On The Sea Again

Ship's Log August 09, 2011
Lat 12 degrees 32.5 min S

Lon 143 degrees 26.5 min W
The World that is Terrwyn!

We are "on the sea again" (apologies to Willy Nelson) on our 3 rd longest crossing of the entire trip ( the 1st and longest was 3900 nm from Quadra Island to the Marquises; the 2nd longest will be the passageway from Tonga to New Zealand at 1100 nat the latter end of our trip). We hope to arrive in Papeete within 7-8m days. So sad to be leaving the beuatiful Marquises Islands where we made so many great friends both ashore and on other boats, but it is time to move on.

Our crossings bring our world much closer and definitely seen through a different perspective. It seems weird that when we sail with only the big, wide ocean as far as one can see, our boundariestend to become very small! Our world shrinks to our wee (relatively) 37' boatand all within her. Our population is - 2 - with a few transient friends popping in now and again (birds and various sea life).

At sea we establish our routines very quickly: 4 hour watches; planning and preparing meals... oh yes, and cleaning up afterwards which Bill is so skilled at!; personal ablutions -as sponge bath or nice warm showere on the foredeck if it is not too rolly; (Bill likes to be clean shaven... as do I)!!; adjusting sails and sail trim when required; checking our fishing lines (and setting new ones when the lures happen to get chewed off1); reading; playing our ukelele(s); playing Crib (only in the evenings); preparing our Pacific Seaferes Net report at 0300 Zulu or UTC time (formerly referred to as Greenwich Mean Time); calling in the report to the net at 0330 Zulu...

We are sailing with a double-reefed main; staysail;and a full jib with the SE Trades blowing 14-20 knots and we doing 5.5-6.0 knots which means we are able to average 120 nm per day. We are on a nice consisten bean reach on a port takc (Terrwyn's favoured tack) which we hope to maintainall the way to Tahiti. This has been our greatest day and night of sailing ever! We decided to travel straight through the Tuamoto Atolls so that we can be in Tahiti with lots of time before Min and Nick arrive on August 20th. ... and so will start another interesting chapter in this, Bill and cathy's sea story.

All of this within the small world that is Terrwyn out on the wide, wide ocean.

P.S. Late breaking news!! - Yesterday while I was on watch I suddenly saw one of our fishing lines go taut and I quickly scanned the water where our lure was tripping along. The lure was no longer to be seen and in its stead was a lovely Yellowfin Tuna! I yelled at Bill to come up quickly so that we could bring it in without losing it... and we did. As soon as we had that fish nicely filletted and Bill had hosed down the cockpit I just happened to look back and sure enough there was another fish on our second line!! Both Bill and I looked aghast since one 20 lb. Tuna is certainly big enough for two - one can only have so much tuna sushimi; baked tuna; grilled tuna steaks ... Yeah I know you got it!! We tried to bring the second fish in alive, detach the lure and send it back on it's merry way. That did not happen so we had another blood bath in our cockpit and even more tuna fillets. You may wonder why that would be a problem - well for those of us who only have essentially an icebox (our freezer block only works when the motor is running and it has been such fantastic sailing I'm afraid we will have to sacrifice a good portion of these fishes :-( Both of us said it almost makes one want to be a vegetarian.

Take care from the middle of the South Pacific Ocean with the best sailing we have ever experienced... and eating tuna sushimi!!

Bill and Cath