27 Days at Sea

March 29 8 degrees 54.506 N Latitude 79 degrees 31.160 W Long.
April 25 8 degrees 54.856 S Latitude 140 degrees 5.67 W Longitude
LIVE IN THE SUNSHINE.
SWIM IN THE SEA.
DRINK THE WILD AIR.

Our last night at Panama City, we were anchored out at La Playita waiting for our one last package to arrive. Our washing machine part finally is here! Let's GO!

Mid afternoon the anchor is up and we are on our way, sailing past the last islands of Panama, navigating between soooo many ships anchored out waiting for their turn to go thru the canal. No stopping at the Pearl Islands. Passed some boats that left the day before.

Annual wind and weather patterns in the eastern Pacific Ocean make the months of March, April, and May the ideal time for sailors to cross from the West Coast of the Americas to the exotic archipelagos of French Polynesia. We are part of the Pacific Puddle Jump, a fleet of boats, providing extra measure of safety and inter-fleet comaraderie. There is safety in numbers. Most sailors consider the trip to be one of the greatest adventures of their lives. Crossing 4,000 miles of open water is a strenuous test of both crew and equipment.

Rather than bore you with what we did every day … I’ll just tell you what we did, what we saw, what we learned …

We saw…
An unobstructed 360 degree view of 27 sunsets and 27 sunrises. A few really nice ones (like Easter morning) and lots of rather “dudley” ones. April 2 was our last sunrise in the Northern Hemisphere.
Blue skies. Pink clouds. Purple clouds. Cotton ball clouds. Rain clouds. Rainbows.
Moon rises. Moon sets. Every phase of the moon, including those wonderful no-moon dark starry starry nights.
Clouds of flying fish – with a few dead ones on deck most every morning. Sightings of whales and dolphins. We watched for mermaids, mermen and unicorns, UFO’s, sea monsters, and things that go bump in the night.

What we did…
Read. Eat. Sleep. Catnapped. Repeat.

We fished. Gpa caught a black fin tuna. Max caught a Mahi Mahi. Whitey caught a Mahi Mahi. Some got up to the scoop, did a quick twist and got away before Whitey could spear them. And then Gpa caught a blue fin tuna.
We ate fish. Thanks to all of Max’s planning and provisioning and culinary skills we ate well. Very well. Leg of lamb, steak, taco’s, curries, lasagna, salads, homemade breads, ice cream with passion fruit, cookies, even SPAM. We haven’t run out of food, tho we are all looking forward to fresh produce again.

One night, as I was just nodding off to sleep to get a few hours in before my 1am-4am watch, I woke up SCREAMING like a banshee! There was a wet stinky sleazy slimy little sea monster flapping around on top of me! Gpa says, “Geez. It’s only a fish.” Eeeew. Flying fish flew a bit too high and landed right in our open hatch. Now I caught a fish, too. See its wings?

We sailed. And we motored. We experienced the doldrums – with flat seas and hardly a breeze. We could have taken the dinghy down and gone skiing in the middle of the ocean. We didn’t. We endured the high seas with 10’ swells and >20knot gusts of wind. Lots of sunshine. Some cloudy days and nights. A few drizzles of rain and some squalls with quick dumps of rain. Nutmeg enjoyed every set of sail – from a nice downwind spinnaker, wing to wing, heave ho, reefed jib, motor sail, no sail. With good winds, sails up, engines off, we’re all happy as dogs with our heads hanging out the window. We sailed by the rest of Panama, passed by the Galapagos Islands, out to the middle of the ocean, qpprox 4000nm (4600 land miles) from Panama to the Marquesas. Think about that. New York to London is 3150nm. New York to San Francisco is 2900 land miles. Madison WI to the North Pole is 3,242 miles as the reindeer fly. We really are out here in the middle of nowhere - alone. Once we left all the boats

behind by Panama we have only seen one ship. Other PPJ's are somewhere out there hundreds of miles away. So glad we are not on one of Magellan’s boats 500 years ago. So glad we are on our wonderful ocean-cruising-sea-worthy Nutmeg, a 2008 50’ St. Francis catamaran, with Max and Whitey’s years (and years) of knowledge and experience safely taking us where Nutmeg and we have never been before.

We adjusted our clocks back an hour 4Xs, every time we passed another 15 degrees longitude. Yet, for some reason, in the Marquesa Islands, there is a 1/2 hour time change. So, when it is 10:45am here, it is 3:15pm in Beaver Dam WI.

On April 2nd we crossed the equator at 0.00.000 degrees latitude. We have all crossed the equator at sea before except Max. We had a Crossing the Line ceremony where King Neptune anointed Max from pollywog to shellback, initiating her into the official Order of the Nutmeg Shellbacks. We drifted and went swimming in the ocean, got stung by jellyfish (ouch!) and Whitey took his drone up flying above us. Time for a bottle of champagne.

Whitey fixed things, like the water maker. Now we can all take showers and drink all the water we want. Discovered water in the starboard engine compartment and replaced the bilge pump; glad we had an extra onboard. The spinnaker line and port block broke – quick pull down the spinnaker! A couple hours later the spinnaker is back up with new rigging. By this last week of the passage even Nutmeg was getting tired. Port engine died. Had an electrical problem. Captain Fixit to the rescue again. Found a bad fuse and luckily had a replacement. Wind died again. More motoring. Fill the fuel tanks with our extra Jerry Cans.

NAUTICAL TERMS EVERY SAILOR SHOULD KNOW:
A HEAD is a bathroom. We actually have 5.
A GALLEY is a kitchen.
A BERTH or CABIN or STATEROOM is a bedroom.
The SALON is the dining/living space between the two hulls.
The NAV STATION is the desk and all the navigation equipment in the SALON.
The COCKPIT is the outside seating & table area which, on NUTMEG, includes the HELM STATION (steering wheel, instruments and seat)
PORT is left side, STARBOARD is right side.
FORE is front, AFT is back (as in aft port cabin).
The BOW is the front of the boat, the STERN is the back of the boat.
Boats do not have ropes, they have LINES, SHEETS and HALYARDS.
The MAIN is the main sail. The JIB or GENOA is the fore sail. The SPINNAKER is the big billowy sail used for lighter downwind sailing (the wind is behind you).
And YES. There will be a test.

There is something very mesmerizing and calming about just feeling the wind in your face, feeling that weightlessness of being softly rocked back and forth, up and down. The warmth of the sun from your toes to your cheeks. Hearing the constant surging of the waves behind you, while glancing along the water side to side watching the calm seas for any birds flying by, flying fish, unusual splashing of waves signaling a school of dolphins or, better yet, whales. Sunrises. Sunsets. Moon rises. Dark nights with gazillions of stars. The Milky Way, Magellan Clouds, Big Dipper, Scorpio, Southern Cross. Bioluminescence.

Pictures and words just can’t do this justice. It just needs to be experienced in the moment and remembered as well as one can.
I may have found my happy place. Or at least another one.

Yeah. But every hour of every day was not that.
There were also those tense moments. Rough seas. Broken spinnaker line and block. Broken bilge pump. The boredom of the same-same, nothing to do, to really accomplish. Lost time with our Gkids, Kids, family, chosen family, friends, strangers, & new friends. I miss snow. Winter storms. Slush. Spring flowers. Sunsets over Beaver Dam lake. Sunrises over Lake Michigan. Solid ground. Walking. Working. Hectic days. Google. Great Harvest bread, chocolate croissants, goodies. OOGA beer. Being there.
As we approach the Marquesas we start seeing boats on the AIS. In all our over 4000 miles we only saw one ship – and one more also appeared on the AIS. We start seeing more birds. And then we see LAND! LAND HO! XO XO Gma & Gpa