The Trade Winds and Two Visitors

Day 154/32

Noon Position: 18 02S 156 32W

Course/Speed: NNE6+

Wind: ESE14-18

Bar: 1016, falling

Sea: E5

Sky: Tropical Cumulus; 30% of sky

Cabin Temperature: 84

Water Temperature: 83 (wow. warm)

Sail: #2 full and Main with one reef; close reaching on starboard

Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 138

Miles this leg: 3,828

Avg. Miles this leg: 120

Miles since departure: 21,782

Late in the night wind filled in from the east and by midnight I had a reef in the main. This has happened before; I wasn’t convinced, but each time I rose, I found that the wind held. By sunup it was still blowing freshly from the eastsoutheast. Today same. I think it’s safe to say we’ve punched through and have entered the SE trades at last. The entire ship’s company is relieved, grins on faces all round, and the old man has made allowanced for an extra ration of grog at dinner by way of celebration.

Mo is close reaching at a gallop, shouldering the seas with purpose. The sails are taught; the decks stream. We are on our way.

—

When I came forward in the early morning to inspect my reefing work from the dark hours, I noted a pea-sized object under the mast. Oh no, not more fasteners falling off the rig! But not to worry, it was a small animal. Mo is a killer. Regularly she catches the panicked flying fish or rocketing squid. But this she has not caught before.

Given its glisten and that it faced resolutely into the wind, I thought the animal still alive. Some prodding proved it otherwise, so I took it below to the lab. Here, and with great difficulty given the heave of the ship and the roundness of the animal, I shot a number of close-ups of its parts, and think I can say this tiny beast is an immature lobster. I believe that a lobster’s early life cycle is spent suspended in ocean currents, but I have no way to corroborate that just yet.

I was wrapping up this important work for science when I noted a vessel target on the chart plotter, a first for this leg. Sailboat Fajo, seven miles to the northeast and making six knots dead at Mo.

We are crossing through popular cruising grounds. French Polynesia, The Cooks, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa are all part of what Americans call the Coconut Milk Run, a “highway” of sorts for sailboats making for Australia or Asia from the Americas. But cruisers who depart Mexico in, say, March and April are still learning how to make grass skirts in the Marquesas. It’s way too early for the caravan to have arrived this far west.

Fajo came out of a squall at five miles off, a white fleck of sail on the horizon barely discernible from the breaking seas; soon after my AIS alarms sounded.

Fajo had the weather gage on Mo, so I let her approach while I held course. She came on to within a mile and then veered sharply south. Confused, I called on the radio and learned that Luka and her husband have been cruising French Polynesia since 2016; thus their “early” departure. They are from Germany. The boat, an Ovni of 45 feet. Their eventual destination, Australia. And the last minute swerve? In fact, they hadn’t seen me; they weren’t converging for a gam. They made the course change when their AIS alarm went off.

So, it’s been a day firsts.