Dry

When I went off watch last night at 3am, the cockpit was soaking wet. The cushions were wet, the towels were wet, the deck was wet, and water has accumulated on the ledge where I store my glasses and the VHF microphone. You get the idea, it was wet. Tropical downpour fresh rain water wet.

When I got up at 7am, it was dry. Bone dry. The water was just gone. In the short period between sunrise and 7am, everything had dried out. There was not a cloud in the sky and the sun was already blazing down. The poor squid and flying fish that had landed on the deck during the night were already dried and stiff.

All day long it was like sailing through a desert of rolling hills, but the hills were made of water. We had a swell from the NE, another from the SE and then just some random stuff. The swells were still pretty good sized, as much as 2.5 - 3m, but they had a long period and thus a fairly gentle roll. None the less they were rolling us around, some current was pushing us back and in general the sea state was slowing us down. Our noon to noon run was only 159nm, one of our poorest days in a long time. And this despite motoring at a higher RPM than usual and burning more fuel in the process.

Through the day it just got hotter and hotter. It was impossible to walk on the deck without shoes. The fresh water out of the faucet was easily 100F. And there was just the barest breath of wind. The sea was almost glassy, and actually was glassy for about two hours. The lack of wind and thus salt spray, plus no rain, allowed us to open up the boat for the first time since we departed. We opened the hatches and let the air flow through the cabins; we opened up the dodger window and let the air move through the cockpit. It was a nice day. Finally in the late afternoon a few clouds began to appear on the horizon so I took a shower at the back of the cockpit around 6pm because it might be the last outdoor shower for awhile.

It's now about 8:30pm and a gentle breeze of 5-7kts has definitely begun to fill in from the east. This is a welcome development because it has stopped the monotonous and damaging slatting of the main sail, back and forth, back and forth on each roll of the boat. The forecast is that we'll go through another band of rain, possibly later this evening or in the morning, then emerge into the trades with 17-23 from the NE which will put the wind pretty much on our beam as we sail the final 600 miles to Honolulu. So we've cleaned up a bit, closed most of the hatches and generally prepared for a few days of brisk sailing until we reach the lee of the big island when things will lighten up again. We expect to reach Honolulu and the Waikiki YC early Thursday morning.

Nice sunset tonight as the sun lowered into the heavy clouds way off on the horizon. The half moon is overhead and there are some stars playing hide and seek with the scattered clouds.