Elias, our fishing master, is naturally, given his upbringing as the son of an ex seabird biologist, very concerned to run a bycatch-free operation.
The other day, we caught a red-footed boobie.
We usually watch any boobies carefully and quickly pull in the lines if they show interest in our lures. But this one gave us little chance. Before we knew it, he was on the water and pecking at our lure.
I hauled him in hand over hand (he had bitten at our hand line). It turned out that he was hooked through the lower mandible. It was a "clean" wound, though a bit bloody, and after some quick work with the needle nose pliers the bird was back in the water. I'm hopeful that he will recover pretty easily from the experience.
What hasn't recovered is our fishing effort. We are now extra-loth to leave the lines out without carefully attending them. And where we were towing a phalanx of offerings - two handlines, the rod, and two "exciter bird" teasers - now we put out a much less ambitious set. Just the one handline, or two at the most. I'm not quite sure what Elias' reasoning is for favoring the handlines over the rod, but I trust him.
Whatever else this passage might offer, it doesn't look to be rich in fish dinners.
~~
This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!
----------
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Saturday, April 15, 2017
Friday, April 14, 2017
Water
We carry about 600 liters of the stuff, which has been easily enough for our longest passages in the past.
On the 21-day trip from South Georgia we washed dishes in fresh and took minimal care with our consumption, but arrived in Cape Town with enough water left for days and days of dockside use, which allowed us to live off the delightful Grytviken water and saved us from the less delightful Cape Town version.
So we've never really worried about drinking water on passage.
This passage, it is apparent, is a little different.
We are now 12 days in, and Hawai'i is still more than 3,000 miles away. It has been above 30° C / 90° F throughout, and the sweat pours off us, day and night.
So naturally we have been drinking water pretty freely. This didn't worry us, but we did take more than normal precautions. I fossicked around in the plumbing parts locker and came up with the pieces to re-plumb the salt water tap at the galley sink, which I years ago disconnected, so that we (she) could wash the dishes in salt.
As I said, we weren't worried. But there is a long long stretch of empty ocean ahead of us, and we imposed pretty draconian limits on wash water that were a bit hard to take for our constantly sweating bodies.
And then, a couple days ago, something odd happened.
The port tank, which we have been using almost exclusively so far, was feeling funny at the foot pump when we drew water. This is often the first sign that the tank is getting low.
And the fridge pump, which uses drinking water as a coolant, was getting air when pumping from the same tank. (!)
Oddly, there was also some water in the container that the overflow hose for the port tank flows into. This normally happens only when the tank is overfilled when we're taking water.
So, something of an open ocean plumbing mystery. Add to that the combination of a fail-dangerous setup and human error early on in the trip that saw some water mistakenly pumped from our starboard tank into the then-full port tank, into the overflow hose, and thence into the bilge.
We thought that only about 10 liters were lost in that incident. But we weren't entirely sure that it wasn't much more. Because - admission - we don't have a way to see how full the tanks are. I hold that people who are going to sea only when they're ready never leave, while nearly everyone who is actually sailing the oceans of the world is doing so with a boat suffering some shortcoming that really should have been addressed before they set off.
On Galactic, that shortcoming might be our inability to gauge the tanks.
So, with the port tank looking like it might be running low well less than half way into the passage, mental alarm bells started going off.
I plotted the distances to ports in Mexico where we might top up. They were blessedly close - less than 300 miles - and the winds wouldn't make it tough to get there.
Elias started asking me what we would do if we ran out of water. We hadn't shared any of our concern with him, but all of our admonitions about being careful with water had made things clear enough. It's hard to hide things from your kids on a boat.
I answered that we always had the emergency 80 liters in jugs on deck, which we could ration severely and stretch a long long way.
He asked what I meant by ration, and then he asked what we would do if those ran out.
I had thought this through, of course, and told him how we would try to distill sea water on the galley stove. But I also stressed that it was vanishingly unlikely we would get to that point.
That night, after the boys were in bed and Alisa was on the HF, checking in with the Pacific Seafarer's Net, I bit the bullet and opened the inspection hatches for both tanks.
The port tank was surprisingly full. Clogged filters explained the funny foot pump feel and the fridge pump sucking air. And Alisa pointed out that the vicious roll we had suffered through on a windless night might have been enough to slosh water out of the overflow hose.
The starboard tank was almost completely full.
So...we're set. At this rate I wonder if we couldn't go 45 days or even 50, which is quite a long way for four people to stretch 600 liters.
We celebrated with bucket showers and a freshwater rinse for all hands. The boys were ecstatic at the treat.
It was quite a relief to look in those tanks and see how well we're doing, and I have resolved to get sight glasses plumbed into the tanks so we can see how full they are.
But through all this, neither Alisa nor I have ever felt tempted by the idea of an onboard watermaker. As long as our backs are up to hauling jerry jugs now and again, a watermaker is beyond our personal line in the sand of unreasonable onboard cost and complexity, an expression of the attitude that every problem in the life afloat has a technological solution which we are happy to sneer at for now.
As I was writing this, a squall passed overhead. We set the smaller of our two raincatchers and filled the kettle. And, more importantly, the whole crew mustered on deck naked and felt the shivery joy of cold freshwater running over our salt-itching bodies.
And that might be a little moment of passagemaking delight that stays with us for a long time.
~~
This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
On the 21-day trip from South Georgia we washed dishes in fresh and took minimal care with our consumption, but arrived in Cape Town with enough water left for days and days of dockside use, which allowed us to live off the delightful Grytviken water and saved us from the less delightful Cape Town version.
So we've never really worried about drinking water on passage.
This passage, it is apparent, is a little different.
We are now 12 days in, and Hawai'i is still more than 3,000 miles away. It has been above 30° C / 90° F throughout, and the sweat pours off us, day and night.
So naturally we have been drinking water pretty freely. This didn't worry us, but we did take more than normal precautions. I fossicked around in the plumbing parts locker and came up with the pieces to re-plumb the salt water tap at the galley sink, which I years ago disconnected, so that we (she) could wash the dishes in salt.
As I said, we weren't worried. But there is a long long stretch of empty ocean ahead of us, and we imposed pretty draconian limits on wash water that were a bit hard to take for our constantly sweating bodies.
And then, a couple days ago, something odd happened.
The port tank, which we have been using almost exclusively so far, was feeling funny at the foot pump when we drew water. This is often the first sign that the tank is getting low.
And the fridge pump, which uses drinking water as a coolant, was getting air when pumping from the same tank. (!)
Oddly, there was also some water in the container that the overflow hose for the port tank flows into. This normally happens only when the tank is overfilled when we're taking water.
So, something of an open ocean plumbing mystery. Add to that the combination of a fail-dangerous setup and human error early on in the trip that saw some water mistakenly pumped from our starboard tank into the then-full port tank, into the overflow hose, and thence into the bilge.
We thought that only about 10 liters were lost in that incident. But we weren't entirely sure that it wasn't much more. Because - admission - we don't have a way to see how full the tanks are. I hold that people who are going to sea only when they're ready never leave, while nearly everyone who is actually sailing the oceans of the world is doing so with a boat suffering some shortcoming that really should have been addressed before they set off.
On Galactic, that shortcoming might be our inability to gauge the tanks.
So, with the port tank looking like it might be running low well less than half way into the passage, mental alarm bells started going off.
I plotted the distances to ports in Mexico where we might top up. They were blessedly close - less than 300 miles - and the winds wouldn't make it tough to get there.
Elias started asking me what we would do if we ran out of water. We hadn't shared any of our concern with him, but all of our admonitions about being careful with water had made things clear enough. It's hard to hide things from your kids on a boat.
I answered that we always had the emergency 80 liters in jugs on deck, which we could ration severely and stretch a long long way.
He asked what I meant by ration, and then he asked what we would do if those ran out.
I had thought this through, of course, and told him how we would try to distill sea water on the galley stove. But I also stressed that it was vanishingly unlikely we would get to that point.
That night, after the boys were in bed and Alisa was on the HF, checking in with the Pacific Seafarer's Net, I bit the bullet and opened the inspection hatches for both tanks.
The port tank was surprisingly full. Clogged filters explained the funny foot pump feel and the fridge pump sucking air. And Alisa pointed out that the vicious roll we had suffered through on a windless night might have been enough to slosh water out of the overflow hose.
The starboard tank was almost completely full.
So...we're set. At this rate I wonder if we couldn't go 45 days or even 50, which is quite a long way for four people to stretch 600 liters.
We celebrated with bucket showers and a freshwater rinse for all hands. The boys were ecstatic at the treat.
It was quite a relief to look in those tanks and see how well we're doing, and I have resolved to get sight glasses plumbed into the tanks so we can see how full they are.
But through all this, neither Alisa nor I have ever felt tempted by the idea of an onboard watermaker. As long as our backs are up to hauling jerry jugs now and again, a watermaker is beyond our personal line in the sand of unreasonable onboard cost and complexity, an expression of the attitude that every problem in the life afloat has a technological solution which we are happy to sneer at for now.
As I was writing this, a squall passed overhead. We set the smaller of our two raincatchers and filled the kettle. And, more importantly, the whole crew mustered on deck naked and felt the shivery joy of cold freshwater running over our salt-itching bodies.
And that might be a little moment of passagemaking delight that stays with us for a long time.
~~
This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
Friday, April 7, 2017
3,951
Yeah, that would be us. Six days into the trip, and 3,951 miles still to go.
This is going to be our longest-ever by far.
Flew the chute today, after we caught the marlin.
Let the marlin go, with a streamer of monofilament hanging from the hook in its mouth. Sometimes I think that our fishing efforts are largely a way of putting plastic into the ocean.
Elias was so pleased with the experience of getting the marlin alongside and then releasing it. He has more or less completely taken over fishing responsibilities from me, and he caught the thing on a handline that he set up by himself.
Not bad for a 10-year-old, I suppose. But very much the norm for a yachtie kid.
He was also so pleased about how he and I worked together to get the beastie alongside without the benefit of a reel. Afterwards he commented several times to me about what a good team we are.
I wonder if he can see the approaching day when he is more competent at some practical things than I am. Can he smell the equality of standing that would imply between us?
Meanwhile, if you're interested, I believe that our position is being posted to the YOTREPS web site. Search for Galactic, or KL2DM.
~~
This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
This is going to be our longest-ever by far.
Flew the chute today, after we caught the marlin.
Let the marlin go, with a streamer of monofilament hanging from the hook in its mouth. Sometimes I think that our fishing efforts are largely a way of putting plastic into the ocean.
Elias was so pleased with the experience of getting the marlin alongside and then releasing it. He has more or less completely taken over fishing responsibilities from me, and he caught the thing on a handline that he set up by himself.
Not bad for a 10-year-old, I suppose. But very much the norm for a yachtie kid.
He was also so pleased about how he and I worked together to get the beastie alongside without the benefit of a reel. Afterwards he commented several times to me about what a good team we are.
I wonder if he can see the approaching day when he is more competent at some practical things than I am. Can he smell the equality of standing that would imply between us?
Meanwhile, if you're interested, I believe that our position is being posted to the YOTREPS web site. Search for Galactic, or KL2DM.
~~
This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
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