Big Ocean, Small Boat

I cannot believe that another week has passed.  We are making steady progress with great sailing conditions.  Energy is low but morale is high and we are very excited to make landfall hopefully sometime this weekend or early next week.  

My biggest complaint right now is that I just finished my last book!  All I have to read now are boat part manuals and reference books, not exactly the kind of reading you want when you are trying to stay awake on a night shift.  I brought six novels with me and thought that would be sufficient for four weeks but it turns out that I should have brought twice as many.  I would try to spend some time at night navigating by the stars or at least trying to find the constellations I know but we have had almost 100% cloud cover, day and night, for most of the trip.  Today happens to be sunny but I would put money down on clouds rolling in sometime around sunset and staying put until well after sunrise tomorrow.  This is great for our efforts to prevent sunburn but it also makes us a little energy starved when our solar panels don't get a full dose. 

We are feeling very comfortable with our provisions.  We still have more than 50% of the diesel, gasoline and water that we brought with us and although I spend some time every day throwing out rotten produce there are a few apples, oranges, tomatoes, cabbages and cucumbers left in addition to all of the potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets and jicama that wouldn't go bad even if our trip were twice as long!  

This week we have been very fortunate because our persistence on the fishing front has paid off.  After coming down the Baja this fall we really didn't have much luck fishing until just recently.  Part of that is probably timing: we were sailing most of the time in the middle of the day, and part of it is probably laziness: we were using the same lures over and over and by the time we removed them they were barely sharp and definitely rusty.  We did catch a tuna early in the trip but it was mealy and we ended up throwing most of it back.  However, in the last few days our luck has changed.  We have caught so many dorado (aka mahi-mahi or dolphin fish) that we have released a number of them. Adam even rigged up one of the flying fish that unfortunately landed on our deck to see if he could catch a monster, but no luck so far. Yesterday I reeled in one dorado that would probably keep us fed for four days if we ate fish for every meal!  Unfortunately, I don't know if we will be able to eat it all before it spoils because we have had to turn our refrigerator off because it was using too much power, but right now the sun is shining, we are almost there, fresh ceviche is on ice for lunch and it is past time for my nap!

480 nautical miles to go!
2546 nautical miles covered