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American Spirit II - Day 12; Almost There!; 2 Huge Current Anomolies; Thursday, January 16, 2014



For the second time during our trip a Petrel tried to land on top of our mast. Though we would like to accommodate any and all birds that want to hitch a ride with us to Panama, landing on top of the mast with our VHF antenna, TV antenna, wind direction and wind speed instruments would be a problem. It would be a costly touch down, as one or more pieces of equipment would be broken. Fortunately, this bird only tried to land twice. A few days ago, we had one make half a dozen passes at the mast top, some as close as inches, before giving up. This is probably the only good thing about a bouncy sail boat - a bird preventer.

Had a little excitement today as our navigation system, a Ray Marine E-80 Chart plotter, lost its position. You get an alarm and the screen says "Position Lost." Not the best thing that could happen on a sail boat in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. Though we have 3 other back up electronic navigation systems on board that can and do help navigate, it is certainly convenient that the primary work. Sometimes or usually when something like this happens, it's because our boat has lost satellite contact. However, in this case, we hadn't. We still had contact with 5 satellites. A possible solution was found - moving the outboard motor away from the GPS antenna. So far, 20 hours later and counting, that appears to have solved the problem. We only moved the outboard to its current location a couple months ago. Bad idea.

Lastly, and what I am about to describe, is perhaps the most incredible anomaly that this boat has ever been thru. Yesterday, Wednesday, while going over two separate sea mounts, areas of the ocean that rise up thousands of feet from the ocean floor, we got carried away by a phenomenal current that took our boat west (90 degrees from our current course) at speeds up to 18 knots (20.7 miles per hour), for about 10 - 15 minutes at a time. We were sailing south, 180 degrees approximately, at 7 - 8 knots. When the current grabbed us, the blue current or tide line on our chart plotter, which is normally quite thin, maybe 1/32nd of an inch wide, expanded to over an inch. As I had indicated in a previous log, dealing with or against currents is part of what goes into sailing across oceans. And why when we went thru the Nicaraguan Sand Bank we were concerned about current anomalies like this. I had had this sort of anomaly occur twice before, both times when sailing back from the Dry Tortugas or Key West to Tampa. Both occurrences were about 35 miles off of Boca Grande; but neither of these were as severe as these two. Imagine driving your car at 20 miles per hour and all of he sudden your car moves laterally at 50 miles per hour, while still pointed where you were originally going

Almost there. ETA Isla Porvenir 5:00 PM Friday.

Brian Fox

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