All posts by : Jessica

Monday June 24, 2013

There was finally a window in the weather that we thought we could make our escape to Guatemala. Boy, did we wrongly predict what the weather was going to be doing in this part of the globe at this time of year. For a little while there, we thought we might be stuck in Utila for hurricane season, while waiting for winds to die down to anything under 30 knots. Yes, that’s all we’ve been getting since we’ve been here. 30 knot winds with thunderstorms on and off. After going to town each day though to check passage weather, we found at least 36 hours to make the 110 mile journey from Utila to Livingston Guatemala.

Oh, by the way, yesterday was Matt’s birthday. He doesn’t care to celebrate them, so I did what I do best, and I hijacked it. We had gone into customs in the morning to check out, so, afterward, we went out for breakfast, since, I wanted to. Then we tired snorkeling, since, I wanted to get in the water at least once while we were there, but we couldn’t find any good places to tie the dinghy where depths weren’t over 80 ft (things drop off fast here), so I never did get in the water after all. I made dinner on the boat, but after the sun had gone down and under the light of this year’s ‘Super moon’, we went into town for strawberry daiquiris. Hate to throw Matt under the bus, but that last one was at his request. However…from what we’d been seeing earlier in the week, the glasses were as big as fishbowls, and who wouldn’t want to drown in one of them on their birthday? (I can now tell you though, they were all mix and no rum.)

Anyway, back to cruising. There was a little bit of excitement this morning as we weighed anchor, mostly in the ‘This is the last sail we’ll have to take for the next five months’ kind of way. The sun was out, and with only the head sail up, we shot out of Utila on a beam reach, averaging 6.5 knots. Once we were sure that we were south enough of the reefs, course was changed to northwest, and we still sped along, still holding 5.5-6 knots of speed. Being close enough to the mainland now, we still never made out the mountains on shore behind the low lying, hazy clouds, but we did pick up the only English radio station in rage for miles. Chomping on Club crackers, we somewhat enjoyed the ride as we bobbed our head to the 90’s mix playing through the speakers. Tacking back and forth to make our way a bit north again, we finally settled into a nice downwind run in the early afternoon. The waves were growing, but steady, and it was nice to have them pushing us along from behind now instead of rocking us back and forth on our side. Being slightly dirty as it was, and knowing that we wouldn’t get to Livingston until the next morning, and then having to spend the rest of the afternoon fighting the current to get the 20 miles up river necessary, I pulled out all my gear to take my last cockpit shower for months. The waves (approx 6-8 ft) were actually large enough at this point that I had to keep one arm holding on to the bimini rails to keep myself from sliding from end to end, unlike my shampoo and body wash which sloshed around the floor of the cockpit.

As late afternoon turned to early evening, we took a check on distance and speed, and realized we were running to fast, and at this rate would arrive in the dark. Having been keeping a steady 7-7.5 knots the past few hours still under head sail alone, we rolled it in a bit. 6.5-7 knots now, still too fast. We rolled it in and rolled it in until the point that it was almost useless to keep up, yet we were still running at over 6 knots. We were almost tempted to roll the whole thing in, turning on the engine and keeping it just barely in forward, only enough to give us steerage. We decided against that, unless it came to it in the middle of the night, and continued on with barely any sail up, still barreling forward.

6.5 knots under only this much sail.  What the…?!

Just after we settled back into our rhythm, a pod of dolphins came by to entertain us. At first I could see their fins slicing through the water on our side, and I was hoping for a good cockpit show, but they made it apparent they were only interested in jumping in our bow wake, forcing us both forward on the deck. Carefully making our way up, we held on to the standing rigging as we watched them put on a show for the next 20 minutes, swimming away from the boat, only to quickly turn around and come charging back. There were plenty that were also showing off, jumping out of the water in our wake. This is the first time we’ve actually seen this happen, they’ve always been soley underwater before, so it was a big treat to see them doing their jumps. I have to admit, seeing these dolphins ride along with us for awhile, kind of made me appreciate cruising again.  Just enough.  So, thanks guys! I wish I could have brought my camera forward with me to capture it, but I barley trusted myself to be up there, holding tight as we pitched back and forth, so an expensive piece of equipment in my hands with me would not have been a good idea.

Our dinner was a very gourmet meal of heated Progresso soup and some leftover breadsticks I had attempted to make back in Utila. After that was cleared away, we did what we do best on passage. Nothing. Nothing but stare out at the horizon and count down the hours until sleep. In addition to that, though, I’m constantly checking the chart plotter, as usual. Which began the phenomenon of one of the things I hate the most. Every so often, for no apparent reason, our depth will go from showing unreadable (anything over 600 ft) to suddenly showing 16 ft, or 12. Panicked, I’ll look over the side of the boat to see if I can see bottom, if we’ve suddenly popped over a random reef somehow, but it will look the same as it did moments before. The screen will go back to showing and unreadable depth, and my heart rate will begin to slow again. Until….it does it again, and again, and again. Matt keeps telling me it’s nothing to worry about, that obviously we’re still in thousands of feet of water, and in the back of my mind I know that’s true, but every time a small digit pops up on the screen, my heart will start beating double time and I have a mini panic attack until it reads normally again.

 You liar!  Why do you lie to me?!

The night shift couldn’t come soon enough, and even though I was exhausted, I had the normal fitful sleep for my first three hours. Back in the cockpit for my 12-3 watch, we were starting to funnel in to the narrow bay between Honduras and Guatemala, with the Honduran shore a few miles off to one side, and shallow reefs to another. I made sure to stay at least a couple of miles away from the shipping lane, and watched as one after another passed by. During one of my 360 degree scans, I saw what appeared to be a red non-moving light off to my starboard side. It was still a ways off and I assumed it was a buoy marking reefs. In 15 minutes, I’d do my check again and see if I’d passed it yet. Yet, at minute 12, I spotted out of the corner of my eye a green light, attached to a mast, whizzing by me at only a few hundred feet away. Turns out that ‘buoy’ was actually another sailboat, and their mast light is one that changes from red, to green, to white, depending on what angle you’re viewing them from. When I first saw them, we had been on the same course, both heading west, although even then I didn’t know they were another boat. Right after I had initially seen them, they must had turned a 180 and set a course directly for me. When my heart once more that day settled back to a normal rate, I had to wonder if they had anyone on watch themselves. Normally, when you see another boat on the water, you don’t head right at it. Have I mentioned that it will be nice to take a few months off from sailing?

I don’t know if you can tell the size of the waves here, but they were higher than our solar panels.

Friday June 14, 2013

Our first night on passage, we went easy on Nate and let him sleep through the night without the interruption of shifts since he had just set foot on a sailboat for the first time only five hours beforehand, and we weren’t about to leave him alone at the wheel in the dark.  Or autopilot, whatever.  I was on my morning watch when he finally woke up around 8 and joined me in the cockpit.  Asking him how he slept, he replied that it felt like he was constantly up, the only way he was even able to tell that he’d gotten any sleep was that every time he’d look over at mine & Matt’s bunk, a new one of us would be asleep there.  He may have laughed the previous night when he’d asked what one does on passage, and I replied with “Sleep, or count down the hours until you can sleep again”, but before he could even spend 30 minutes awake with me, he was promptly passed out in the cockpit, napping for the next two hours.  Matt was finally beginning to stir around this time as well, and now that it was daylight hours, agreed that we could raise the main.  We hadn’t done it the previous night since our course was putting us almost directly downwind and we’d need to go wing’n’wing, using the spinnaker pole to secure the headsail to one side.  Nate, trying to be a helpful crew member, kept asking what he could do to help, but it was really only a two person job anyway.  Although I think he thoroughly served his purpose just by being on the boat, and when I let the main out a little to quickly and almost knocked Matt off the boat with the boom, was saved a severe screaming since Matt didn’t want to cause a scene in front of an almost stranger.  There was still a look of death, but it’s much easier to ignore by just looking the other way.

Georgie is just having so much fun.

The rest of day one was divided up between the three of us by reading books and taking naps.  With a scopoalmine patch on, my stomach was actually settled enough for me to pick up a book for once, so I decided to start ‘Maiden Voyage’, which has been sitting on our bookshelf for over a year.  I was two or three chapters in when I went to make lunch for us all (out of one of my worst loaves of bread ever), and came back up to find that Matt had stolen the book from me.  I was actually quite alright with this since it meant the Nook was open for the taking, and brought up ‘A Brief History of Nearly Everything’ to keep me occupied for the rest of the trip.  I don’t know if it was the added bonus of finally being able to read on passage again, or the novelty of having another person aboard, even if we were all doing our own thing, but before I knew it the sun was dipping down in the sky and it was time for dinner and sundowners.  Passing everyone a cold Red Stripe, we enjoyed the spaghetti I had prepared the previous day, and even though I think Matt’s eating habits are on par with mine, Nate made sure to mention how he’d never seen such orange spaghetti before in his life.  Ok, so maybe the grease of the ground beef mixed a little oddly with the Ragu, but it was still edible…right?  And probably much better than the only other option…Cup-o-Noodles.

 The lee cloth is doing it’s job of keeping Nate in his bunk……mostly.

Thursday brought even more excitement…in the form of movies.  I don’t know why the two of us never thought of it before, but when I started moving around the cabin without actually getting sick I thought ‘Hey!  I probably have enough energy to actually hook in all the necessary components to get the tv working, and then I can plop down on the settee for two hours of entertainment.  As strange as it sounds, I think I’d never actually done it before because I felt bad for leaving Matt up in the cockpit alone on watch while enjoyed the movie, but he was so engrossed in his book that he didn’t mind.   For the next two days we kept the movies rolling and introduced Nate to such cinema classics as The Proposal, The Adjustment Bureau, and Hot Tub Time Machine.  I think he was very impressed with the two TB of movies and tv shows that our hard drive houses.  After the first movie played, everyone would join in on viewing, with the scheduled ‘watch’ person poking their head out of the companionway every 10-15 minutes to conclude that we were still surrounded by water and nothing else.  Popcorn was popped, very poorly, and it was a nice distraction from the fact that we were actually traveling.

Friday afternoon we were all getting antsy though and ready to make landfall.  For awhile we had hoped that we’d be to Utila by Friday night since there was a period our speeds were shooting up, but then we realized we were going to fall short and get there in the middle of the night, meaning we had to slow ourselves down enough so that we wouldn’t arrive before daylight.  I tell you, nothing slashes spirits more than the hope of getting somewhere early and then finding out it’s not going to happen.  Later in the evening though, we were treated to some building seas and winds blowing over 30.  The sky held promises of storms that we prepared for by strapping on life vest and gathering in the cockpit, but each time we saw a wall of water coming our way, it would divert at the last minute and we were in the clear.  The skies finally started to clear around sunset and we prepared ourselves for bed, trying to sleep away the last agonizingly long hours of the passage.

 Nate, playing with Georgie while waiting for our non-storm.