Days 2 - 5 March 13 – March 16, 2000

Fairly light winds for the most part, although they come and go. We saw a couple more ships early in the morning of day 2, then none afterwards. Most of the time we have the 150% genoa fully unfurled with full main, but the wind was not steady and we were motoring on and off, partly to charge the batteries. It is really a problem when there is little wind because the sails flog and we are afraid of damaging them. So we end up with a reef in the main when we are just ghosting along in order to stop it from banging too much. Very odd. Night four we had no wind at all and just drifted along in circles in a glassy black sea with genoa furled and reefed main. The swell had dropped to an undulating gentle 2 foot rise and fall. The motion was quite smooth although the mainsail was still banging a bit but we were able to sleep quite well.

We are having intermittent problems charging the batteries, and Vlad found that the 12 volt current wire to the regulator was loose. Once he got it properly connected, it began charging.

The seas have been pretty calm for the most part, long swells with either one foot waves or almost smooth depending on how much wind there is. The water went from a chalky green close to shore to a very pretty turquoise in the first day or so and to a deep indigo blue about two hundred miles off, very beautiful and so clear you can see the rays of the sun striking deep down when it is calm.

Two turtles surfaced nearby the boat when we were not far off shore and a booby came to sit on the bow pulpit for a while one evening but he did not like it when we furled and unfurled the genoa, so he left. At night there are small black birds flying around, a check in the bird book makes us think these are Leach’s Storm Petrels which nest on islands off the Mexican coast.

It was cold the first couple of nights out but now is much warmer (although Paula still wears her sweatpants and sweater, particularly on the 0400 watch). The moon is about half full now, waxing gibbous, and so the sky is very bright until about 0100. Star gazing gets a lot better once the moon goes in but it’s nice to have the light.

Days 6 - 9