Amari - Hitting the Century Mark

We hit 1000 miles to go today!! What's weird about that is how much perspective changes everything. Three years ago, when we were noobs back in New Bern North Carolina and just starting all this, one thousand miles at sea was a really big number. And you might expect that instead of covid, we'd have an awful case of cabin fever after two thousand already on this one single passage. But we're all kinda cool here. I mean, would I like to hit the bar and have a plate of salty fries to go with my bacon cheeseburger and draft beer? Sure! But at this point it's not urgent to GTFO the boat, and clocking off another thousand miles just doesn't seem like such a heavy lift. We are all in our routines, and we even get good sleep from time to time. But I'm old, and getting a good night's sleep every. read more...

Amari - Finally Clear

The moon lifts above the horizon like an amber cup half full, rising to find a clear night ahead of it, ready to light up a truely pacific ocean this evening. It's been clear all day, and the first day on this passage that hasn't been at least partially overcast. Good things come to those who wait I suppose, because today was a glorious sunny day of 16 to 18 knot winds over sun sparkled seas with gentle waves. What do you do when you're given this gift of a day? Crank some tunes, get up in the cockpit and sing! We couldn't really stand and dance so we danced from the waist up for an hour or so. We are making such good way, now only 1200 or so miles out. We will reach our 2/3 of the way point, with 1000 miles of ocean before us on Tuesday. The milestone treat for the half way point was. read more...

Amari - More COVID updates, and duckinacan

We received a communication from the ARC Rally Control that all incoming sailing vessels will have to show hard copies of our medical insurance, and also that we have flight tickets back home. So we will have to purchase refundable one way tickets back to Anywheresville, USA, to show to them.I guess a 3 week quarantine period in the middle of the Pacific Ocean just isn't enough, lol, because S 08 32.4, W 116 39.2 is such a known hotbed of viral activity, dontcha know!It's all such a fluid situation, and I know they want to err on the side of caution, but I hope they don't get a wild hair and change their minds. I guess the worst case scenario would be to get the big "NOPE, can't come here." But even then, I guess we'd just reroute to some island that would take a bunch of vagabond boats. read more...

Amari - Almost half way

Wing on wing is a beautiful thing, like Amari's arms open wide to the winds behind us. This is our sail plan, now that the winds clocked around from SE to ESE to now fully east, heading pretty much exactly where we need to go. So we had two choices: throw up the spinnaker chute or pole out the ginny. The winds are up to 20 knots, so we couldn't risk the spinnaker (someone in the fleet reported last night on the net that they tore theirs!), so the pole is out with fore guy and aft guy tacking it solidly into place. Now that all that line work is in place, we should be in this sail plan for some days, which makes our lives easier than they already are! The clouds finally gave up their campaign of harassment. They've gone back east and left us with a brilliant sun to sail under. It looks. read more...

Amari - COVID

Obviously we knew. We all did. The Corona virus was out there in Asia and somehow in Italy as well. But now over one week into our passage west we have learned through friends back home of the speed of its spread. The extent of the measures now taken. It's crazy. A town is surrounded by national guard troops to quarantine them because one lawyer infected about 100 people. I guess he'll be called Typhoid Larry from now on. Flights are suspended into the US from Europe and China. Who saw this coming, where we are more concerned about infectious disease from Italy than Africa?Schools are closed, the NBA season cancelled, hockey games played in completely empty stadiums, travel restricted. I don't even want to know what's happening with the stock market.And meanwhile here we are, in this. read more...