ITCZ? Doldrums? What are those? Definitely in our past – we have had nothing but consistent winds for the past two days. Tonight, we have calmer (but by no means calm) seas and the wind is down slightly. I took the reef out of the jib late this afternoon and Joe shook out the second reef on the main this evening. We are now speeding along in the 10 – 12 knot range with one reef in the main and 15 - 18 knots of true wind. I’m fairly certain we have found “the current” (one of many in the area) because we are regularly hitting 13 knots. Also, our current indicator shows 2.5 knots in a favorable direction. But I’m not sure it actually works.
I was optimistic enough with the improving conditions this afternoon to open up some hatches and spray the cockpit with fresh water. So many waves had crashed onto the cockpit table that a salt crust had formed. A rinse wasn’t sufficient – I had to scrub and soak and loosen the salt to get the table clean. Joe pointed out that the waves were still crashing into the cockpit but I was tired of getting coated with salt every time I went outside. Plus, it was my workout day and I didn’t want to slide around on the salty floor.
While it’s still funky and humid down below, opening the bathroom hatches for a few hours allowed some fresh air to circulate, hopefully preventing the mold from setting in. I closed them just before my watch when things started getting a bit spicy again. Last night, just before bedtime, Cobin announced that there was water behind the wall in the hallway opposite the freezer where Joe installed a temporary hatch for the one that got ripped off by a spinnaker sheet en route to the Marquesas. The temporary cover is just a thick sheet of plastic screwed on to the outside of the boat so it’s not inconceivable that water could enter there. Cobin volunteered to vacuum it out but it was late and the image of the wall bulging with water was just too much to deal with.
When I went to tuck the girls in to bed, I glanced at it and saw that the water wasn’t actually in the wall but trapped in a small space inside the window. Good news – enough to let me defer it to another day. Today I decided to sponge it out so at least the water would quit sloshing out of the space where it was trapped. As I repeatedly squeezed the sponge down into the wall to soak up the salt water and extracted it with my fingertips, I decided that the water had probably been accumulating in the space for a long time. Perhaps it had just recently filled to the point that water was sloshing out and therefore called attention to the issue. To test my theory, I asked Cobin to get his saline testing kit (a gift from my brother) to see if the water in the window well was saltier than the seawater around us. If my theory was correct, the water had been getting trapped in the space and evaporating, leaving saltier water behind to mix with fresh salt water entering now.
The results were not satisfying. Water in the window well had 35 parts saline per 1,000 and the regular sea water had 32 parts saline per 1,000. While I thought a 10% difference was telling, it’s not the overwhelming number I was hoping for. Still, it was fun to use the saline kit to get an answer. When we first started, I had visions of Cobin testing the salinity of water all over the world and making a graph of it but he didn’t find that idea as compelling as I did.
We did a little filming for our “Life at Sea” video that Cobin is putting together for me as one of the videos I have commissioned from him to help him repay his laptop debt. I’m finally using the gimbal I bought for my phone so the quality of the videos should be much better than my past efforts.
Years ago, in my hometown of Corpus Christi, TX, when a hurricane was headed for the Texas coast, I remember seeing a film crew in town, trying to make the moderate conditions look much more severe for their audience. While everyone else was walking around in shorts and T-shirts in the gentle rain, the film crew put on full foul weather gear for the cameras. They filmed in front of a restaurant called Hurricane Alley and I vaguely recall that they had a fan hooked up off camera to boost the wind speed for their shot.
I told this story to the kids so that when we went outside to film, they would help enhance the excitement for our “wave day” shot. I originally wanted them to go on the foredeck but the conditions there were actually quite brisk and splashy and I didn’t really want to film a rescue at sea so I contented myself with the edge of the cockpit. Tully and Marin put on lifejackets and we tethered Tully to the rail. The girls looked off at the waves and . . .
I think I’m praying to the wrong gods. In the middle of my sentence, some devious little sea sprite caused a wave to splash in an unpleasant direction and dumped a giant bucket of water down the hatch in the port bathroom. Hearing Joe’s voice of reason in my ear, I had closed the head hatches earlier because it was getting rougher and I do sometimes get tired of mopping up seawater. I did pull it closed all the way but I didn’t dog this one (turn the little handles that lock it down) because I thought I could risk letting a little air in. I was wrong. I spent twenty minutes wiping up the water and then went around and closed and dogged the other troublesome hatches. I have left the old faithful three in the salon open but will probably regret it.
Fun fact – even if you close AND dog the hatches in the heads, salt water spray still manages to coat the walls. How does this happen, you ask? I wondered the same thing when I repeatedly found salt water spray on the walls in bathrooms that were sealed shut. Until one day when I happened to be in the head when it happened. The cool thing about living on a boat is that we aren’t attached to anything, unlike normal houses that have links to sewers, electrical lines, etc. So, all the systems have an end somewhere on the boat. The end of the bathroom sink drainage is a hole under the boat with a little half cap on it that is designed to let water out rather than in. Vigorous wave action occasionally circumvents this design and sends salt water shooting up the drainage pipe and out the sink’s drain hole, into the bathroom. This is exciting, hilarious and terrifying, all at the same time. Imagine brushing your teeth and leaning over to spit, only to have a fine mist of salt spray shoot up into your face. Such delights await unwary guests at sea!
Back to the story of Tully and Marin gazing off to sea. Cobin took my story of exaggerating the conditions to heart and decided that if we couldn’t have giant waves splashing on the foredeck, he would create a similar situation in the cockpit. He filled a bucket of water and threw it at the girls. Sadly for Cobin, his desire for mischief was much stronger than his awareness of the wind’s direction. The water he threw into 20 knots of wind barely touched his intended victims. Mainly it landed on him and the cockpit floor. Mischievousness is strong in our son – perhaps a bit too strong as it seems to override most other thoughts, like, “If I do this again, will l have more success?” Yep – that thought just stayed in the background while he refilled the bucket and tried again. Too bad I wasn’t filming him instead of the girls! I’ve just made a mental note to stay upwind of Cobin whenever possible and things will turn out OK for me.
After my next story, you may figure out whose genetics Cobin inherited. Yesterday when I went for my long nap, I heard the annoying infrequent tapping that had troubled me the night before. I know I’m oversensitive to noise (at home I leave the fan on to drown out the sound of people helpfully emptying the dishwasher early in the morning) but there are dramatic differences in sound above and below deck. Many a time, I’ve been in my bed, hearing a horrible banging, only to go into the cockpit and find a tiny strand of rope gently brushing against the wall or some other similar situation. It has become a game of sorts, to try to identify the tiny sound above that is creating a cacophony below. I have startled many a crew member on watch in the middle of the night when I stumble out, half-dressed, mumbling about banging things while I pull on various lines and rearrange life jackets and other dangling objects to try to eliminate the sounds in my bunk disrupting my sleep.
Over the course of the trip, I have become familiar with all the usual culprits – the main sheet flopping on the deck when the winds are light, the bottles rolling around in the cooler, the spare block in the storage locker that has worked loose and is flopping against the shared wall with our cabin. This particular sound was in synch with the waves and it felt like it should be easy to identify. I scoured the cockpit, trying to identify the exact location based on the geography of our room below and where the sound was coming from. Nothing conclusive. I checked the cooler which isn’t actually cold, just a place we store warm drinks to move into the fridge later. Sometimes we fill it with ice but ice is often hard to come by and/or difficult to transport in a frozen state to the boat. I looked in the storage area next to our room. Nothing. Out of desperation, I tried the one next to it. Bingo! A big piece of metal pipe (why do we need this?), had been wedged against the back wall by some heavy boxes which had moved in the wave action, allowing it to roll around. Certain that I had solved the problem, I went down to sleep.
The tapping started again. It sounded just like the metal pole rolling around. I went up again to ensure that I had secured the pipe. Yes, it was definitely secure. Down into bed again. Marin was on watch. Would Marin help me by tapping in various locations on the deck so I could identify them down below? She would. Could she see if the cooler handles were banging? They weren’t. Hmm . . . could I just ignore it? I couldn’t. Every time I felt a wave, I knew I would hear the tapping. I could survive it during the afternoon but all night? I didn’t think I could make it through.
I took a deep breath. Definitely a rolling sound. Had I confirmed that nothing was rolling in the cooler? Why did it have to be so loud – like it was inside the room. Wait a minute – inside the room. I hadn’t tried that. The shelf near Joe’s side of the bed – what was on it? Wasn’t his Kindle propped awkwardly? Could that be banging? I checked. It wasn’t the Kindle. But a large roll of art paper could definitely make a rolling sound, in synch with the waves. I wedged the art paper against the paintbrush box and the noise stopped. Perhaps in the future, I will start looking for noises that sound loud enough to be right next to me in the areas right next to me. But I doubt it. Where’s the fun in that?
We have 128 miles to go before we reach Devil’s Island. In preparation for our short stop, we started watching Papillon tonight. It’s based on the true story of a man sent to the French penal colony located on Devil’s Island and his multiple escape attempts. I don’t think the anchorage is actually on Devil’s Island but on one of the other two islands right near it. Still, it will be fun to make one more stop at a remote location I had previously never thought about and where we will probably never visit again. At the rate we’re going, we might make it in time for lunch!
I didn’t take any photos today although I discovered that a small person on board borrowed my phone to take a photo of her artwork done during social studies class. I prefer the page that was under the coloring page to absorb the permanent marker – I think it looks like those paintings made up of all the little dots by the guy whose name I can never remember. Matisse, maybe?
Also included are photos of the rainbow from our days in the ITCZ and a lovely moonrise during that same time period.
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