The wind became an eerie calm as we entered the thickest part of the ITCZ. The air was moist, hazy, and absent of wind. All around us a wall of grey with spots of dark patches connecting the clouds to the ocean, it’s if a cloud sat on the ocean and we were sailing inside of one large cloud. Sprinkles showered the deck and washed away the salt. We turned on the Yanmar engine to 2500 RPM’s and motor sailed into the storms. Surprisingly, the squalls were mild and we spent the day wet but not cold. We watched the radar to avoid any large storms and motored around them as needed. As we thought we had finally emerged from the ITCZ this morning we realized it wasn’t done yet. The sky is beginning to look clear but we continue to sail through rain showers. Our wind has shifted to 140 degrees which is 50 degrees off our bow. The wind strength goes from 3 to 25 knots so our main and stay sail are pinched tight and the motor is still running. The ocean has become a washing machine headed into the wind and we could really do without the diesel exhaust smell in the cockpit.
Equipment:
We have had a few radar difficulties. Our Raymarine es128 multifunction display (MFD) and Raymarine Quantum radar keep loosing connection. There is an option to connect the MFD to the radar via hard wire or Wifi. We chose to hard wire the radar to Wade’s previous existing all-in-one power/data cable. The new Quantum has separate cables for data and power cable, there is an option to use the existing all-in-one cable by special ordering a splitter. A new feature of the Quantum is the ability to not use wires at all and connect the MFD and Radar wireless, as the Raymarine MFD emits its own Wifi network signal. We started to loose the connection about mid day yesterday when Sara connected her Raymarine iPhone app to the MFD to view the radar on her phone. We are at a loss as to why we keep loosing connection, could it be 1) the power/data splitter, 2) the radar is trying to connect wirelessly and if it can’t connect then it thinks there is a loss of connection, like a bios boot sequence but it’s stuck in a loop that doesn’t resolve, 3) Sara broke it by connecting the app to the MFD? Who knows? We’ll continue to monitor the situation and possibly figure something out in Fanning.
Sea Life:
We have not fished and we haven’t seen any sea life, dolphins and such, but we have seen birds almost every day. We wonder if they hitched a ride with us or they are just cruising the ocean searching for food.
Sailing at night is beautiful as the boat pushes through the water and a small wave peals away from the hull shinny blue algae shimmer in the water like a thousand little blue glow lights flicker as we sail on.
Updates from the previous post:
– 8 degrees 8 minutes N, 157 degrees minutes 44 W
– Heading: 202
– 129 miles traveled since our last Noon Report
– 789 of 1049 miles are traveled thus far
– Sara has been off the Zofran for 48 hours and going strong, even with the smell of exhaust!
