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American Spirit II - Day 132; Just Sailing & Slowing the Boat Down to Suwarrow; Thursday, May 15, 2014



Off watch at 1:00 AM. Joel on watch from 1:00 AM - 6:00 AM. Before going to bed I showered and shaved. It's always a good feeling to climb into bed 'clean.' Usually I shave when I get up at 6:00 AM, but this morning I didn't. Still getting used to the 'new' routine.



Joel had a good watch. No rain squalls; full moon; and some stars out.



At 6:50 AM the sun broke thru the clouds on the horizon. Clouds = no green flash. Still looking for my 2nd sunrise green flash.



We still have the 'giant' stalk of bananas hanging on our transom. I grabbed 4 of them. Usually you can eat 60-70% of each. They're really small, 3 1/2 inches at most; 3/4 of an inch in diameter. And taste different than the Delmonte's you buy at Publix. A little sweeter. We had bought them 2 weeks ago and they've been 'ripening' on our transom ever since. Maybe 30 left out of 50 or 60.



I'm asked frequently, how deep is the ocean where you're sailing. Well, the Pacific is REALLY deep. Today we're in water over 16,000 feet deep. That's over 3 miles.



Up at 6:00 AM for the 6:00 AM - 9:15 AM watch.



At 7:15 AM the wind and seas started building. Wind and waves seem to go up or down at sunrise and sunset. We're racing along at 7 1/2 to 8 knots with the wind 20-22 knots. I put a reef in the main and jib, slowing the boat to 6 1/2 knots. We're cruising, not racing. And with limited crew (2).



At 9:18 AM I put a second reef in the mainsail and jib. Wind 20-24 knots. That lowered our speed to 6.4 knots. Its best to reef before you need to. If you reef and the wind doesn't increase like you think it will, then you take the reef out.



At 9:15 AM I woke Joel up. At 9:30 AM we had the net communication between all the boats. We learned then that Folie a Deux and Celebrate were skipping Suwarrow and heading directly to Niue. Folie didn't want to get to Suwarrow at night and 'wait around' to enter the lagoon the next day; and Celebrate may have secured a haul out position in Fiji so they're heading closer to that location.



Our noon position was 15 degrees, 3 minutes South; 157 degrees, 2 minutes West. 370 miles from Suwarrow.



We passed by a sea mount called Marara Seamount, where the water was 1,162 meters (3,834 feet). The water before the seamount was 4,986 meters (16,453 feet). Why is that important? Because when you go from deep water to shallower water there can be wave disturbances due to the 'piling up' of water over a seamount. So we always try to sail around them if possible.



Some time during the day we passed out of French Polynesian territory. Soon we'll be in the Cook Islands.



I took a nap from 10:38 AM to 1:15 PM. Joel stood watch. FYI. There is always one of us in the cockpit, on watch, and awake 24/7.



Back on watch at 1:15 PM, Joel taking a nap, I shook out both reefs on the main and jib. We had 2 boats gaining on us from astern: II Audeacious and Caduceus. We don't want them passing us.



Dinner was at 6:00 PM and, as usual, consisted of Mahi Mahi, blackened by me and grilled by Joel. With the fish we had minute rice (actually, microwavable rice that took 90 seconds to cook), and chilled pear halves for dessert. Whenever we catch fish, dinner for the next 3-7 nights is going to be fish. Until the fish we caught is totally consumed, its fish for dinner. And after we catch a fish, we don't put our fishing lines back in the water until the fish we caught and filleted is gone.



The sun set at 6:10 PM. No green flash. Clouds obstructed the horizon. Again.



During the 6:30 PM net Caduceus stated that they were heading to Niue instead of Suwarrow due to maintenance issues. That's the 3rd boat to skip Suwarrow so far.



Joel saw a shooting star at 7:45 AM that was like a bright white flair, that almost dipped into the horizon. No, Joel was not drinking wine with dinner.



At 7:45 PM the auto pilot shut off on its own. First time that's happened in weeks. Joel 'caught' the wheel before we rounded up. Good catch Joel! We're not the only boat that has this problem. Martin on Caduceus says its a 'software' problem with Raymarine. Fixable...but. Sometimes the fix is worse than the problem.



We finally realized that the new ICOM radio we installed wasn't working properly. We could hear but not transmit. Similar to the problem we had with the Raymarine VHF radio. So now we think the problem may be an antenna issue. We'll deal with it in Suwarrow. Joel may have to go up the mast. For now, if we need to talk to another boat we can use a separate handset to talk, and listen on the boat's other radios.



At 10:40 PM I took out both reefs on my watch. Our speed increased from 5.5 to 6.5 knots.



352 Days until home.



Brian Fox


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