Miles day 1: 106
Miles total: 106
Miles to Yap: 1,108
Believe it or not, Mr. Personality was waiting at the dock at 9:00. We arrived early to give ourselves time to go pay our checkout fee, but had to wait for a big fishing boat to leave to make room for us and Shang Hai (a Tayana 37 sailing west with us) on the dock. All the papers were signed and delivered within a half hour. Perhaps Rob’s visit with the head of the Visitor’s Bureau last week had some impact afterall, after he explained that the yachties were recommending to others not to stop because of the officials (even though that was not a sentiment we agreed with). We were out the pass and under sail by about 10:30 yesterday morning.
But the winds were light and the seas were lumpy, conditions which are frustrating at best. If we try to speed up by sailing on a beam reach (the fastest point of sail for a boat, with the wind directly across your beam), we’re putting the seas on our beam as well. Every time a big wave comes by the boat rolls hard enough to completely collapse both sails, and that was happening about every 3 minutes or so. If we turn downwind in the direction we want to sail with the waves and wind behind us there’s not enough wind to fill even the spinnaker. So we wallowed and rolled most of the afternoon and into the evening.
Finally about 4:00 this morning the wind completely died and the skies opened up. It’s completely odd to us to have rain and no wind. We’re so used to the squalls being squally, but now we’re in an area where big clouds do not equate to big wind. Very hard to get used to. But without any wind Rob turned on the engine and we motored until it filled in again at 9:00 this morning. Right now we’ve got about 11 knots 30 degrees aft of our beam on our starboard side, giving us a pretty nice ride. We’re not exactly screaming along, and barely making 3.5 knots right now. But I think we’re in a bit of the equatorial counter-current, which we should finally lose for good as we travel a bit further north.
Today on Yohelah we’re happy to be underway and feeling pretty darn good for our first day out on passage…..
Teresa
