Days 5-8 Pacific Puddle Jump

[pin 4320] Day 5 Mar 24 Fish On!!!! Shortly after Jim;s shift started he saw a fish at the end of the line. It was a 20+lb yellowfin tuna. Of course this happens the day after we had a nice clean shower and there was blood all over Jim’s clothes and the deck of the boat. Nick miraculously didn’t get a drop of blood on him. We filleted the fish and froze half for later and ate sashimi for lunch and cracked pepper tuna steaks for dinner. It was amazingly tender and melt in your mouth and much tastier than skipjack tuna. The winds picked up today and we were on a beam reach and going fast. Way more rocky and rolly so cooking was a challenge as everything wants to roll away from me. Overnight Ian broke due to the strong wind & wave action so we’ve all got to hand steer overnight. A stainless steel bracket holding a pulley bent up (a lot of force considering this is 1/2 inch thick stainless steel). Day 6 Mar 25 We passed our 1/4 distance today! The winds slowed down today and Jim is worried that we’re going too far west so we’ve been trying hard to head more south. Today we put up our drifter sail – it’s like a large headsail but pretty like a spinnaker. It flew well in the light winds. Provisions wise the avocados and mangos are getting really ripe whilst the apples, oranges and potatoes are doing nicely. Since the winds were light, I did some clothes washing today. Mainly Jim’s blood stained clothes from yesterday and threw in some other clothes as well and set up the clothes line on the sunny side of the boat. We had tuna fried rice for lunch and leftover steaks for dinner. No more fish for a while. Overnight the wind died down to 4-5 knots and the sails were flapping and the boom banging so we turned on the motor for a few hours and headed south. We made water, charged up our batteries and turned off the engine when the wind picked up. Day 7 Mar 26 Everyone is tired as we have been hand steering for the last 2 days/nights. Also the sea has been confused which makes the boat roll up and down and side to side. The boom creaks, the sails flap and the blocks rattle whenever we get hit on the side by the waves as the wind is too light to keep the wind in the sail. It makes it difficult to sleep as well. So we’re more grumpy and irritable. We used the whisker pole on the head sail and it stopped the sail from slapping around. Jim is unhappy about our heading but we can only go where the wind takes us and maybe we should just head to Hawaii. The winds picked up steadily through the day but our heading is dead down wind and our boat doesn’t seem to want to head in that direction. Every day at 5pm we have a gathering in the cockpit for happy hour where we have a special treat and sometimes a beer or margarita. Today we had chocolate ice cream that I smuggled on board. We had cup of noodles for dinner. Day 8 Mar 27 Another tiring night of hand steering last night. Jim finally jibed and put out the mizzen sail to port and our poled out genoa to starboard on a wing on wing configuration, Ian was happy to steer the boat. Phew! We don’t have to hand steer tonight. Ian worked well, even with his dislocated shoulder in the 15-20 knot winds. The 2 cookbooks that I have found most useful is “The Boat Galley Cookbook” by Carolyn Shearlock & Jan Irons and “The Essential Galley Companion” by Amanda Swan-Neal. Today I made mango cream pie, thanks to Amanda who’s a kiwi (from New Zealand) as her book had 5 different mango recipes. As the oven was going to be on, I also made hamburger buns for our dinner tonight. It is challenging trying to cook with the rolly waves but I’m getting the hang of it. We had the mango pie for happy hour and Nick cooked up the hamburgers for dinner.

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