Friday, May 9, 2014

May 9 Position Report

5/9/14 Wandering Dolphin POS

1300 GMT
09 56.7 N  094 51.7 W
COG 270T
SOG 2kt

Wind: Light and Variable
Temp: 86.8f
Pressure: 29.65
Current .5 to 1 kt favorable
Sky: overcast
Sea: calm

There are thunderstorms all around.  We were hit by the first yesterday afternoon and it has been one after another since then.  There is another huge one coming from the north right now.  We motored from 4:00pm until 6:30am and made headway in spite of the storms.  Right now we are back to drifting in the calms between the storms and sailing in the rain when they hit us.  It is not comfortable and everything is wet, on the flip side all of our water tanks are full and the batteries are charged.   We are about at the stage where we'll stop using the engine but if I had wanted a trawler I'd have bought one.

Yesterday we had light (5-8 knot) winds from the East for about four hours so we pulled up the spinnaker and made 4-4.5 knots under the chute with the main all the way out.  The wind died altogether around 2:00pm an we had a hot calm before the march of storms began.

The thunderstorms were magnificent if not a little scary at times last night.  The thunder rolled sometimes for 30 seconds straight, lightning flashing all around and rain was falling in sheets that in the lightning flashes you could actually watch as they raced across the water toward the boat.  Sometimes they brought gusts of wind, once over 35 knots, at other times nothing but rain.

Yesterday with the boat all closed up it was way too hot to cook so for breakfast we made a ton of French toast and ate the leftovers for lunch with peanut butter and for supper we put cold canned chili and Campbell's cheddar cheese soup over tortilla chips.

Everyone still has good spirits.  When we were all in the cockpit catching rain in all of our drinking bottles and jugs we all were goofing off laughing.  All of my muscles are sore from working the boat.  The constant sail changes and rushing to reef is taking a physical toll on me because I do all the heavy work.

Oh! And in the afternoon when the wind died I went for a little swim off the back of the boat... I held on to a line and all I could think about was the one time off shore when my buddy Richard and I did the same thing and then pestered my son Jimmy to jump in and he almost jumped right on top of a HUGE shark!  The water is such an amazing blue out here and when you get in you feel completely out of your element.  I think it must be the closest thing the earthbound can do to feel, in a small way, the way an astronaut feels on a spacewalk.

We had the phone off most of yesterday because of all the rain and a poor signal, we also put it and other important electronics in the oven when we get into lightning.

I'm sure I have a ton of messages to listen to today.

Also a reminder, the InReach takes lithium AA batteries and although I have a lot of them, we now turn it off in between uses to conserve batteries.  If you check our position when it is off it will just give you the position from the last request.  Sorry but the one complaint I have about the InReach over the SPOT is the comparative battery usage.
I better get this sent off before the next storm hits us.

Wet and Wild on WD,
Captain Tofer, Beck, Ems, Kanyon, Kaleb, Ben

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