hand, was flapping furiously towards us. It wanted desperately to land, and tried on our stainless steel handrails. It kept slipping off, but found our backstay to be a better diameter to hold on to. It landed about eye level with Jon, who was sitting at the stern. It stared at him for awhile, so he offered it some crumbs from his sandwich. The bird just stared at those too, then back at Jon. After a few seconds, it took off again. I wish it had stayed longer, to recharge after what must have been a long journey.

Days 1 and 2: Rude Reminder

We were able to cover 133 miles yesterday, which is pretty good for an old boat and two people new to blue water cruising. That came at a price, however, as yesterday was far from comfortable or how we anticipated the weather to be.
First, a stiff 25 knot breeze pushed us out of the harbor toward Anacapa. That wasn't so bad because it was behind us, but 6 foot swells were coming at us from the opposite direction. Then the wind shifted, and made for some entertainment as we tried to reef (decrease the surface area of our sails so that we can maintain control) while getting slapped in the face with swells rolling straight into the cockpit!
We almost crossed into a Navy live fire range, yet we were hailed on the radio by the vessel "Swiss Ladder," requesting that we alter course to pretty much retrace our progress for the last 7 nautical miles. Ugh.
The icing on the cake was the combination of gales (30-35 knots of wind) outside of the test range, and the fact that Jon and I were having difficulty keeping any food down or even staying awake. So, as you can see our first day was a bit of a bummer, but we are keeping positive and looking forward to the warmer days that lay ahead of us, along with the more organized swells and comfortable direction of the trade winds. We've already seen a few beginning signs of this today, so at least we are on the right heading!

Bon Voyage

Jonathan & Danielle set sail on their grand journey this morning at 6am.

       May the sun shine on their faces and the wind be at their backs!

Fuctional Email and Weather via Radio

This message was sent by email over radio wave. Trippy! If you can read this, then we were finally able to work out the last few kinks. We've also been messing around with weather (in the form of grib files) overlaid on our laptop chart plotter. It's pretty intimidating at first, but I think we will get the hang of it...we will have quite a bit of time to kill with practice.
Ten more days, then blue water, here we come! So far, the weather for our departure looks pretty accommodating. Fingers crossed!