Timeless Trades
Day 21
Noon Position: 3 30.25N 126 00.97W
Course/Speed: SW 4 – 5
Wind: SE 11 – 13
Sail: All plain sail.
Bar: 1017
Sea: SE to 6 (These are the reason we can’t get our speed over 5 knots.)
Sky: Clear
Cabin Temp: 85
Water Temp: 74
Miles last 24-hours: 118
Miles since departure: 2526
Wind softened overnight as a series of outlier squalls–dry and starved for heat–passed overhead. They were large enough to disturb the wind flow around them, but too far from their feeding grounds to the north to do any damage. In my bunk, I pulled the sleeping bag over my legs by way of noting that it is beginning to cool. The cabin was 76 degrees when I came on deck.
After sunup, the sky brightened to a pale blue blank slate, and the wind came on steady and gentle and has remained that way all day. These trades, not the too fresh trades of yesterday nor the too variable trades of the day before, these steady trades are the timeless trades. The boat rolls on and on as if a machine of perpetual motion in a world of endless, undulating blues.
Gadfly Petrels strong-stroking the air nearby, a new, even more diminutive Storm Petrel, and then, in the afternoon, a herd of dolphins charging east, frothing the water with their mysterious chase, leaping in quick arcs, their bodies the color of stone, some flinging themselves into the air five times their body length, crashing down haphazardly.
Symbols of what we do not and cannot know, these animals that live entirely outside the human realm. If you wish to study the insects of the Amazon, you can go to them. The elephant of Africa awaits your inspection there by a tree. But the dolphin of the deep Pacific? Who could swim with him for a day would be a hero. Who could soar with the Albatross at night as he sleeps on the wing would know more than the profets.
Next to which I am a mere onlooker, a vacationer in a safari park. Please keep doors locked, hands and arms inside windows at all times. No flash photography.
Not all musing and poetry here. On gentle days, domestic chores. Rinsing out salt soaked boots in the caught water of a few days ago. Washing head and beard again in same. Mopping the floors. And then a job long denied–scraping the salt crust from the inside of the toilet bowl.
In answer to questions from Doug and Dustin, who wish to know how much fuel I’ve got left after motoring through the doldrums, some reckoning…
I’ve been across the Pacific doldrums twice, and each was a piece of cake compared to this trip, which saw some serious wind holes starting at 29N and then some whoppers in the ITCZ proper. In total, I motored 35 hours, including one run of 20 hours on November 12th between 12N and 11N.
This used 41 gallons of fuel. Mo carries 200 gallons of diesel in two 100-gallon tanks port and starboard of the engine, both of which were chockablock full upon departure. So, I’ve burned about 20% of all available fuel in order to punch through the Pacific doldrums and have roughly 160 gallons remaining.
I don’t use diesel for any other device except the Reflex gravity-fed heater in the salon, and I’ve not budgeted any current fuel for its use prior to the Arctic. I don’t think it will operate in the heavy swell I expect in the south. That said, its 5-gallon tank is partially full and ready for testing many miles from here.
Hi Randall,
I Follow You from Germany, a small Town, called Glueckstadt. It is Not far away from where your boat is Build. A Friend of Mine, a sailor aswell, was working during that Time When your boat, The former Asma , was build at the yard ” Dübbel and Jesse. Its fantastic To See what your boat has achieved over the years. In 1990 i read The book from Clark stede. And over the years the boat looks as When it leaves the Yard.
Best wishes and good Luck for your challeng