Passage Panama to French Polynesia, day 9, Tuesday 28-March: Sailing SW to the trade winds.
At midnight we can officially say we have left Galapagos waters and now heading in a generally SW direction in search of the SE trade winds. We need to be a bit sporty in the coming days because an extensive calm will soon settle around Galapagos.
30 miles ahead of us we can see Et Hop on our AIS (automatic identification system). This is the French catamaran we came through the Panama Canal with. And a similar distance behind us is Salty Ginger, our Canadian boat buddies. Even when we cannot see each other on AIS we can see our individual tracks and positions on the PredictWind website. As an example, here is us: http://Forecast.PredictWind.com/tracking/display/cloudybay
Of course, you need internet to do that, but most of us out here have Starlink now 🥰
Our Starlink had been working well up to Galapagos, but since then it keeps pointing its dishy at our radar pole and declaring it’s “obstructed”. Now, isn’t Elon Musk into AI these days? I mean, couldn’t he at least teach his dishy not to point where it sees obstacles? I think I’ll write him a letter with my suggestion 😃
But for an immediate solution I remove the dishy from its improvised fishing-rod-holder mount and place it on its original stand in the middle of the aft deck. Now it works perfectly, 90% of the time.
Mind you, our Starlink uptime may soon be challenged in another way. Two weeks ago, a sailing yacht doing our exact trajectory (Panama->Polynesia) hit a whale and sank rather quickly when the aft end of the keel pushed up into the hull, cracking it open. The family got into their life raft, but their EPIRB (emergency beacon) failed to activate, the battery on their Iridium sat-phone was dangerously low, and they were out of VHF range for anyone to hear their MayDay radio call (triple bummer). BUT before sinking, they managed to call a friend using their Starlink and a successful rescue was coordinated ONLY because of that call. They were only 10 hours in their life raft before another yacht picked them up.
Given their story hit the big-news headlines in the last few days, we are thinking it won’t take long for Mr. Musk to ask “how could a supposedly geofenced residential Starlink even be working in the mid Pacific Ocean?” And with further investigation: “and why are so many Colombian purchased residential Starlink units, all registered to the same Colombian address (!), now crossing the Pacific Ocean?” So we are pretty sure we’ll all soon get our signals cutoff, because this package is not supposed to work at sea. Well, they do work, clearly, but Starlink doesn’t want them to. They only want their “Starlink marine package” to be functional any distance offshore, because their price-tag for that airtime is several $thousand a month. A far cry from the $50 we pay.
On the other hand, Elon and his worker-bees should be happy their Starlink saved a family, right? So maybe they’ll just turn a blind-eye and pity us low budget sea goers. Fingers crossed.
[Actually I shouldn’t even be writing this, should I? Please, Mum’s the word, OK?].
Today, all our log entries are consistent: “sailing 60AWA, winds from SE”. Earlier in the day the wind speed was up to 17kt and Oana was starting to get sick with the motion caused by the beam-on sea. And there ensued much discussion on the subject of “you told me it would all be downwind to Polynesia” (downwind motion generally doesn’t make Oana seasick). I have a feeling she thinks I conned her! For me, with the true wind on the aft quarter, this is down wind. But for Oana, she (rightly) only cares about the apparent wind, the wind we actually feel, and with the effect of our boat speed, that wind is just forward of the beam. And forward of the beam = seasick.
Now, if we continue to Gambier, we will be cutting across the entire SE trade wind zone, with similar conditions most of the way. So, the conclusion is that we may have to change plan and instead turn slightly right to the Marquesas, which will be a more downwind trajectory. But for the next few days, for either destination, we must be at this angle to reach the good trades wind zone. Hence, we conclude we will wait till Monday and decide then.
During the afternoon the wind abated, and we enjoyed a dinner of yesterday’s mahi-mahi catch. It really is our favorite sea fish. Tasty and not the least bit fishy. Quite contrasting taste and texture to the tuna steaks we’d eaten yesterday.
By late afternoon the wind was down to 6-7 kts and the main and genoa were annoyingly banging and slapping around as the boat rolled in the swell. Time to get the “silent” sail out, the spinnaker. We went through the usual hassle of setting it all up, but do you think we could get the damn thing to fill? It would fill occasionally but then the first big boat-roll and it collapsed again. We think the problem was that the 2 kts of current made it virtually windless on deck. So down it came again and packed away, leaving us both very sweaty and me slightly annoyed.
For the rest of the evening, we motored in rolly but glassy sea, hoping beyond hope that the calm zone hadn’t caught up with us, and that we’d break out into the wind again.