Pacific Crossing - Day 20 - Under Spinnaker

[April 28]

Lat/Long: 09°21.14'S / 132°45.24'W
24hr distance: 106 nm
To Go Distance: 372 nm

After 19 days of steady 15-20 knot winds from the South East, we've finally had some change. Yesterday the wind started to lose its strength, the boat slowed, and after several days of sailing under a poled-out genoa and staysail, we decided to bring them both down and hoist the spinnaker. Unfortunately, and we somehow managed to put a rip in the thin sail cloth. No problem. We have tons of fuel, so we simply motored through the night.

First thing this morning, I repaired the spinnaker, and we're now cruising along at 4 knots. Hard to watch our average speed decrease, after these weeks of steady progress at 6 knots. A couple months ago we would have danced for joy at 4 knots!! Funny what a fickle pair of sailors we are. The good news is that along with the wind, the swell has also calmed down considerably. I'm about to mix up a fresh batch of cookies, and bake some bread.

We've been out of bread for almost a week, and yesterday we finished the last of our potatoes. All that's left for fresh food is watermelon, a couple limes, and onions. But our fresh supplies kept better this time, and we still have lots of canned goods about. I'm pretty sure that we could have bought enough BIMBO (think: Wonderbread) bread for the whole passage - it just never goes bad. Eerie. We just finished our last tube of Pringles, so we'll have to be careful with our remaining chocolate, or we could have a crew meltdown!!

[labels: sailing, provisioning, passage making]