20 Years Ago Today -- May 2, 1996 -- Day 24

Thurs. 96-05-02 - Day 24 - 3° 02' S  133° 38' W  Log: 2,190nm

Shitty weather. Hot, squally. Yanked the trolling generator off its mount in a squall; luckily there was a safety line on it, but we now can't use it again. Ran engine for a few hours to generate power.

Still very tired, but felt somewhat better after a 2 hour nap in the afternoon.

Finished my letter to my sister by moonlight on my first watch, although it clouded over. Virtually full moon made the night bright like a dark day, even with cloud cover.

Caught at 30" wahoo on my second watch, between rain squalls. Ugly sucker -- really skinny, with nasty pointed mouth and 3 big teeth (plus lots of razor-sharp small ones). Decided to keep this one and try to get a meal out of it. Stayed on watch a couple of hours extra to clean the fish after daylight. Bony down the outside of its body, just inside the skin. I cut a few steaks, as recommended, but they were too small. Cut some fillets from the rest of it, leaving the skin (and bones) on.

No CDs. Started reading Frederick Forsyth's The Fist of God, a novel about the Desert Shield/Desert Storm war in the Persian Gulf. No lottery.

20 Years Ago Today -- April 27, 1996 -- Day 19

Sat. 96-04-27 - Day 19 - 3° 53' N  126° 48' W  Log: 1,609nm

Up at 1700Z. Fixed myself some eggs for breakfast. At mid-morning, it appears likely that we are truly in the SE trade winds, and through the doldrums -- hurray! Sunny, puffy cumulus clouds and steady 10 knots of wind from SE. Ah, paradise.

Daytime cabin temperature is still mid-eighties (~30°C). Nighttime watch is shorts and t-shirt mostly. Humidity down from the high values in the doldrums. John and I are both happpy.

Lottery: Dave: 12 miles off. John: 43! 3:2. I took a sun sight at 18:30 to help me -- it was close.

I baked bread today, using Ardmachree's white bread recipe, although I used 20% whole wheat flour in order to empty a container. Made two handsome loaves, plus I attempted cinnamon rolls, which weren't great -- not nearly enough sugar in the cinnamon layer. Hang on... let me sample the loaf... well, not that great. Looks good, and rose better than the Boobie bread, but not as nice a flavour. Maybe the whole wheat flour is to blame. Fun!

I also made supper -- tuna, mushroom and cheese pasta (re-run), and used the end of the cabbage for coleslaw. No more fresh veggies, except onion.

Great, peaceful sunset. We listened to Milestones together. CDs:

• Miles Davis: Milestones, Doo Bop, 7 Steps to Heaven
• Los Del Rio: Macarena
• Stanley Clarke: East River Drive
• Chick Corea: Elektric Band

Started reading a horror book: Dark Channel by Ray Garton. Long time since I've read a horror book.

We moved our watches, as we're getting west, and the sun is rising and setting much later. My watches: 0400 - 0800; 1100 - 1400Z. I took sun and moon sights in late PM, but the sun shot was off by 42 miles. Ouch!

Stats on our doldrum crossing:

• From April 23 @2100Z -- 8° 50' N to April 27 @ 1600Z -- 4° 07' N.
• Width: 4°40' = 280 nautical miles.
• Took us 91 hours = 3.07 knots average.
• We motored less than 10 hours, half solely or partly for electrical power requirements -- too slow for trolling generator at times.

My early pre-dawn watches on the last two nights had the same phenomenon: I could discern light in the SE from over the horizon. Nothing on RADAR, but I concluded there must be a fish boat there. This morning, John saw a 150' fish boat (tuna?) chug past in the distance from that direction, so I guess I wasn't hallucinating after all.

When it's clear, the night watches on this trip have been fascinating, as we learn some stars and constellations, and watch as the sky changes as we move further south and west. The Southern Cross was visible from Puerto Vallarta, but is now quite high in the sky, and the North Star is very low -- neither of us have seen it for about a week.

Still kicking myself for letting that wahoo go last night! I've really become quite interested in fishing for food, ever since sailing aboard Cabezon.

There are interesting bioluminescent flashes happening tonight, as the boat and trolling generator (the halyard is working out fine) disturb some sea life or other. The flashes seem to be about 8' across.

I'm feeling quite happy today, no doubt because we're back in the kinder, gentler trades -- sun, pretty fluffy clouds, stars, > 1/2 moon -- it's great. We're beam reaching on a course of 210° magnetic, starting a great circle course to Hiva Oa, Marquesas. I'm happy despite having nicked my finger, scalded my hand (fiddling with the oven while boiling water on the stove), and sweated through a hot day in the galley.

Next trip, bring: video camera, at least 2 35mm cameras/bodies, and a flash. I've love to shoot some 1000ASA colour or 1600ASA B&W in the moonlight. Neeed a lens that can focus <<6', unlike the 70-210mm zoom I brought (and nothing else). Also a camera mount and shutter release would be good. Mount is absolute necessity for good video.

20 Years Ago Today -- April 23, 1996 -- Day 15

Tues. 96-04-23 - Day 15 - 8° 56' N  124° 53' W  Log: 1,334nm

Up at 1700Z. John ran the engine for 1.5 hours early this morning to charge batteries -- it wouldn't be at all necessary if we could get the trolling generator to behave. John put it out using an old halyard instead of his special rope this morning. It's slowly kinking up as well. The only solution I can think of is trying wire rope.

Great sailing in NE trades until late afternoon, when we met our first rain squall. Maybe 25 knots of wind, tops, where we had been sailing in high teens to 20 already. Night gave us distant lightning and a number of squalls -- all on John's watch.

No CDs. This is the edge of the doldrums. We're grumpy so no contest today.

20 Years Ago Today -- April 19, 1996 -- Day 11

Fri. 96-04-19 - Day 11 - 14° 53' N  118° 14' W  Log: 816nm

Pretty, red dawn before I went to bed this morning, and, much later, a pretty, red sunset to match. Up at 1700Z. Overcast today, with wind 15 - 20 knots from the NE. We continued wing and wing all day, and put in a reef before sunset. The boat's moving well (and a lot!), averaging 5 to 6 knots.

I've been particularly grumpy today from the incessant rolling, swearing a blue streak every time I tried to do anything. Cooking was very slow and frustrating, as the boat rolls +/- 35° at least once a minute as some steep wave overtakes us.

I cooked french toast cheese sandwiches for myself for breakfast, which were pretty tasty when I finally got to eat them.

Today's lottery: Dave: 145; John: 140; Log: 132; GPS: 135. John wins. 4:4

Oh yeah, Doug the boobie left us not too long after sunset, after dropping into the cabin to check things out. John says he fell off the dodger through the open companionway. John threw a blanket over him to get him out of the boat, and unceremoneously tossed him overboard, as he had outstayed his welcome. Quite a bit of poop on the dodger.

Finished reading the Bourne Ultimatum, and frankly was sick of it long before I finished.  Weird, since I had quite enjoyed the Bourne Supremacy a few months back, but this didn't seem to be in the same class. Started reading David Stanley's South Pacific Handbook, which is quite interesting (eek, non-fiction!). Interestingly, he comments in it that Boobies can be found at sea as far as 50km from land, yet Douglas came to us a couple hundred miles from the nearest land, and there were quite a lot of boobies around until yesterday -- I didn't see any today (some shearwaters though).

Saw a flying fish today. Streamed the white feather lure this afternoon, but still no fish caught.

We had trouble with the trolling generator, as its prop keeps jumping out of the sea at these speeds and the rope gets kinked up. After untangling it 3 times, John gave up and brought it in. Unfortunately, without it we had to run the engine for a couple of hours tonight to charge batteries (1st time since the 11th, despite refrigeration and watermaker and running lights -- troll generator and solar panels really work).

Interestingly, the generator tows off-centre, I guess due to the prop spin -- it's adviseable to ensure it's mounted so it tows outward from whichever side of the boat it's towed from, so a fish line can be towed clear of it on the other side. It's been a concern for us, as the right-hand prop (from aft) tows off to port, but the generator was mounted on the starboard side of the cockpit.

Starting to run low on fruits and vegetables. Celery (rotten), bananas (rotten) and carrots (rotting) were used or thrown out today. One head of lettuce and 2 (questionable-looking) cabbage left, as well as 1.5 jicama (root vegetable that looks like turnip and tastes [raw] sort of like carrot). Apples and oranges (in foil) generally OK, although we've been finding rotten oranges occsionally since day 3.

I cooked baked beans (from a can) with a carrot/jicama/raisin coleslaw salad for supper, with a couple of slices of John's excellent Boobie bread.

No CDs.

20 Years Ago Today -- April 13, 1996 -- Day 5

Sat. 96-04-13 - Day 5 - 19° 35' N  109° 16' W  Log: 234nm

Up again at 1600Z. Nice sunny day with relatively steady NW - W wind at 8 - 12 knots. Great sailing! I'm finally pretty well over the funny feeling in my stomach, and happy about that!

John installed a diode for the trolling generator and we towe it all day long, then realized the polarity was backwards so we didn't get any power out. Fixed. Also fooled for hours with the anemometer instrument, which eventually turned out to be a blown fuse we were certain we had checked hours earlier.

Great sunny day, clear sunset and starry evening. The weather is cool in the breeze and out of the sun, and we wear sweaters/pants and even jackets for night watch (1st time I've worn a jacket since returning to Mexico in January), but it's very pleasant and I haven't been feeling the need to wash (not sweating at all).

Lots of seabirds around today -- brown boobies and big black & white birds that also look like boobies. The brown boobies made many passes at the bow pulpit but didn't manage a landing.

I took a sun sight today with John's sextant. Haven't yet reduced it. Also studying the star chart tonight to learn some new ones.

Lottery today: me: 76; John: 79; GPS: 54 (ouch!). I win. Net Score: 1:1.

I cooked chicken fajitas tonight. Chicken stank. Hope we don't die of food poinsoning. I was disappointed with supper too. Moved watches 1 hour later. Me: 0300 - 0700Z & 1000 - 1300Z.

CD [listening on my Sony Diskman]: Tito Puente - The Mambo King [This was an album I bought in Mexico... Tito's 100th record.  Very good... I really had only a dozen or less CDs with me total.]