All of us woke a bit late, except for Chris still at the wheel, from our 2am Equator ceremony; he is now thankfully napping in Southern Hemisphere bliss. Seas a bit on our beam, winds light, we slowly sail along at 4 knots. We are trying to head more south than west at this point to avoid a pesky thing called the SPCZ (South Pacific Convergence Zone) that normally doesn’t live here. It is usually over toward Tonga, not French Polynesia. It brings with it squalls and unsettled weather. Our goal is to continue heading south, then catch a conveyer belt of current and wind west toward the Marquesas. It makes for a slow, rolly sail today, but morale is good after our Equator crossing.
We made more room in our freezer and Calder is happily fishing again.
I haven’t been great about school lately due to the rolly seas, but am determined to do a bit today, as we read more together about clouds, start Greek mythology, and continue reading our Captain Cook book. The kids are great about doing their foreign language daily and both have books they are reading and listening to on Audible. And we are doing year-round school, no summer vacation for this crew (our “summer vacation” is scattered throughout the year).
We finished the last of our lettuce today, lucky to still have some fresh produce. Eating wahoo fish cakes tonight for dinner; finding as many creative ways to cook wahoo as we can.
Flying fish are our friends out here. If we look long enough out at sea, we see schools of them flying along the surface. There are fifty-six species of flying fish in the world; we’ve seen two different species out here. The longest flight recorded was 45 seconds. They can fly up to 6 meters high, but most of the time we see them just above the surface. We also see an occasional bird, boobies and a little black bird (petrol?).
Last night I forgot to close the screen on the hatch over my bed and suddenly Chris, on watch, yells to me, “Jen, you have a fish in there!” A flying fish had landed on my sleeping back and was flopping around in bed with me, spreading slime and scales. I picked him up and threw him out my window into the ocean.
On last night’s watch, we saw a fishing boat 6 miles away. Chris was dodging squalls and making sail changes. We continue to push south, trying to outsail the calm predicted and to get into the west flowing currents.
Total miles over the last 24 hours: 110.6 nm
Average speed in last 24 hours: 4.6 knots (max 8.7)
Total miles of trip so far: 1,862.5 nm (less than 1,000 nm to go!)
SV Terikah Adventures 