Two At Sea

May 5, 2012

We’re kind of falling into our at-sea routine already. Normally, it takes about three days but I think it’s coming back to us more quickly this time. I take watch from 3PM until 9PM and I check in on the Pacific Seafarers net at about 8PM. Cyndi takes watch from 9PM until 3AM – good thing she’s a night owl. I’m on again from 3AM until 9AM. Cyndi takes 9AM until 3PM and then it starts all over again. We’re doing really well at getting some sleep when we’re off watch. So well that I’m already really missing Cyndi’s company.

It looks like we might get some sun today as the sky is clearing – it’s about sunrise now. It would be nice to have a little warmer day. The swells are supposed to be a little smaller today and that would also be nice. We’re making pretty good time but we’re deliberately going a little slower to make the ride more comfortable. We made about 136 miles in 24 hours yesterday. We’re 75 miles west of Guadalupe Island off of Mexico right now.

This is less than the most creative email I’ve ever written. Sorry. I hope they get more entertaining as we settle in more. -Rich

May 3, 2012

Cold, cold, cold! I should just leave this post at that but I’ll go on. It was a pretty nice night. The winds were steady and from a good direction. The swell is a little too large and not from such a good direction as we’re rolling quite a bit. As I tried to type that sentence, my seat, with me in it, went sliding across the chart table bench. You really can’t ask for better conditions leaving the California coast but wow, is it cold! We’re wearing long underwear, sweatshirts and parkas. If it gets any colder, I’ll have to resort to socks. Oh well. Soon we’ll be complaining about the heat. I can’t wait. -Rich

May 3, 2012

We’re finally getting underway. There are just a few last-minute things to do and we’ll sail away from Catalina Island, California, the United States, North America. Out across a big chunk of the Pacific Ocean and hopefully, end up like one of the boats in this picture. More in a few days.

(By the way, don’t worry about us if these posts stop. You know computers. There are vast complexities between us on the boat and the resulting blog post. If any one piece fails, no posts. We have an emergency signaling device on the boat called an EPIRB and if anything were truly wrong, we’d activate it.)

-Rich

May 1, 2012

Sorry to say, We won’t be able to post pictures while we’re underway – just text. After all day of messing with this issue, it seems that the system we use for email over HAM radio changes the images in such a way that the posting software doesn’t recognize the image. There are several posts on the internet discussing this issue but no resolution.

So here’s what we’ll do: We’ll save up all the pictures until we find a wifi connection in French Polynesia and post a whole bunch of pictures then. We’ll just have to do our best to describe the trip in words until then. -Rich

May 1, 2012

Here we sit in beautiful Avalon, our first stop. Although only 26 miles from Redondo Beach, it might turn out to be the hardest leg of the trip. So much planning, so much preparation. Was it enough? We’ll find out. Only time will tell if we brought enough Cheeze-Wiz and Oreo’s!