Day 3: Thu 7th April - 04*48'S, 96*00'W The SE Trades Constancy

As I sit at the chart table and type this blog, at 3am at the beginning of a 2 hr watch, I muse at the ridiculousness of my situation. At both one and the same time, I am in the most familiar, and the least common, environment ever.  I am sitting in my home in the middle of thousands of square miles of salt water, sitting in front of a computer screen with my life-jacket on. And I pop up the stairs to check for lights on the horizon to be met with a blaze of stars, the milky way, and a constant warm 20 knot SE breeze propelling this beautiful yacht of ours along at a wonderful 7-8 knots.  She broke her all time (Sernberg ownership) record today (that's midnight to midnight just passed) by achieving 179 nautical miles in 24 hours, a cracking 7 and 3/4 kt/hour average.  That represents 18 days to the Marquesas, not that we are going to do that 'cos there's lots of holes in the wind, and those little challenges along the way, to come yet.  But coming up on watch to have the constancy of that passage over the last 12 hours is, as they say, awesome.  Wondrous.

Back to reality, though.  Yesterday, started with rain, lots of it, bucketing down at one stage, so much that we could have filled our water tanks if we'd had the apparatus. Should we, one muses?  It would have been unpleasant had we not been dry within our lovely cockpit tent.  Johnny was tempted to shower again on the back deck, but one can have too much of a good thing! It was a timely reminder that big rain storms are around these parts; they are thankfully represented on the grib files if your request it.  The latest shows a huge swath of rain on the 4-5S latitudes spreading west going our way.  Head south, my boy, head south.  Hence our 7-8 knots SW.  By midday on our 4th day we should be south enough to miss the bad stuff, and be able to think of a more westerly track.  Somewhere around 6S/96W perhaps.

Deb is suffering an upset tum at the moment, but being valiant on her watch duty and checking the plumbing regularly. Cooking has been relegated to a basic essential, cereal and fruit (eating into the multitude of those ripening bananas), an easy spam and tomato roll for lunch, and heating some of the pre-cooked meals for supper.  As our routine and constitutions stabilize, we will both no doubt become more adventurous in the galley, for it is there that the morale-boosting stuff is created.  AND, our new addition on board, from of all places San Cristobel Galapagos, is Pat the pressure cooker.  New to us though much recommended throughout the sailing fraternity. Oh, the joys of experimentation to come!  Sadly, we had to say goodbye to the electric frying pan in Galapagos without a chance of replacement (we could have bought one too, but it's that 110 versus 240 volts conundrum).  We shall have cake again soon!  Not to rival the cake baking on Haven though, who we hear from regularly. 

My rambling time is nearly up.  The radio transmission routine still needs tweeking so these posts are likely to be randomly timed.  I seem to be able to guarantee good transmission speeds to Panama at 4pm, but all else seems hit and miss. Until the next time ........