APRIL 2000 April 1st, 2000 Aprils Fools day! Back to work today. Finishing up some sewing projects while David is working on propane tanks and various other projects. I went for a long bike ride today by the ocean. Another beautiful day.  We are busy shopping filling up the frig and cupboards.  We are both working on taxes…. Have to get those nasty things done before we go.  It was fairly windy today so we decided to put up the flag halyard. I had never been up the mast before, so decided I should see what it is like. David strapped me into the boson chair and zoomed me up the mast with the help of the new electric winless. It wasn’t as bad as I had envisioned.  I attached the gear for the flag halyard and then quickly wanted down.  We hung up the first set of flags we will fly. Up went the quarantine, the French and French Polynesian flag. What a site. We were so excited! Sunday, April 2nd, 2000 Today I visited the famous Getty Center in L.A.  My parking reservation was for 9:30am so I had to get going early. Wow! What a place. I was so impressed with the architecture and the collections, but the most impressive was the gardens at the center. The landscape architect did a wonderful job! I visited the furniture collections, which were remarkable. There in front of my eyes were all the pieces I had studied in school. There were also paintings by VanGough, Cezzane, Monet, and lots of Italian and Dutch paintings. There was a room full of ancient Greek and Roman collections and a show called departures, which was very interesting. I had a great day. I was there when it opened and left when it closed. While I was gone David went to Santa Barbara to visit our friend Ed and arrange our departure date. While in Santa Barbara he also ran into John Neil in our old slip! John is the sailing guru who we took our offshore cruising class from. He and his wife Amanda had their boat full of crew and were on their way to the Panama cannel. So David had fun running into him. David also did a lot of shopping for things we couldn’t find in Ventura. Monday, April 3rd and Tuesday 4th, 2000 These two days have been filled shopping, finishing up taxes and trying to organize everything for our departure. Wednesday, April 5th, 2000 Started the day by going over to the fuel dock and filling all the tanks. We took on 70 gals to add to the 25 plus we already had.  Then we motored around awhile to calibrate the new autopilot.   I drove back to Santa Barbara for one last visit to the chiropractor. Have to get this poor old back checked out. It was doing a lot better, but he said he could tell I hadn’t been swimming. Hopefully soon that will change. We went over some back stretches that I could do on the boat.  Later I went to visit Ed to see if he was still on schedule for our departure. Looks like we are both on schedule. Looks like April 7th or 8th will be the day.  Once back to Ventura began doing the laundry for the last time in washer and dryer for who knows how long. From now on laundry will be done by hand in the sink and hung out to dry in the sun.  Does it still sound like a luxury cruse? I washed everything in site, 8 loads in all. Then finished off the day calling my family. We have 3 birthdays this week back in Iowa.  I couldn’t let that go by unrecognized. David made many trips to the store today to buy various things. One last trip to Costco should fill the boat up.  I cleaned out my poor little car and will try to either sell or give it away tomorrow. I know it’s not much to look at, but we’ve been through a lot together. It will be sad to see her go.  Today on the news they announced the death of two California Grey whales along the shore of Seal Beach. What a sad site, but not as sad as the sea world tanks. I wonder what caused them to die? Old age? Or just the tough journey they have to make from Mexico to Alaska? Or maybe pollution? The marine biologists are hard at work trying to make sense of it all. This last weekend someone killed and then stole 3 bald eagles from the Santa Barbara zoo! What is going on? Thursday, April 6th, 2000 Today David was up at 4:00 am to drive to San Diego and pick up our mail one last time, meet Patrick’s mother and then pick up Marcus in Carlsbad California. I stayed behind to deal with last minute things on the boat. Patrick will not join us until Friday morning. After getting Marcus settled in we took off to finish up some shopping and run some other errands. David, Marcus and I drove up to Santa Barbara to meet with Ed and his crew and plan our strategy for leaving on Saturday. There certainly was lots of excitement in the air as we all talked about the impending trip and where we will meet in the Marqueses.  We arranged a calling time and station to call each other on the radio everyday and now we both have email, so if the radio contact doesn’t work we can email each other. Ed’s friend Mike, the one we met in Costa Mesa, had driven up to say his good-byes. We all went out for last dinner at the local pub. This is the last visual contact we will have of each other for the next 25 days. We parted our ways agreeing to email each other as we left port. We didn’t get back to Ventura until 11:00pm, A VERY long day for David. Friday, April 7th, 2000 Up early today to finish up all the last little details. We still have to get rid of our cars today and then install our lighting repellent on the mast. Patrick arrived with friend and gear around 9:00. After we got him stowed, Marcus, Patrick and I took off to finish up the shopping, do a Kinko’s run and look for matching shirts for us to use as crew shirts. We will design a logo on the computer and print it out on transfer paper to iron on to our shirts. Then we will be the quit the styling crew when we reach the Marqueses.  While at the mall Marcus saw a place that pierced cartilage (Australian for priced ear) so he walked in and got his ear pierced. Wow. Back at the boat we are wondering where in the world we will stow everything. Some how we managed to find a place for everything. Our poor boat is now well below the water line due to being loaded down with fuel and water, and food for a small army. If we never catch a fish we will be just fine.  Patrick is totally worn out from his gigantic send off yesterday from his friends, so he takes a nap while Marcus and I try to figure out how to get him cleared out the country. After calling 6 different U.S. Custom’s offices, an INS office, an inspection office, the harbor patrol and the U.S.  Coast Guard, we were still left with no answers. Typical American bureaucracy. Hard to believe even the customs people don’t now how to deal with it.  What is a poor align to do? Patrick is now up from his nap, and called his best friend to come down and pick him up so they could spend one last night together.  Marcus, David and I, gathered up our friend Marvin further down the doc and went out for some Thai food. While at dinner we found out that Marvin used to be an animal trainer for Michael Jackson and took care of the animals at Neverland (Michael Jackson’s Ranch by Santa Barbara) Another WOW. You meet so many interesting people in California. Saturday, April 8th, 2000 Up at 7:30, Patrick arrived and we began finishing up all the little task. David and Marcus worked on putting up the lightening repeller. David went up the mast and installed the repeller and then gave the rigging one last check on the way down. We checked out of the marina, made a few phone calls and got every thing stowed away and we were finally ready to go at 12:30. We pulled out of the slips at 12:43. Once out of the harbor the swells were very ruff! Dewey immediately got sick and it was too rough for me to go below. So I took over steering while David went down to deal with Dewey. While we were steering into the wind Patrick and Marcus put up the main. The waves were getting bigger and bigger while the wind kept building. I think we were in for a rough time. We were now beating into the wind; two of the 4 of us were not feeling well. The further out we got the worse it got. Waves were coming over the bow, over the boat, over the dodger and hitting David and Marcus in the face. David says it was the roughest weather we had ever been it. It was deceiving because it was such a beautiful day, Sunny and blue skis. Almost to Anacapa island David goes back down to listen to the weather and coast guard and decides that we could be in this wind for a couple of days and so we decided to turn around and head back.  Once we turned around the winds were at our back and it was smooth sailing at 8-9 knots. We rolled out the jenny and we were cruising along nicely, just in the wrong direction.  As we got close to the harbor we rolled in the jenny and went to start the engine and it wouldn’t turn over. I went back to steering and David went below decks to see what was up. We sailed into out marina and down the way to our old slip. Only had to tack once. Patrick and Marcus let down the main sail and we were still going 4 knots. We ended up going too fast and went right buy our slip. Luckily it was Saturday and all our dock friends were around to help us out. We finally made it back into the slip stern first. We flaked up the main and cleaned up the boat. It turns out the problem was a dead battery. So David ran off to get a new battery. I went in to make us all some food. Finally all is relaxed. I ran off to wash the things that got covered with salt water.  Now we all resting and watching the Waterboy. The new battery seems to have the fix. I guess that trip out to Anacapa was our shake down. Things didn’t shake around too badly considering the wind and waves were in…. Tuesday, April 11, 2000 DAY ONE Starting at 6:50 am Latitude = 34 degrees 14 minutes Longitude = 119 degrees 15 minutes Today we finally left under much better conditions. We are finally on the trip that we have been dreaming of, planning for and working so hard for the last year. We left the Ventura Harbor at 6:50 am, what a contrast. Today there is not enough wind to sail, so we motored out past Santa Cruz Island. It was a beautiful clear day and the island was beautiful. Many schools of dolphins were seen. We even had about 10 swimming off the bow playing with us. About 1:30pm we decided to put up the sails. We are sailing quite comfortably between 7 and 8 knots. We had about 5 whales swim by us as well as some seals. We are all doing fine, even Dewey (the cat) who is sleeping in his little bed. No seasickness yet. 4:30pm Conditions have picked up and we are sailing at 8 knots and had to head down 30 degrees.  Blowing 25k out of the west. We were all wearing shorts until an hour ago when we sailed into the fog. We have logged 64.2 nautical miles and are headed south fast. Now Lisa has a bit of seasickness and Dewey isn’t feeling well either. So they both go to sleep to overcome it. 9:40pm the fog has lifted and the stars are a glorious site. We have a half moon lighting our path across the ocean. Very beautiful, but COLD. We are all taking turns doing our night watches. David is only getting about two hours of rest. The rest of us got at least 4 hours or more. We will force him to sleep in the morning. 7:00 am April 12, 2000 Latitude = 32 degrees 36 minutes Longitude = 120 degrees 45 minutes. After 24 hours we have now traveled 134 nautical miles! We are pleased with our progress today. Wednesday April 12- Thursday April 13, 2000 DAY TWO Starting at 7:00 am Latitude = 32 degrees 36 minutes Longitude = 120 degrees 45 minutes. If you are confused about our day, since we left at 7:00 am from Ventura, our 24-hour day is from 7:00 am to 7:00 am the following day. We had a beautiful day on Wednesday. The sun was shinning bright, the sea was calm and we were gliding across the largest body of water on the planet like it was no big deal. We have the mainsail up, the Genoa up and the stays'l. What a beautiful site to see the boat in all its glory. We kept a pretty steady 6-7 knots with a few times of light wind where we got down to 4 knots.  Today at around 2:00 in the afternoon we launched the message in the bottle that Sue Pecks 2nd grade class gave us. The latitude and longitude were: Latitude = 31 degrees 59 minutes Longitude = 121 degrees We watched it slowly float away behind us. Will be interesting to see where it washes up. Don’t worry class .... We got a picture. David has a waypoint set at the equator at 0 latitude 135 longitude.  That’s where we are headed.  The GPS calculates a great circle route and if the wind permits we follow it.  The wind has been mostly westerly and now we are sailing due south but our rhumb line is more like 195 degrees.  So we are accumulating a few miles of crosstrack error which we can make up in the trades.  The crew of Markus and Pat are doing fine.  They had salt-water baths of the foredeck this morning.  They each took turns throwing the canvas bucket into the sea and then throwing the water at each other. We dropped the meat hook in this morning, hope we get a tuna. The night watches went real smooth. Everyone had moon and stars except for me. When I came on watch at 4:00 am it was cloudy with no stars or moon... just darkness. It looks like a cloudy day ahead of us. As of 7:00 am we have covered 117 miles and our latitude and longitude is: Latitude = 30 degrees 43 minutes Longitude = 121 degrees 27 minutes Till next time... the crew of Francis Thursday April 13th  – Friday 14th, 2000 DAY THREE Latitude = 28 degrees, 37 minutes Longitude = 122 degrees, 13 minutes. Total Miles traveled = 137 nautical miles Good day Mate!  Guess our Australian is rubbing off on us. Most of the morning was spent in the clouds. It looked like your typical Seattle day with overcast drizzle. I thought we left this behind.  We spent all day traveling though what is know as the Horse latitudes, famous for variable winds, which we seem to be experiencing. We spent the day going form 2.5 to 6.5 knots. After Lisa’s watch, she went below for a short rest and short shower, then back up on watch until 4:00 in the afternoon. Patrick slept from 4:o0am to 2:00 PM. David and Marcus slept here and there. About 10am Marcus and I saw a school of about 10 very large dolphins. They didn’t pay any attention to us, so we figured they were fishing, we quickly let out the fishing line, but not a nibble yet. About 11:00pm the auto pilot was giving us a few problems so I hand steered for a few hours while David set to work on the problem.  We switched over to the new autohelm until the problem is verified and solved. Thank god we put in the spare autohelm.  Lisa also went to work sewing leather patches on the stern ladder stairs cover. They had already worn two holes where it rubbed against the dinghy. Can’t have that rubbing on the dinghy so leather patches ought to do the trick.  Actually saw 2 different birds way out here in the ocean today. Hard to believe birds come way out here. Maybe tomorrow I will feel good enough to get out my bird books and figure out what they were.  At 4:19pm we officially passed across the 30-degree latitude line at 121 degrees and 44 minutes longitude and our now in the 20’s. We are so excited, only 30 degrees more south to the equator.  The water has also warmed up a bit. When we left Ventura it was 63 degrees and is now 66 degrees. That’s good news for that salt water baths, of which Patrick par took today.  For all of Lisa’s geology friends we are passing over the Molokai fracture zone. I have to take what little bit of geology I can get out here at sea.  David prepared another deluxe meal of pizza for us tonight and we all sat around the cockpit table enjoying the sunset and pizza. Patrick and Marcus had the first watch until midnight; all seemed to be going pretty well for them. Lisa came on watch about 11:00 PM, by 1:00 am King Neptune decided to raise his head out of the water and let me know just exactly what a big deal this really is! The wind picked up. With the help of Marcus we first doused the stays’l and left the genoa up, but that was still too much canvas, so Patrick and I put up the stays’l and rolled in the genoa. With just the stays’l and main we were still cruising along at 6.5 knots. The winds were building and by morning they were easily 35 knots. Friday April 14th, 2000 – Saturday April 15th, 2000 DAY FOUR Latitude = 26 degrees, 41.7 minutes Longitude = 123 degrees, 49.2 minutes. Total Miles traveled = 149 nautical miles King Neptune is letting us know he means business. All day we were in strong winds and strong and confused seas. Lisa was very seasick. It was time to get out the prescription stuff from the doctor. Marcus was a little queasy and Patrick and David are in the lucky group, who doesn’t get sick.  David stayed outside all day from when he came on watch at 1:30 am until 4:00 PM when we forced him to bed. It was way to rough to cook today so it was power bars and cold sandwiches for lunch and dinner. Can’t eat like kings every day. It was also too rough to get the computer out to send email. So if you don’t hear from everyday you know why. The night watch started with Marcus, Patrick and I.  Marcus was trying to teach Patrick how to hand steer, but he soon got bored of it and wanted the autopilot back on.  Now he knows how great that autopilot truly is.  I got out the knot book and we practiced tying different knots. Then I decided to go down and get some rest before my watch at midnight.  Of course while I’m on watch the wind totally died down and I have to bring in the genoa and the stays’l.  David came up with all the clatter and decide to douse the main and start the engine. There were huge squalls around us and we had to try to get away.  So Dewey sat watch with me while we motored through the rain.  Just shortly before 2:oo am we logged in our 500 miles on the trip so far.  At 6:00 am David came up to relieve me so I could get a few hours of sleep. Saturday April 15th, 2000 – Sunday April 16th DAY FIVE Latitude = 25 degrees, 16 minutes Longitude = 124 degrees, 21 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 118 nautical miles Well today is another story. King Neptune decided we had enough punishment and totally let up today. The wind was so light that we decided to put up the spinnaker. It was so beautiful. But even the spindrifter wasn’t enough to keep us going so we put up the stays’l as well. We are now drifting along at about 1.5 knots. Where are those trade winds? Well enough is enough, David, Marcus and Patrick decided to jump off the boat. I guess they all ready have cabin fever.  I stayed on deck and played lifeguard. They tied a line along side the boat to hang onto so we didn’t loose them.  The water is now a warm 70 degrees and they all had a pretty good time. The water is so clear and beautiful blues that I can’t even explain. Patrick dove down as deep as he could and we could still see him.  David of course took this opportunity to look at his new propeller to see if it was feathered correctly.  We have a little growth on the waterline where we are currently sunk below. Next time we will send Patrick over with a scrub brush. Well it looks like we will motor a little more to find some wind. Can’t sit around drifting all day we have places to go and people to see.  We saw many albatross’s today flying so close to the water and then getting a lift of wind from the swells, they were so beautiful to watch. We motored well into the night at a very low rpm, just so we could keep moving, but at least we were able to head straight south.  At 11:27 PM we hit wind, but from which direction. While I was on watch Marcus and I tacked 4 times. The wind just kept changing all the time. This was making me tired! We also went through several small squalls so I got wet again.  By 7:00 am we were very weary and tired from fight squalls and mixed up winds. Sunday April 16th, 2000 – Monday April 17th, 2000 DAY SIX Latitude = 25 degrees, 22 minutes Longitude = 125 degrees, 40 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 133 nautical miles Well today is another story. King Neptune unleashed everything he had to test us. Today has been the worst day of sailing I have ever experienced. The winds were coming straight at us from the south! In Jimmy Cornells book on sailing routes of the world, this is never suppose to happen in this part of the ocean. Guess we will be sending him a little letter. If you are tracking our progress you will be surprised how many miles we went and how little ground we made. This was from all the tacking that went on. The south wind beat us up all day; it forced us to take a tack going west. Later on I noticed that we were actually heading northwest! Yikes, that’s not the direction we want to go, but we have to do what’s best for the boat. We had a second reef in the main, the genoa rolled in and the storm stayl’s up. We were just trying to stay as safe as possible. The seas were rough with whitecaps.  Next time you see me I will have a few more gray hairs from the heart attack Patrick gave me when I found on him on the fore deck with out a life jacket or tether! Laying there sunbaking with green water spilling over on him.  Don’t worry mom, I chewed him out.   David stayed up all day watching over the boat and crew. There wasn’t much eating today because it was too rough. Marcus, Lisa and Dewey were pretty sick.  I was lying on the floor by the engine room trying not to throw up. David was listening to the weather and watching the radar.  I had Dewey’s lifejacket on and was holding him in my arms. At about 1:30 am we were surrounded by mean ugly huge squalls, first we decided to go north to escape them, but then one appeared there, so we decided to tack around to the south and just go through one.  When this happened we lost the traveler car and the main sheet. David quick got out his trusty drill and toolbox and went to work trying to fix the situation. Patrick held the light for him and Marcus steered while I watched the radar for squalls. All of the sudden, the squalls were gone and the wind switched and now started blowing from the northwest which is what we had been looking for, for days. Now we are happy to be sailing south again and hope to make up the lost ground of today’s storm. Marcus put up the genoa and the left the reef in the main and by 7:00 am we had almost made up out lost southing. It was a rough day and we all exhausted! The Crew of Francis Monday April 17th, 2000 – Tuesday April 18th, 2000 DAY SEVEN Latitude = 23 degrees, 22 minutes Longitude = 126 degrees, 10 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 145 nautical miles The gentle northwest wind blew us south all day. It was a good opportunity for us to put things back in order and have a well-deserved rest. Things were going good; it was a beautiful full moon lighting our way across the ocean. Lisa was on watch until 12:00 am and everything was going great. Hardly had to trim the sails or move our course, it was just a nice steady 5-6 knots into the night. Marcus was on watch next, at 2:00 he writes “ finally in the trades” the wind we had all been waiting for. All the books said we should hit trade winds at 30 degrees but king Neptune made us wait until 23 degrees, but were glad to be here now, hopefully this will mean better rest and less stress for everyone!  Patrick and Lisa went back on watch at 3:00 to try to give David some extra sleep. But at 3:30 am the new autopilot malfunctioned! David came scurrying up and we immediately started tearing apart the autopilots trying to figure what was going on. In the mean time Patrick had to hand steer us on course. He stayed at the helm doing a great job for 2 and half-hours. His new name is now AutoPat.  I told him we would make a sailor out of him yet. David and I worked on the autopilot while Marcus slept in anticipation of hand steering our way to Tahiti.  At 6:00 am I went out to hand steer while David put the autopilot back together.  We have great trade winds blowing us south but the northwest swell is still making for a bumpy ride.  By 7:00 am we had traveled 145 miles. We are happy with our progress, but not much else. We are waiting for the day when nothing breaks or goes wrong! The Crew of Francis Tuesday April 18th, 2000 – Wednesday April 19th, 2000 DAY EIGHT Latitude =  degrees,  minutes Longitude =  degrees,  minutes. Total Miles traveled today =  168 nautical miles By eight this morning David had the autopliot working again! We are so relieved, but also holding our breath. The trade winds are blowing us at about 7-8 knots toward the equator. It was a semi calm day considering none of us except for Patrick had any sleep in the last 48 hours, at least any good sleep. That Patrick can sleep through anything. I bet he would sleep through a hurricane!   Patrick and Marcus took saltwater baths today up on the fore deck dumping bags of saltwater on each other with the canvas bucket. I’m not brave enough for that just yet. I can’t even remember the last time I washed my hair. Maybe when the clouds go away the solar panels will charge up that watermaker and the captain will let me have a real bath. We reeled in our fish line today only to discover that some big fish had bitten off the lure. I think I’m glad that one got away. After the chores were done David, Marcus and I tried to get some sleep while Patrick sat watch. He had the fishing pole back out with a new lure and we told him to catch us a fish. Soon enough we heard the line go singe. Patrick rushed back to reel it in but it got away. After all the excitement was over we tried to go back to sleep when all of the sudden was another singe of the line. This time we definitely had a fish. Marcus reeled it in while Patrick gave it a good gaff. It was just a little baby tuna, but we figured it was dead so we better eat it. There was blood everywhere. Who new tuna had so much blood. Marcus cleaned it for us and we immediately popped it in the oven for dinner. One hour later we were eating fresh tuna from the ocean and toasting king Neptune for our fine dinner.  This little tuna did wonders to raise everyone’s spirits after the last couple of rough days.  Patrick was so amped up that we were wishing we could hook him up to the battery charger.  Lisa sat watch from 8:30 to 11:30 when David and Marcus came up and we put a reef in the main sail and rolled in the genoa. It was getting pretty windy and we didn’t want to stress our autopilot. Patrick sat watch from 12:30 to 7:00am. We really didn’t want him to be out that long but he insisted. We were having such great mileage he couldn’t stand to go to bed until 7:00 am to see if we broke our record.  He really wanted to hit 170, but alas the day’s total was 168 miles! Not bad, that is a record for us so far on this trip. If we can keep up those kinds of days we will all be happy. Wednesday April 19th, 2000 – Thursday April 20th, 2000 DAY NINE Latitude = 17 degrees, 54 minutes Longitude = 127 degrees, 18 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 168 nautical miles So far today has been an uneventful day compared to the rest of them, which is just fine with us. We all need a chance to recuperate after the last few rough days. We have been on a port beam reach ever since we reached the trade winds and are making good southing.   We still have one reef in the main sail, the genoa rolled up and the storm stays’l up. With this small amount of canvas up we are still averaging about 7 and half knots, which is all the faster we want to go at this time. One thing interesting is the huge sea we are experiencing. We had always heard and read that once you reached the trade winds it was smooth sailing. Well the huge swell is hitting us on the stern port side and rolls us from side to side. It makes maneuvering around the boat very interesting and sleeping very difficult. The only one getting any good sleep is of course Patrick.  We are slowly learning to time every movement with the swell so we don’t get beat up to bad, you constantly have to be hanging on to something or you go flying across the boat to land on something usually not soft. Today I noticed I had bruises in places I forgot I had body.  I have hit my head so hard that I actually saw stars!  Cooking is another story. You can’t set anything down unless it is held down by something else or it goes flying across the counter. We have special tools that hold our pots and pans on the stove while we try to cook. The sink has become a favorite holding place for things while we try to cook.  All this constant rolling back and forth from port to starboard is not making Markus or I feel very good.  You should see poor little Dewey try to walk or sit at his food bowl. He looks like he is drunk. But he’s starting to get his sea legs and is leaning to brace himself when he lies down. If you don’t hear from us very often its because I’m too seasick to write in this computer. Imagine me sitting on the bed with computer swaying back and forth from side to side trying to hang on to something wedged in-between the wall and my lee cloth.  It’s not very comfortable! Patrick, Marcus and I slept most of the day while David stayed up on day watch.  Markus is a sailing instructor in Australia and is doing a great job with Patrick. Before we left we bought Patrick the sailing for dummies book and Markus has been giving him reading assignments and quizzes on sail trim, points of sail and wind. We now feel comfortable leaving Patrick on a watch by himself. At about 1:00 PM we passed another major latitude when we crossed from 20 degrees in to the 19 degrees. Yea only another 20 degrees until the equator. I prepared a spaghetti feast for everyone to celebrate and then relieved David on watch at 8:30. At 11:00 Marcus relieved me. Patrick wanted to stay up all night again, but we made him wait until 2:00 am before he could come on watch. He wanted to stay up until 7:00 again to see if we could beat our record, but once again we hit 168 miles. That’s pretty good for two days of sailing with small canvas. Thursday April 20th – Friday April 21st, 2000 DAY TEN Latitude = 15 degrees, 25 minutes Longitude = 128 degrees, 07 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 154 nautical miles Still rocking and rolling.  The sea swell, wind waves what ever you want to call it can’t be normal for the trade winds or this latitude.  Everything we have read said the trade winds should be a gentle 12 – 15 knot breeze. David says that we haven’t seen anything less then 20 knots yet.  Even though it makes for an uncomfortable ride we are moving south fast. Today we put in a double reef in the main, still have the genoa rolled up and the storm stays’l up and yet still traveling about 7 and knots!  Markus is very ill today. We decided to call what he has stage- two seasickness, where your body is so sick of fighting it that you just have to collapse for a day and drinks lots of fluids and take lots of seasick medication.  The skies are still very gray and cloudy; we are wondering where the heck the sun is?  The water temperature is now 78 degrees, which happens to be warmer than the air temperature! I have yet to wear a pair of shorts or stow away my foul weather jacket. I decided to try to make bread. That was an interesting notion. Imagine trying to make bread with your pans and ingredients flying back and forth across the counter. But alas 5 hours later 2 loafs of bread emerged from the oven and actually tasted good.  Patrick slept all day while David stayed up on day watch attending to little chores on the deck and relaxing here and there. After my bread baking I was pretty seasick so I went to lay down when all of the sudden I heard the singe of the fishing line go off again. I ran up the stairs only to have another heart attach when I saw Patrick once again at the stern of the boat reeling in a fish without his life jacket or tether on! I swear I’ll be Grey by the time we reach Tahiti.  This time we caught a Mahi Mahi. What a beautiful fish it was. I had to mourn the passing of such a beautiful fish. We guess it weighed about 6 lbs. We all had some fresh fish and bread for dinner tonight.  I started out the night watches tonight, just my luck we were surround by big ugly scary looking clouds. I got rained on once in awhile but not enough to wash my hair. Then Markus took over for a few hours before Patrick came on again.  We decided to let David sleep until 7:00am since he had been on day watch 12 and half-hours.        Friday April 21st – Saturday April 22nd, 2000 DAY ELEVEN Latitude = 12 degrees, 55 minutes Longitude = 128 degrees, 48minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 165 nautical miles You know its going to be one of those days when you wake up to a sink full of dirty dishes, not even a clean glass to drink juice out of. Then I went to get something out of the front bilge stowage compartment only to discover that the cans of cola we had been storing there had exploded! There was sticky pop everywhere and still going everywhere. David came down with a bucket and we began doing all the dishes so we could use the sink to wash off the sticky stuff from the bilge.  Patrick slept through the whole thing; pop exploding and shooting on him and he never moved a muscle. Man, we all wish we could sleep like that.  Well after that little episode it didn’t take long for me to develop the stage two seasickness.  So I was out of it for the rest of the day. David gave me some pills and put me to bed. I woke up just in time to go my night watch at 7:30, feeling a little bit better.  At 11:00 Marcus came up to relieve me and I went down to sleep on the floor by the engine room. I sleep there because it has the least amount of rolling motion and is the best place for me to sleep. At 4:00 am the flogging of the sails and the banging of the boom awakened me. I quickly ran out to find that the wind had switched direction. Patrick was on watch, but apparently didn’t notice that the Windex was pointing backward or that the sails were flogging, so I quickly adjusted the autopilot to set us back on course and sent Patrick back to bed and I stayed up on watch until David came to relieve me at 7:00 am.  Saturday April 22nd – Sunday April 23rd, 2000 DAY TWELVE Latitude = 10 degrees, 26 minutes Longitude = 129 degrees, 47 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 171 nautical miles WOWZA!  Do you know anyone else who sailed 171 miles in 24 hours with a double reefed main and just a storm stays’l? Well, now you do.  We couldn’t believe it either; we are really knocking off the miles with this strong wind. For the last 24 hours we have been in 25 to 35 knots winds consistently. The seas are very lumpy, at least 10 foot wind waves, still hitting us on the beam so it is still a rocking and rolling like crazy! Marcus and I are just not with it. This rocking and rolling is just something people susceptible to seasickness just don’t get over I guess. Thank god we have the pills or who knows what we would be like.  Today we saw our first occurrence of flying fish. One flew on to our deck and dried up there so we got to have a close examination of the funny little fish.  I was wondering what do you call a bunch of flying fish? In the water I suppose they would be a school of fish, but when they fly through the air in a big group do you call them a flock? It was a very low activity day being that the whole entire crew is getting very tired and stressed out from this lumpy ride. Where are the gentle trade winds we all read about? The only thing that lifted our spirits was that we are so close to breaking the 10-degree latitude mark.  The Captain treated Marcus and Patrick to a movie by hooking up and running our little Honda generator to the AC current.  A journey across the ocean in small boat is more mentally hard than physically hard. All though sometimes I wonder.  But it does appear that we are all mentally drained. We need to have a nice day of sun and calm seas to bring us back to life. Sunday April 23rd – Monday April 24th, 2000 DAY THIRTEEN Latitude = 8 degrees, 4 minutes Longitude = 130 degrees, 48 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 169 nautical miles Well another record day. We still have a double reefed main and storm stays’l up and are still making good time. We are so happy to be at latitude 8, because our first land fall will be 8 degrees south of the equator so we are getting close. The seas are still huge, with big whitecaps. When you watch them break in the sun the tops are a crystal bluegreen. Sometimes when we come sliding down a big wave the knot meter goes way up. A couple of times we hit 10.4 and 10.5 knots.  Even though it’s an uncomfortable ride we know that it will make for a quick passage and it’s easier to live with.  Every once in awhile we’ll see squadrons of flying fish dart in out of the big waves. There are actually lots of bird’s way out here in the middle of the ocean, but I haven’t gotten a close enough look at one yet to look it up in my book. The sun finally broke through the clouds today and suddenly everything got extremely hot and humid. Everything has a layer of salty humid mist on it.  The toilet paper and paper towels are wet before you even use them.  The water temperature is now 86.5 degrees and the air temperature inside the boat is 80 degrees. I guess you could say we are finally in the tropics. Marcus and I are still very weak and weary of the seasickness, no one feels like fixing anything to eat so I broke out a jar of apple sauce and then we sat around imagining our families get together on this Easter Sunday and the nice big Easter dinners they were all having.  It was a very low activity day. Everyone is trying to get as much sleep as possible. Once Patrick got up and saw the sun shining he immediately went below to shave his face and chest so he could lay out and sun bake.  The night watches went well with out any mishaps or squalls so we were thankful for that.  We have set a waypoint to cross the equator at 135 degrees longitude and it is looking like we will be fairly close to that. Monday April 24th – Tuesday April 25th, 2000 DAY FOURTEEN Latitude = 5 degrees, 25 minutes Longitude = 131 degrees, 55 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 166 nautical miles Today started out pretty much like all the rest, cloudy skies and lumpy seas. Although we have 50 gals of fuel in jerry jugs on deck, we are running low on fuel in the tank. We’ve been running the engine to charge the batteries to run the electronics and the watermaker. We thought that the solar panels we installed would be running this equipment but with the lack of sunshine they have not been pulling their weight.  The question is how to get the fuel in the tank when we are in huge seas. The trick is you can’t get any saltwater in the tank with the diesel or we would be in big trouble.  David very carefully moved forward with the 80-pound jug of fuel, the boat rocking back and forth, but no water was splashing on deck. We used a piece of plastic hose to siphon the fuel from the jug to the tank, which worked pretty successfully, so we have 10 more gals in the tank. While we were in the middle of this exchange a big pod of dolphins came swimming by and played in the bow for a few minutes. That was a nice treat to see after a lot of stress.  We ran the engine to make some water and charge up the batteries. The skies are cloudy and mean looking and rained on us several times. Around 4:oo PM we were hit by SQUALLS!  Welcome to the ITCZ (the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) this is a zone usually close to the equator where weather and winds from the Northern Hemisphere converge with weather and winds form the Southern Hemisphere. They are usually going in opposing directions in a band several miles thick close to the equator. The zone is known for squalls on the edges and the phenomena of the doldrums in between. The doldrums is an area of no wind and calm seas, so we are actually looking forward to that!  The actual thickness of the zone varies so we don’t know how long we will be here, but I just hope the squall part is quick.  The Rest of the night was spent in squall diversion tactics. I sat at the radar warning of their impending size and direction, David, Markus and Patrick were all on deck to deal with the sails. Mostly I think they just wanted a good rinsing off in fresh water.  We would go from having no wind to being in a gale of pouring rain. The main is still double reefed and just the storm stays’l up.  Just after we went through a 4- mile long 2-mile wide squall I heard a big bang! The block holding in our clue for the double reef broke free of the boom and the sail was flogging like crazy. Marcus and David quickly diverted the sheet through another block on the boom and we were back in business. The seas were still very rough and it was pretty much a sleepless night for all. It poured rain all night long. Those on the night watch looked like prunes when they came off, but all said the fresh water was nice. At least the boat and everything on it got a nice fresh water rinse.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a nice squall free day. Tuesday April 25th – Wednesday April 26th, 2000 DAY FIFTEEN Latitude = 3 degrees, 58 minutes Longitude = 132 degrees, 50 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 133 nautical miles King Neptune is really making us pollywogs earn our shellback degrees the hard way. As you can see, fighting squalls and pouring rain all night slowed us down a bit, but not too bad. At least this time we didn’t loose and ground.  I awoke this morning to pouring rain! I went to take a look outside to see what was going on and there sat David alone in the cockpit in the poring down rain surrounded by dirty dishes that he was washing in the fresh rain water. He said water was collecting in the reefed part of the main and pouring into his bucket he had positioned below the boom.  What a site, I asked him if we were in paradise yet?  Due to the pouring rain and no wind we have had the engine on for several hours just to keep us from going backwards in the north equatorial countercurrent. We once again were running low on fuel and no way to get it in the tank in this pouring rain. So we decided to try to put it in the hard way. David sat in the cockpit and siphoned the fuel into a one-gal jug, which I took below and poured through a funnel into the tank. We have access to the tank under one of the seats in the salon and we unscrewed a metal plate that has the fuel gage on it to reveal a small 2-inch by 2-inch hole in the top of the tank. We very carefully transferred another 10 gals of the fuel in to the tank one-gallon at a time.  Boy, I hope we never have to do that again.  It poured rain all morning. I put on my swimsuit and went out for a fresh water rinse myself. Markus and Patrick were a sleep until about noon, I think Patrick may have slept a little longer. When Markus was awake he and David set to work on installing a new cheak block on the boom for the second reef sheet to run through. Who says things don’t happen for a reason the new block and position turned out to be way better than the old one.  By the afternoon the squalls were out of site and the seas were calm and the sun was out! We think we are in the doldrums. Hooray! At last we can take a little break. I went to work making bread. We had been out for days, but it had been way to rough to try to make. I baked 6 loafs of bread this afternoon. I hope this will hold us over until the Marquesas. While I was baking (LITERALLY) the boat was 83 degrees, plus I was standing by a 400-degree oven making and baking bread, my T-shirt totally soaked in sweat.  The boys were outside in the nice tropical breeze fishing. Around 3:00pm Marcus caught a whale of a tuna. Of course he and Patrick thought it was a 50- 60-pound fish, but David and I think it was probably more like 25 – 30 pounds.  None the less it was a good size fish and a beautiful spectacle. Patrick and Markus spent the next two hours carefully cutting up the fish into nice fresh tuna steaks. Looks like we will have fresh tuna and bread for dinner tonight.  Even after we all feasted on tuna, there is enough left in the fridge for several more meals.  So far in our fishing adventures we have lost three lures to fish and caught three fish so I guess the score is fish 3, boys 3. Near dusk the wind pick up so we double reefed the main once again.  Around midnight the wind totally died to nothing, so rather than drift backward we decided to turn on the engine again and powered south to the next batch of wind or squall.  David and I decided to empty the rest of the fuel jugs into the tank. Even though it was dark it was very calm conditions so we now have a full tank and are only a few days away from our destination. It was a very calm night and Patrick wanted to stay up on watch after his marathon 13-hour sleep.  The rest of us were too tired to complain and let him. I got up several times to make sure he was ok and wearing his life jacket.  When I got up in the morning I checked the water temperature and it was registering 87.5 degrees! Wow! Wish I could go swimming. That will have to wait for a bit. Wednesday April 26th – Thursday April 27th, 2000 DAY SIXTEEN Latitude = 1 degrees, 45 minutes Longitude = 133 degrees, 35 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 162 nautical miles Well today was the finally the day that David showed me in the brochure when he said, “want to sail to paradise?” The seas were calm; we had the nice gentle southeast trades blowing us gently towards our destination. We put the spinnaker up, which shaded the boat nicely.  David and I sat on the toe rail (harnessed in) and dragged our feet in the crystal blue warm water. We used the canvas bucket to throw water on each other to cool off and then bathe.  We then rigged up the sun shower from the end of the boom and everyone got a nice freshwater rinse. Nice to get those salt crystal out of my hair! With the main and our beautiful turtle spinnaker up we were making good time. We were going 8-9 knots and it hardly felt like we were moving.  Marcus made us all wonderful fresh tuna sandwiches for lunch (the Australian way) yummy!  We are all getting very excited because we are so close to the equator. Then it’s only 8 more degrees to the Marquesas. I think we are all tired of being on this boat for 16 days. It’s hard to keep everyone entertained and happy.  About 7:00 PM the wind really picked up so we took down the spinnaker and put up the genoa and stays’l and finally have the main unreefed.  Around 8:00 we witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen and then the stars were abundant around us every where. Marcus pointed out the Southern Cross constellation to us. It is the constellation of stars on the Australian flag. This is one that you can’t see from the United States.  This constellation is famous for guiding sailors for hundreds of years for is southern most star points to the South Pole.  It was a fairly uneventful night; the stars stayed out and the squalls stayed away. Guess someone’s finally listening to all those prayers, or King Neptune decided we had enough.  We are all hoping we will cross the equator tomorrow. YEA! Thursday April 27th - Friday April 28th, 2000 DAY SEVENTEEN Latitude =0 degrees, 7  minutes South Longitude = 133 degrees, 43 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 134 nautical miles Do they mean doldrums or dold-dumbs! Today was the day of mishaps.  It started out pretty good; we had really light wind so we put up the spinnaker and drifted along towards the equator at about 4 knots.  Around 2:00 PM the wind had dropped to nothing and even the spinnaker couldn't keep us going. So Markus and I went up to take down the spindrifter. David decided that we had enough fuel left that we could power for a bit until we find wind, so he went down to change the oil in the engine. Marcus not knowing that David was even awake started up the engine while I was up on the bow stowing away the sails and David was in the middle of an oil change! I heard a big scream and then a lot of other mixed words. Talk about having a heart attack.  I went running back to the cockpit, slipped on some slimy wet clothes that Patrick had left laying around for 3 days plus, fell and hit my head.  I think all three of us had the scare of a lifetime. Once we recovered from the initial shock of the whole thing, we began attacking the clean up of the mess it made in the engine room.  While we were cleaning this up Patrick was leaning over the edge of the boat with our only plastic bucket trying to get water I guess. (Life jackets on, but not tethered!) Just when I sat down to take a breath he pops up and says,"I lost the bucket". There it was sinking and floating away from us fast. David quickly turned the boat around to go after it as Patrick took off his life jacket. I asked him what he was doing? He said he was going to dive in after it. I said " are you crazy! Do you think you life is worth a plastic bucket?" the bucket was never to be seen again. I hope they have one of those in marquises.  The rest of the day was spent in slow recovery from all the stress and we slowly motored our way towards the equator. It was looking like we wouldn't make it before midnight. I stayed on watch until 6:00 PM and then went below to relax and go to bed. I said, "wake me up when we get close to the equator." Being that the engine was running, David turned on the inverter and let Patrick and Markus watch a couple movies. At 4:00 am I awoke to see that we were almost to the equator. At 4:38 am on April 28th we crossed that imaginary line that separates the Northern and Southern Hemisphere.  The GPS read 0^ 00' 000", 133^ 42'. We broke out the Champaign and toasted King Neptune for letting pass safely into the southern waters. David and I now wearing our shell lays because we have all graduated from pollywog to shellback.  We felt like there should be some committee boats there waving flags and congratulating us for the great accomplishment. Patrick and I baptized our feet with southern water form the canvas bucket and watched the dinoflagilates swirl a phosphoresces glow around our feet.  Stars surrounded the crescent moon high in the ski. Everyone was tired, so off to bed they went. I stayed up on watch to witness the beginning of a new day on the equator. Friday April 28th- Saturday April 29th, 2000 DAY EIGHTEEN Latitude = 1 degree, 44 minutes South Longitude = 134 degrees, 46 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 125 nautical miles Still in the doldrums. It’s hard to believe that way out here in the middle of the ocean the water is like glass. There is not a breath of wind and it is HOT! David is going crazy not moving so we are running the engine at a low speed, just to keep us from floating backward in the counter current.  With the engine running there is plenty of battery power so the boys watched a couple of movies while I sat watch. I got out my curtsey flags to work on. I was content to be finally moving at a slow pace in a smooth sea. It gave me a break from seasickness. But everyone else is so anxious to get there that we powered most of the day and into the night. Finally we found a breath of wind and turned the engine off and put up the sails, alas we were going 4 knots. I told David he should be very happy with that out here in the doldrums.  The water temperature is now 89.7 degrees. Hard to imagine.   The rest of the night the wind kept building until we were finally going around 6 knots again.  We were all happy to be moving and have a breeze going throughout the boat. Saturday April 29th   - Sunday April 30th, 2000 DAY NINETEEN Latitude = 3 degrees, 35 minutes South Longitude = 136 degrees, 03 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 146 nautical miles Around 9:00 am this morning the wind came back with vengeance. The day was spent in squall defense. King Neptune is testing out our newly acquired shellback degrees today. Every half-hour or so we brace ourselves for another squall, running around closing all the hatches and rolling in the genoa. We have the main double reefed and the storm stays’l up. This makes it easy to run through the squall when all we have to do is roll up the genoa. By night fall we are all weary of fighting squalls and big seas again, but its not going to give a break tonight either. We hit one huge squall that didn’t have any wind in the middle and just poured rain on us for about an hour. I stood out in it for a fresh water bath.  The boat didn’t make any forward progress; in fact we think we may have floated backward a little. Markus is very ill and hasn’t slept for days and so David and I took turns doing watch tonight until 4:30 am when we couldn’t take it any more and got Markus up. Then I slept for few hours and relieved him again at 7:30 so he could try to get some sleep.  These definitely are not the gentle southeast trade winds you read about.  Sunday April 30th - Monday May 1, 2000 DAY TWENTY Latitude = 6 degrees, 14 minutes South Longitude = 137 degrees, 18 minutes. Total Miles traveled today = 184 nautical miles Wow, we broke our mileage record today. 184 miles made our Captain proud, plus the crew happy. After sitting in the doldrums for days, the wind picked up and stayed fairly consistent.  We still had the main double reefed and the storm stays’l and genoa out and were flying towards our destination. The ride is still a little bumpy. Lisa and Markus are still suffering from seasickness. You would think we would get used to it, but this has been an extremely rough ride.  We are closing in our destination with less then 300 miles to go. Our GPS will gives us an ETA based on our current speed, but it changes constantly with our speed so we don’t look at it too often, but we are all excited to be seeing land soon.  Patrick being one of two that can stand to be below deck doing anything has become chief cook and bottle washer. I told him we might not make a sailor out of him but we sure turned him into a good cook. Tonight he baked us a chocolate cake that was soooo good. We couldn’t figure out why it was so good, was it because it was something fresh or did the moist ocean salt air add a certain flair to the cake. Needless to say the cake is gone today.  Markus still being to weak to do a watch left David and Patrick up to until about 5:00 am when I relieved them. They had fun with David playing and giving Patrick a lesson on old time rock and roll. I occasionally would wake up to hear Pink Floyd or Eric Claptian and then dose back to sleep. When I came on watch at 5:00 am the moon was just rising in the tiniest littlest sliver I’ve ever seen. I watched it rise high in the sky surrounded by stars and shooting stars, it was followed by the sun at around 7:30am.  If we have continued good winds we should arrive in the Marquises on May 2, 2000.