Last night was much more pleasant than the night before. The wind held steady, and aside from minor trim adjustments, the sails were low-maintenance. It’s starting to get chilly at night, but we can shed our extra layers of clothing at sunrise.
I loved reading your messages and comments about the sewing machine. It sounds like Sailrite has a ton of helpful video tutorials I can follow—I’m optimistic about my project list! There’s a running joke amongst sailors that to be a liveaboard, you must be a nurse, chef, engineer, carpenter, maid, marine biologist, electrician, mechanic, meteorologist, doomsday prepper, seamstress, etc. I am constantly learning something new!
We’ve been turning Starlink on for an hour in the morning and an hour at night, but it takes ~30 minutes to connect, so our time online has been minimal. After checking in with my family this morning, I read up on another catamaran requiring rescue— the 4th one here in two weeks. They hit “something” around 3am and began taking on water. All crew members evacuated into a liferaft and were rescued 10 hours later. I couldn’t find anything that detailed what exactly they hit, but there’s been speculation it may have been a shipping container. It’s rare but not unheard of. The large metal containers fall off cargo ships and drift partially submerged for miles. One of the people aboard was an Olympic sailing medalist, which shows that while skill is an important part of sailing, so is luck, and sailing in the dark adds another layer of risk; it could happen to anyone. I’m sure their hearts are aching over the loss of such a beautiful vessel, but their well-executed evacuation is admirable. We’re glad everyone is safe!
Despite it being a beautiful sunny day today, we had to run our generator. We simply do not get enough solar with the sails up, travelling east/west. Considering we’ll be sailing in this direction for the rest of our circumnavigation, increasing our lithium bank and charging options (or simply getting a more reliable generator) is a high-priority project. Our current setup was perfect in the Caribbean, but it just isn’t cutting it out here.
There’s been a creaking noise coming from our boom for a few days now, and it’s been driving us crazy. We’ve tried everything we could to silence it but couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. This afternoon, Ray cracked the code: it was coming from where the reefing line loops around the boom. He put a black piece of rubber in between, and the sound is gone! Woohoo!
We had homemade Salisbury steak, gravy, and mashed potatoes for dinner (one of Ray’s favorites) and watched the sunset.
Tonight has been lovely so far, with 20kn of wind and green bioluminescence glittering in our wake. We have less than 400nm to go to reach our destination. If you’ve been keeping up with these daily updates, you know the drill by now: my shift has just ended, so I am off to bed! Goodnight! See ya tomorrow.