Tasman Crossing: Our Last Full Night at Sea?

This post was originally shared exclusively and directly with our subscribers during our passage across the Tasman.

We sailors are a superstitious lot.

You may have noticed that I never say “after we make landfall…,” or, “when we arrive to Australia…” That’s because the completion of a voyage is never guaranteed, and I choose not to tempt fate. The ocean gives us so much, but can also take it all away. We are so very small and the sea is vast and powerful. We are but guests here. Until the anchor is down and set, I live in the realm of the unknown, with a constant mild undercurrent of fear and anxiety.

But, hopefully, tonight will be our last full night at sea on this voyage.

We are now less than 100nm from the northern tip of Breaksea Spit beyond the top of Fraser Island, which is where we will turn and bear southwest toward the entrance to Port Bundaberg.

This means we are well into what I think of as the “marathon at the end of the marathon” — the last 200nm of a passage. Similar to this stretch of mileage at the start, we are exposed to all the hazards of near-shore sailing: increased shipping traffic, a higher likelihood of poorly-lit or questionably-managed non-professional vessels, and land-altered winds and seas. Last night alone I had more than ten AIS alarms sound for nearby traffic; typically, I might see one every 48 hours or more. This close to land, I must keep a more persistent look-out, so I set alarms to limit my sleep to naps of 30 minutes or less.

I’m a big believer in the philosophy that there is no one right way to do this kind of sailing. However, most of the single-handed sailors that I know share a similar strategy: we aim to transit the first and last 200nm of a passage as quickly as possible, because we know that we cannot subject our bodies to such deprivation for long. Were this to drag on for more than 48 hours, the perspicacity of our decisions would suffer, and in turn, so would our safety.

When I left on my first solo ocean passage, one of my singlehander mentors asked me, “what is the most important system on the ship?” I thought he meant the autopilot, but he quickly corrected me. “It’s you.”

Above all else, without the benefit of a crew to share watches, make hot drinks, ensure you are well fed and hydrated, you must do it all for yourself. And you simply can’t care for yourself as well during this stretch of time. Even with just one other crew member, a skipper could make the decision to slow down and transit these waters more comfortably, sailing a longer course to avoid unpleasant conditions or angles of sail.

I need my sleep, so for me the safest choice is clear — keep the boat moving as fast as possible so we can put the anchor down and rest as soon as possible.

Aside from decreased sleep, the sailing also tends to be trickier and more demanding close to shore. Since mid-morning today, we’ve been fighting our way through headwinds and uncomfortable seas. Even now, they persist, but in the middle of the night, the wind will abruptly shift with the arrival of a southerly front. This will make for even sloppier seas since it’s such a big change in weather direction, and the front also brings higher winds and strong and sudden gusts. I’ll need to quickly reef, then unreef, furl, then unfurl, trim the sails and then ease the lines. While it will be a more comfortable wind angle than today’s sail, it will be nonstop.

If all goes to plan, then we should be making the turn at the tip of the spit in the late afternoon, perfectly aligned with the more favorable tidal current, and with the advantage of daylight. Then, we’ll sail another eight hours or so, arriving to Bundaberg between midnight and eight in the morning on Sunday. I normally don’t like to enter an unfamiliar port in the dark, but I spoke with another sailing couple who made the passage a few months ago, and they said the entrance channel is very clearly lit and simple to navigate (the charts certainly show it to be so).

So, while I’m too superstitious to say anything about our landfall with certainty, I am very hopeful that tonight will be our last full night at sea. Come on, Australia!
By the way, don’t forget to check out our other tracker for shorter and more timely text-message-type updates. I will post there tonight and tomorrow as we track toward our destination.

Sorry for the length and meandering of this post, but I’m too tired to edit, the boat motion is nausea-inducing, and an AIS alarm is about to sound for a beacon in my vicinity! Wish us luck tonight and tomorrow, and thanks a million for all the love and support!

Tasman Crossing: How to Make Potato Salad at Sea

This post was originally shared exclusively and directly with our subscribers during our passage across the Tasman.

What follows is a beloved recipe straight from Windfola’s galley to your home kitchen. I hope you find it useful (but that’s doubtful).

Ingredients:

• some potatoes, not too many for the pot

• spices, whichever ones you like but don’t contain salt

• something crunchy and vegetal

• mayonnaise or aioli

• pickle juice or some (food grade) acidic liquid

Step 1: DON’T gather together the ingredients. If you don’t follow this step precisely, you will instantly regret it because everything is going to fly off the counter top when the next swell hits. Instead, sit down and think about what you have in your stores, where you’ve most likely stowed each item, and what your back up item will be if you can’t actually find the first one you wanted. Also consider a back up item to the back up item, and maybe even whether or not you really want potato salad that much at all.

Step 2: Once you’ve mentally gathered the ingredients together, go outside with your pot and scoop up a few cups of seawater; just enough to cover the potatoes you’ll add. Try not to look to closely at the water; any microorganisms will be sterilized during the cooking process and you need the protein anyway.

Step 3: Carefully place the pot on the cooktop and adjust the pot clamps into place. With one hand, pick up the lighter for the burner. Now, strategically position your body while gauging the rhythm between the waves hitting the boat. When you think there’s a gap, quickly lift the pot with one hand, light the burner with the other, set the pot down again, and grab hold of a hand rail with your newly liberated pot hand. NOTE: if you don’t time this right, you will end up with seawater all over you and you’ll need to return to step 2 (or, again, reconsider how much you actually want potato salad).

Step 4: Find your potatoes. (There’s no substitute for these, sorry. I hope you realized during step one but maybe I should have spelled that out more clearly.) Pick out the best of your inventory, then cut out all the brown spots, the eyes, and that thing that seems to be growing out of the one but might just be a shred of rotten leaf from the old cabbage that you stowed in the same place.

Step 5: Immediately slice each potato in half and turn it cut-side down on the chopping board so it doesn’t roll away. Dice the potatoes into your preferred size, and do it quickly, because soon your seawater is going to boil over on the cooktop…

Step 6: Rinse the knife and put it into a secure location. Wait through one cycle of swell to be sure it’s actually as secure as you think it is.

Step 7: Quickly and carefully lift the lid to the pot and put it somewhere safe. While holding onto a railing with one hand, carefully transfer the chopped potatoes into the pot by the handful. DO NOT try to pick up the cutting board and slide the potatoes off of it with a utensil like a civilized landlubber, because that will take two hands and you will end up in a shower of diced potatoes with the next wave, and only one or two measly pieces will make it into the pot, at which point you are likely to end up giving up on the whole endeavor altogether, but you will still be finding diced potatoes between various cushions in a month’s time and remembering how you failed to make something as basic as potato salad.

Step 8: Put the lid back on the potatoes and turn the heat down to a simmer.

Step 9: Commence your search for the crunchy vegetal items you identified in step 1. I like to add any fresh crunchy veg I have, which on the occasion of this writing, is a cucumber which is only one third black and squishy. Cut away any bad bits and chuck them up out of the entryway and into the sea… oh damn, you’ve likely forgotten about the new solar arch and somehow despite the constant swaying of the boat hit one of its narrow tubes dead-on and splattered rotten cucumber all over the cockpit.**

Step 10: Find more crunchy or interesting things to put in the salad. I nearly always add pickles of some kind, and I highly recommend those if you can remember where you stowed the jar. Fish around until you find it — no, those are olives… those are jalapeños… — but watch out, because I forgot to tell you to put the knife away after chopping the cucumber and it’s sliding around dangerously. Once you find the pickles, chop them up to your desired size and let the juices soak into the cutting board so that you can smell them all night since you only sleep a meter away.

Step 11: Check the potatoes. Hopefully, they are just the right amount of salty, and give easily when pricked with a fork. If they are done, go to the sink and remove the lid from the used coffee press that you’ve been avoiding rinsing all day. Stand the press up in the center of the sink. Now, carefully, with your feet at hips distance and a slight bend in your knees, use the lid to hold the potatoes in the pot while you you pour the boiled potato seawater into the coffee press. Stop halfway through, put the pot back on the stove and secure the pot clamps. Swirl the grounds in the press and take it outside to pour overboard. (Give yourself a little pat on the back for how clever you are at conserving water.) Set the press back in the sink and pour the rest of the water out of the pot into it. Repeat the process with the pot, pot clamps, and pouring out the press (no more back patting though, that would be excessive).

Step 12: Go outside with a non-slip pot rest and look around for a good spot on deck that’s exposed to the wind but has high sides and is narrow enough that the pot won’t slide around. Carefully set the pot down on the protective mat, make a well in the center of the diced potatoes to increase air flow, and leave them to cool in the breeze.

Step 13: Inside, rummage through your onion bin. Find that one onion that is sprouting and has the lovely green protrusions that remind you of springtime. Chop them off on the cutting board and dice them finely. Return the onion to the bin; it’ll be back to its old self in a few weeks.

Step 14: Bring the cooled potatoes inside and return the pot to the pot clamps. Dig out that open bottle of aioli or mayonnaise and remove the lid to sniff and check for any growth. (It’s probably fine.) Into the well in the center of the potato pot, squeeze out what you need, which will surely be more than is remaining in the bottle. Return to that provision cupboard where you usually stow condiments, and dig around until you find another bottle. (This might take awhile.)

Step 15: Add the rest of your desired quantity of mayonnaise, then begin to look through your spices. I like to add dill weed, but only if when I invert the jar the dried herb still comes out. I also add a pinch of garlic powder — a literal pinch, because it is very lumpy and I need to break it up on its way into the pot. I also add a little bit of tart brine from the pickle jar, but if you have lemons — posh, aren’t you? — you can add the juice of half a lemon.

Step 16: Stir the ingredients in the center well until they are combined, then fold in the potatoes from the outside edges. Once combined, grab your pot holder or a tea towel and go sit in a spot where you can wedge yourself into place while you use both of your hands to enjoy your potato salad straight out of the pot.

Et voila! Doesn’t it feel wonderful to make a meal*** from scratch at sea?

NOTES:
*Recipe time may vary from 30 minutes to six hours, depending on the conditions. You may need to insert additional steps not included in these instructions, for example, to trim the sails, take the dog out because she finally wants to wee now that you’re doing something else, adjust the heading, or shoo a booby off the railing that is cute but pooping on your deck.

**After you’ve enjoyed your meal, don’t forget to find all of the pieces of rotten vegetable matter that didn’t make it overboard. You may need to haul up a bucket of seawater and use a scrub brush to remove them, as they have probably baked into the deck by now. It was worth it though, wasn’t it?

*** Hopefully all you wanted was potato salad. That’s the whole meal, and there’s no time to make anything else because the entire day is over and it’s time to go to sleep.

Tasman Crossing: Decisions, Decisions

This post was originally shared exclusively and directly with our subscribers during our passage across the Tasman.

We had brilliant sailing all afternoon today after a long night of motoring. I anticipate that we’ll motor tonight again. The decision to chase wind just hasn’t seemed to pay off, and I figure our best bet when there isn’t enough wind to sail is to motor the shortest course. We seem to be pushing a knot of current much of the time, which really impacts our headway in light winds (that are aft of the beam). Typically I avoid motoring, but I also know that it’s best to cross this hazardous stretch of ocean as quickly as possible.

We have to make a choice soon about whether we’ll head north and take the longer trip to Bundaberg, or if we will continue to head for Southport. It is an agonizing decision for me.

The main issue is a nasty low forecast off the Gold Coast area on Thursday. Half the models say it’s happening and it’s going to be baaaad for 14+ hours — the sort of conditions in which I would typically heave-to and drift. The other two models, which have been more accurate lately, say it’s not going to be very bad at all. Do we plan for the worst? Or trust the models that have been more accurate this past week?

Either way, on the back side of the low, a southerly is arriving on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Almost all forecast models show this front will be significant and uncomfortable. So if we want to lessen the effects of Thursday’s low by arcing north, but still want to enter Southport, we’d then be fighting upwind in bad seas to get there (possibly with wind against East Australian Current conditions). So if I make the decision to avoid Thursday’s low by going north, we have to sail to Bundaberg.

If we make a turn now and head for Bundaberg, we will be in windless zones for much longer, spend two days more at sea, and risk hitting some weather blowing down from the tropics that some forecast models are predicting. Also, some models show that there’s no way we can go north far enough to be out of the range of Thursday’s low, regardless.

It doesn’t feel like there’s any one right choice, just a number of calculated gambles.

I don’t know what to do. Yesterday evening I felt quite down and discouraged by it.

Last night I had a better night of sleep, and woke feeling quite a bit more positive and mentally acute. We can’t control the weather, and we can’t predict the future, even with the forecasting tools available. I just have to make the best choices I can when it’s time and hope everything works out.

This morning I did boat chores — checking the deck and inspecting the rigging for any odd bits of hardware or slipping pins. I refueled and calculated what our average fuel consumption rate has been so far on this trip, as well as how many hours maximum we have remaining. I’m impressed by how efficient the engine has been; we have enough fuel to motor for 100 hours more if need be. (Thanks to the kind donation of a number of extra jerry cans!)

From midday on I focused on keeping the boat moving as fast as possible for the seven hours or so we were under sail. There were a few squalls that rolled through, each with its accompanying wild wind shifts, heavy rain, and glorious double rainbows. The clouds out here are just beyond compare… they are every shade, shape, and towering fluff that you see in cartoons, or impressionist paintings. I had forgotten how amazing they are, and that you never see anything like them except in the middle of the ocean.

Last night, I saw my first ever moonbow. I remember that when I first heard about them, I couldn’t even imagine one. In the wee hours last night, I went outside after a light rain squall and saw the moon off of our port side. When I shifted my gaze to starboard and saw a glowing white arc in the darkness, I instantly gasped, “Moonbow!!!” It was stunning, otherworldly, like the dark night sky was wearing the halo of an angel. You just know it when you see one. (And I do hope you see one.)

Zia is eating and drinking like usual. She brought me a toy for afternoon play time today for the first time since we’ve set sail; that’s a positive sign that she’s found her sea legs. She is weeing regularly but not doing any solid business yet, poor baby. She’s never been a gassy dog, but now she is, making her a less appealing bunkmate than usual. Hopefully she finally finds some relief in the next 12 hours. As my vet friend told me when I fretted about this on our first passage, “What goes in must come out.”

You may soon see our course change direction sharply, and you’ll know I’ve made a decision. Please wish us luck and ask for only good wind and mild weather to come our way.

Lots more to say but I really must start my night sleep cycle now. Thanks for all the loving and supportive messages; they really mean so much to me! xox

Much love,
E & Z & W

P.S. I’d love to write more, but the boat in light winds takes a lot more of my time than on a steady-wind passage, and I only just feel I’m coming back into a functioning brain. Hopefully, I’ll wake up with full mental acuity tomorrow and steadier wind conditions. Thanks again for all your support, we really couldn’t have made it here without you! <3

Tasman Crossing: Decent wind and looking forward to a good night of sleep 😴

This post was originally shared exclusively and directly with our subscribers during our passage across the Tasman.

All is well with us, and getting better with each passing hour. Just in the past two hours, the wind has become much more steady — exactly what we needed before another long night at sea.

The wind angle has changed slightly and I can no longer hold quite as much north in our course to angle up to Norfolk Island before turning west toward mainland Australia. The main advantage of that course was that there was supposed to be more wind along that latitude, but another advantage is that it would give us more sea room away from any weather coming up from the southern ocean.

Both advantages are largely moot now. The forecast has changed and there won’t be more wind at that latitude, and there doesn’t appear to be anything bad coming from the south in the next seven days. So, for now, my main priority is to keep the boat moving at a speed greater than 4 kt/hr. With the slow wind speeds we are experiencing (7-11 knots), and the angle of sail (nearly dead downwind at 165-170 AWA), this is actually pretty challenging. By heading up slightly, we’ll hold a slightly faster, stable, and more comfortable downwind angle of 150-160 AWA, with a slightly more WNW heading.

If I was less tired, we could go faster; I’d swap our headsail for my 165 genoa or even put up our symmetrical spinnaker.

But, I was troubleshooting an issue with our AIS transceiver the past few days and couldn’t verify the fix until I saw another ship… checking to be certain it appeared on our chartplotter (multifunction display, or MFD). Since I wasn’t certain I could trust the MFD to show dangerous targets, I have been setting alarms to wake me every hour since we passed the northern capes. (Before that, I slept on a beanbag in the cockpit in full kit and woke every 20-30 minutes.) This morning around sunrise I saw a cargo ship on the display, verifying that the MFD is showing AIS targets properly. I cannot express my joy and relief! I’ll be able to sleep in longer increments tonight and should feel a lot better tomorrow.

A number of other interesting things have happened, but I don’t have the brainpower to write any further this evening. Since the sun is sinking below the horizon, it’s time for us to go to bed.

More soon!
-e & z & w xo

P.S. Zia is much perkier today but has yet to toilet. She is eating and drinking normally, so I’m sure it’s just a matter of time now and she’ll slip into her routine at sea. I have her favourite treat (dried Possyum sticks, kiwi as!) on standby in the cockpit for the moment she finally does her business.

Tasman Crossing: The Morning After Our First Night Sailing to Australia

This post was originally shared to our subscribers during our passage across the Tasman.

An uneventful but soulful first night at sea. I dozed off and on all night in the cockpit while listening to the soothing sound of water bubbling past the hull. The crescent moon played hide and seek behind the clouds, while the stars winked and blinked dimly like light through the weave of a blanket thrown over the world. It felt cold despite layers and layers of clothing. I even wrapped a knit scarf around my neck and head under the hood of my jacket. Hopefully today we will see the sun.

The wind is like a fickle child: it has mostly been tapering off since midnight, but then suddenly springs to life again to fill our sails and swing our heading by 20 or 30 degrees. The forecast suggests our wind will die soon this morning and we’ll begin a 24+ hour stretch of motoring. I’ll be sad to lose the soothing sounds of the ocean speaking its language to us… but with such fickle wind all night, I kept the electric autopilot driving instead of the windvane, so now the batteries could use the engine recharge. (Especially if the sun isn’t going to come out!)

Zia has been snoozing peacefully in a nest of blankets down below. She seems unfazed so far by our return to sea.

I am very tired and not able to focus on anything but the sailing yet. I haven’t gotten sick at all — a first for me, when returning to sea, and a very welcome change.

Thank you for all the loving messages and support. I don’t have access to cellular data anymore but will stay in touch this way and vía other satellite communication mediums. More soon. Please wish us wind and sunshine.

Cast Off the Docklines and Believe

After so many weeks staying put in one place and working hard, it feels so good and so right that Windfola is moving again. Tomorrow we are planning a big shakedown sail, and if all goes smoothly, we’ll depart the next day to cruise down the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand.

Sitting here by the light of Windfola’s oil lamp, rocking gently on our mooring, I’ve been remembering the beauty of long days at sea with incredible sunsets like this one. It was memories like this, coupled with a poem by Pat Schneider, that kept me going through the last few weeks of labor. To those of you who, like me, are working with a focused discipline... don’t forget the equal importance of just casting off the docklines and believing.

YOUR BOAT, YOUR WORDS

Your boat, they will tell you,
cannot leave the harbor
without discipline.

But they will neglect to mention
that discipline has a vanishing point,
an invisible horizon where belief takes over.

They will not whisper to you the secret
that they themselves have not fully understood: that
belief is the only wind with breath enough
to take you past the deadly calms, the stopped motion
toward that place you have imagined,
the existence of which you cannot prove
except by going there.

- Pat Schneider

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Day 6 of 25, singlehanding from CA to The Marquesas, French Polynesia

Day 25: Arriving to our First Destination!!!

[This was originally published to our subscribers during our passage from San Diego to the Marquesas.]

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WE MADE IT!!!!! ✨🌈🌴

Once the anchor was down, I couldn’t stop crying. Between the swell and the shifting wind angles, today was incredibly challenging sailing. The relief of making it safely was—is—overwhelming.

I feel many things, but most of all, I feel humility and deep gratitude. I’m honored and humbled by your support and enthusiasm, and I have loved sharing this journey with you! 

It does feel like we—all of us—made it today. 💕

with excitement for what’s ahead of all of us,

elana, zia, and SV windfola

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Day 22: The Rum Fairy Remembers her Lessons

[This was originally published to our subscribers during our passage from San Diego to the Marquesas.]

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Defying all expectations, today’s conditions were completely mellow. After a windy and rolling night, the winds and seas calmed around mid-morning and have been moving us along in gentle, perfect conditions ever since. The sky was a clear, gorgeous blue. This left me wondering, what’s the weather doing ahead of us and when is it arriving?

I tend to sail conservatively since I’m alone and relatively inexperienced. I try to make the most responsible and informed decisions that I can with the hope that this will keep us safe(r). I sometimes wonder if my restrained and cautious choices seem silly to more experienced sailors. But, as I’m already taking enough risk doing this solo, why encounter that which might be prevented?

Then the unexpected arrives, and I remember what the ocean teaches me every time I’m out here. No matter what’s forecast, you have to sail the conditions you are in.

She teaches me this when unexpected winds crop up and linger. I think, “This isn’t in the forecast; it will probably pass before I can put a reef in.” But it doesn’t. She teaches me this when the winds lighten and I’m hesitant to shake out a reef, knowing conditions are forecast to worsen soon. But they don’t. She is reminding me that we are in this moment, right now. We must adjust sail for both the expected and the unexpected. If we worry too much about what’s coming, we will miss out on enjoying the clear blue sky overhead and the gentle rolling swell below.

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Once I remembered this, I relaxed and shook out a reef. Zia and I savored the day, wandering the foredeck together, watching the birds, and hunting for flying fish in crevices of the cockpit lazarettes. Since e-mail was still down, I had time to read a book for pleasure. I chopped and pickled onions in lemon juice and white wine vinegar and prepared a giant salad for dinner. It was delicious. Today was unexpected and perfect.

with love and serenity,

elana, zia, and SV Windfola 💕

P.S. You can reply to this email to reach me again! 😀 I would love to know what you want to hear more about during our final days at sea.

Day 21: Anxious But Happy Shellbacks

[This was originally published to our subscribers during our passage from San Diego to the Marquesas.]

We crossed the equator! I saw the southern cross for the first time! These are incredible, amazing, joyful milestones—and yet I’m a bundle of nerves.

I had forgotten that this is the point in a passage when things fatigue to exhaustion. We have been beating into the wind ever since we exited the ITCZ, and all of us can feel it. Windfola’s wooden interior is swollen with the humidity and creaking horribly as her hull bashes into the swell. Zia is so tired of our life at 20°, heeled to starboard, that she pooped in our bed in her sleep last night. 💩 The starboard side has a leak into the shower pan floor of the head so I have to manually run the sump pump there every two hours all night. The GPS chart plotter has gone on strike and shuts itself down throughout the night, disabling all my alarms for ships and objects. The strap that holds my life raft on the boat wore through and I just barely caught it in time. The e-mail app I use to check my Gmail won’t send or receive e-mails anymore, so I also can't share pictures with you now. Every sound the boat makes feeds my anxiety that she’s going to fall apart at the seams any second.

But, incredibly, I feel stronger than ever! My soul is renewed and my heart is full. As I crossed the equator I thanked Mother Ocean for giving us so much joy, teaching us, and delivering us safely. I hauled up buckets of her beautiful, warm water and drenched myself in it, happily licking the salt off of my lips. I thanked Windfola for being her vessel, and I thanked Zia for being our companion.

And then I put on my Rum Fairy outfit, crawled to the bow, and poured one out for my homegirl. 🥃🌊

There was a dance party in the cockpit that culminated in me singing Southern Cross at the top of my lungs. A tub of frosting with rainbow sprinkles was eaten with a spoon (I forgot to buy something to put it on) and Zia got a can of tuna juice. We are all still smiling.

But ahead of us lies one more challenge. You might have noticed that I haven’t been sailing a direct course to Hiva Oa, and the route I’ve chosen has added at least a day to our passage. That’s because I wanted to put us at a better angle for what’s coming.

A very strong cycle of tradewinds is building, and with it is a pattern of 3+ meter swell with a short period of seven seconds. Our longitude exiting the ITCZ, coupled with the angle of these tradewinds, meant that if we sailed directly to our destination the wind and swell would be right on the beam or slightly forward of it. This position would be uncomfortable and worrisome in the short, steep waves that are coming, so we sailed south for the last few days. As the seas and winds build tomorrow, I will fall off to the southwest on our heading to Hiva Oa, putting the wind and swell slightly behind us for the final leg of our journey.

It will still be a stressful and bumpy ride, but we only have about four and a half days to go. Now is the time to hang in there and nerves are just part of the package. Part of the glorious, beautiful, awesome package.

delighted and determined,

elana, zia, and SV Windfola 💪

P. S. More of our playlist from the sea!

• Thelonius Monk, Bluehawk (swing/blues/jazz piano)

• Calexico; Hush (bordertown indie folk rock)

• Gemini Rising, Fiora, & Tensnake; Best Case Life (80s-inspired modern indie)

• Junip; Don’t Let it Pass (indie euro folk rock)

• CSNY; Wooden Ships (classic folk rock)

• Emiliana Torrini, Sunny Road (indie girl with guitar folk)

• Jose Gonzales; Every Age and Open Book (indie guy with guitar folk)

• Sugarloaf; Green-Eyed Lady (classic rock)

• People Under The Stairs, Montego Slay (underground/classic-style melodic hip hop)

• Blues Image; Ride Captain Ride (classic rock)

• Collective Efforts; Tunnel Vision (underground/classic-style melodic hip hop)

• CSNY; Guinevere (folk)

• Kate Bush; This Woman’s Work & Running up the Hill (women’s)

• Ibeyi; Rise Up Wise Up Eyes Up (Afro-Caribbean/French inspired modern soul)

• Yes; Owner of a Lonely Heart (80s)

• Nina Simone; Wild is the Wind (jazz)

• Bibio; Saint Thomas, You Won’t Remember, & A Mineral Love (chill indie folk electro-groove singer/songwriter)

• Joni Mitchell, A Case of You (folk)

• Rationale; Prodigal Son (indie African-inspired singer-songwriter)

• Procol Harem; A Salty Dog (classic rock)

• Curtis Mayfield; Move On Up (soul/funk/brass)

• Stevie Wonder, Uptight (Everything’s Alright) 

• Vetiver; Current Carry (indie modern chill surf-folk-rock)

• Iron & Wine; Joy & Fever Dream (modern indie folk)

• Andrew Bird; Truth Lies Low & Far From Any Road Be My Hand (indie folk/strings jazz)

• Beth Orton, State of Grace (singer/songwriter modern folk)

• Aqualung; Magnetic North (indie rock)

• Noname; Diddy Bop (indie female r&b/melodic rap)

• Brandi Carlile; The Eye (bluegrass/country folk)

• Phosphorescent; Song For Zula (mellow indie rock)

• Vetiver; The Swimming Song (cover of another folk artist)

• Jim James; The World’s Smiling Now (mellow soul)

• Sam Padrul; Why Do I Do? - Matanoll Remix (modern soul funk pop)

• Kat Edmonson; What Else Can I Do? (solo female latin jazz)

• Escort; My Life (modern soul funk pop)

Day 18: A Lengthy Portrait of A Day at Sea

[This was originally published to our subscribers during our passage from San Diego to the Marquesas.]

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Many of you have asked me to describe a typical day at sea. In my experience, there is no such thing. Just the wonder and grandeur of being on this beautiful, wide ocean makes each moment feel unique and awesome. Days and nights blend together with waking, sleeping, and sailing, and I literally don’t know what time it is since we are between time zones. There are small events each day, and I sometimes annotate these on the chart as I record our course. “Big Brown Bird,” “Gorgeous Rainbow,” “Potato Salad” (that was yesterday), “Big Squall,” and so forth.

Awareness begins for me sometime around 0500, which is typically the first time in the night that I wake up without feeling like my brain is still asleep. This moment is otherwise no different than any other throughout the night; I check the GPS to see if there are any ships around on AIS, listen to the sails and the boat, roll out of my bunk to check the bilge pump, and walk up the companionway to scan the horizon for lights or hazards and make minor tweaks to the trim of the sails or our course. Then I return to bed, telling myself I should sleep more.

Depending on how restful the night was, I wake up sometime between 0630-0730. In the last week, this has been getting later, and I think it may be my body’s natural response to the sun rising and settling later at this longitude. I listen to Windfola’s sounds, check the chartplotter and scan the horizon for ships again, then turn off the masthead navigation lights, AIS, chartplotter, and instruments. I walk around the deck of the boat, looking for any stray parts on deck and plucking off the dead flying fish. I haul up a bucket of water to rinse Zia’s potty area. I observe the sky, sea, and wind conditions, as well as the battery charge state,and I note it all in the log. I also set goals for the day, and I write about how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking (hopefully foreign officials never actually want to read my log!).

Electricity is precious, so I grind my coffee beans by hand. I use one hand to hold the container and the other to turn the crank, so I must wedge my body into a secure corner of the galley, using my legs, hips, and elbows to assist. I often stop mid-rotation, when I feel a big swell coming. Once the coffee is ground, I put everything away before moving on to the next task, or else the grinder and fresh grounds will fly around the boat with the next wave. I brace myself while I slowly fill a pot of water, anticipating the boat’s motion and tilting the pot accordingly to prevent spillage. I set it on the swinging stovetop at precisely the right moment. Then I grab the lighter, brace myself again, lift the pot with one hand, light the burner, and set it down to boil. I prepare the french press, nestling it into a corner of the clean side of the sink, wedging the clean, drying dishes around it to hold it in place. I brace myself again, so that I can use two hands to unscrew the lid off the jar of coffee grounds, and scoop, slowly, between waves, into the press. Putting the coffee away, I prepare a small thermos with powdered milk to receive some of the boiling water...

The end-to-end timeline from conceiving the desire for coffee to sitting with a cup in hand is typically about 25 minutes. As I’ve mentioned before, everything takes longer at sea. Even just walking from one end of the boat to the other can take four times longer than it would in port. Bear this in mind as you read all of the rest of the happenings of the day, because they are all colored by the need to constantly balance oneself as the boat moves.

I find a spot to nestle with my cup of coffee—usually in the companionway where I can watch the horizon—and begin the weather download process. Other than the Garmin InReach tracking device with the map and messages, all other data comes through my satellite “phone”, the IridiumGO! It’s not really a phone, it’s more like a modem/wifi hotspot. I keep it mounted in the cockpit attached to its antenna, and it is on all of the time because it is sending position reports automatically to the PredictWind tracker map. The GO! functionality is otherwise entirely dependent on pairing with other smart devices. There are only perhaps twelve approved apps that work with the GO! so you don’t have much choice when it comes to weather, e-mail, and browsers (I use that term very loosely). I am using a different service provider for this passage than I did for my last, and they had unique deals on weather subscriptions and data, so I’m also using some different apps this time.

You have to set aside any notion of the experience you have on land with the Internet; it is simply not comparable. Think early-90s dial up, text only, no Google, and no other smartphone apps. The process is as follows: open the IridiumGO! app on my iPhone, login. Open the PredictWind Offshore weather app. Select a grid and data for download; typically I pick wind, pressure, CAPE index (thunderstorm prediction), and wave (every other day, usually), in all four available models. Check the estimated download size. Hit download, watch it dial, authenticate, and connect. It takes at least 20 minutes, usually more like 30, sometimes stopping in the middle of the download inexplicably, at which point I go back through the connection flow and then restart the download. During this, I eat breakfast. 🍎 🥜 😀

After the download is complete, I begin to study the weather. I also use the Garmin InReach app on my iPad mini to look at the same tracking data you see on our map tracker, analyzing my course and speed over the past 24 hours. This is also when I do my charting. I use this to determine when I’ll be where in the upcoming weather forecast. The last two days, I’ve been doing less analysis because the weather should be fairly predictable from here to our destination, and instead spend time looking at broader trends in the entire South Pacific. When I finish this, I use the iPad to connect to the IridiumGO!, then use another app to initialize access to the internet, then the Opera mini browser app to load a few web pages.

I use another app, OneMail, to fetch email. Again, it’s a long connection and download process: first, it fetches the header data of the emails in my inbox, including their size. Then I select which I’d like to download. If there are a lot, I have to do this in batches. I then reconnect to download these e-mails. It fails regularly and I have to reconnect and try again.

Through all of this, I’m taking breaks to sail, watch the horizon, and log any changes in observed weather or sail configuration. Most mornings, I’m also listening to an audiobook on a mobile bluetooth speaker. Early in the passage it was Trevor Noah’s book Born a Crime, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. For the last week, it’s been a book about the history of human settlement of the Pacific, The Puzzle of Polynesia. I’m also listening to a program of French lessons. 👩‍🎨

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By the time I’m done with all of this, it’s usually around 1100, and my brain and eyes need a break. Zia and I hang in the cockpit and I sail, steer, and watch the birds and flying fish. It’s amazing how many birds there are out here! I am seeing so many more than I did on the way to Hawaii. 

I’ve informally fallen into a rhythm of using the mornings for learning and studying, so this is also when I read books about weather, anchorages, routing, and other helpful topics. There are so many things about passage making that I still need to learn, and there is never enough time for all of it! 

Eventually, I make lunch (my big meal for the day), and then try to take a nap between 1400-1630. If I get a good one, I’m more alert when I wake up intermittently in the night. The evenings I spend in the cockpit, watching the horizon, editing photos, and writing. I type everything on the computer in a document because all of the IridiumGO programs have horrible lags and mess up what you’re typing. I transfer the file from computer to iPhone or iPad, and go through the whole upload/download process again, copy/pasting every email from the document into the email program.

Every evening, I write a brief daily status report and email it to a “net” of boats crossing the Pacific this year. We share observed weather conditions from the day and night, and technical details on our course and speed. Everyone is really nice and sometimes there are funny stories, anecdotes, or requests for tips on fixing something that’s broken. It’s like having an instant group of friends. Some will be in the harbor when I arrive, and I’m really looking forward to meeting them after five months of emailing!

When the sun sets, I try to wrap up writing as soon as possible and go to bed. I know I’ll be up and down all night checking things and making adjustments. I turn all of the electronics back on for the night, checking to make sure they are all working. They aren’t necessary during the day, but I find it easier to have the instruments about wind, course, and speed turned on when I’m groggy at night. With the cockpit tidy, my headlamp and gloves hanging ready, and the hatchboards next to the companionway, I go to bed. 😴

The rhythm I’ve described gets completely disrupted if there are storm conditions, variable weather throughout the day or night (requiring more active sailing), breakages, or maintenance tasks. Obviously, those take precedence and usually mean there will be no writing on the computer that day. And if the sea state is rough, moving around becomes much more challenging, which limits activities to only the necessary.

I can’t think of any day out here that wasn’t a happy one, with some unique beauty or insight. To my land friends, it may sound like a foreign way to live, but I love it. I am absolutely in love with what I am doing. Windfola, Zia, and Elana merge and our rhythm of life weaves into the rhythm of the ocean and nature around us. It is the most connected, strong, and limitless I’ve ever felt.

with our eyes on the horizon,

elana, zia, and SV windfola 💕

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Day 14: Routing and Forecasting

[This was originally published to our subscribers during our passage from San Diego to the Marquesas.]

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A few of you have asked how I’ve chosen our route to French Polynesia, and the truth is, it’s mostly been chosen for us by the same winds that chose the routes of ships four hundred years ago. If you look at our PredictWind tracker, you can see the general wind trends of the Pacific. Winds blow down the west coast from the northwest, until you hit the northern hemisphere tradewinds, which blow from the northeast toward the west. Just north of the equator, there’s a band of light and variable winds with frequent thunderstorms, which is often called the “doldrums” in classic sailing literature, but is properly known as the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). That’s what we’re approaching right now!

Across the equator to the south, everything is a mirror image of the trends in the north Pacific. The south Pacific tradewinds blow from the south-east toward the west. Sailors often call sailing this route across the south Pacific the “Milk Run” or “Coconut Milk Run,” and give directions for it with the ever-quotable phrase “sail south until the butter melts, then turn west.”

While the prevailing winds have determined our general course, I make day-to-day decisions about our route. I spend no less than three hours every morning downloading and studying the forecasts, determining our course and speed averages, and plotting an estimated course ahead. I’m sure more experienced sailors can do this much faster than me, but I also enjoy taking my time and comparing all of the different forecast models so that I can feel confident I’ve checked everything thoroughly (also, download speeds are extremely slow).

Some sailors will pay for a weather router to send them routing advice during the passage. I’m lucky to have an incredibly knowledgeable friend who did this for me on my journey to Hawaii, so I had the chance to learn first hand from someone who could teach me in real time (and we had to track a developing hurricane during that passage). His kind tutelage laid a foundation which I’ve built upon by reading books and studying forecasts on my own ever since. I’ve discovered it’s one of those skills you have to practice consistently over time to build, because you need to see many, many examples of forecasts and observe what actually happens so you can learn nuances and discrepancies. Paying a routing service is great, but for me, I know I want to have the data for myself and know how to interpret it.

We left San Diego only a few days before the official start of hurricane season, so we have been sailing nonstop to get out of the hurricane zone as quickly as possible. (Hence no stops in Mexico.) I want to cross the ever-shifting ITCZ thunderstorm zone at its narrowest point because lightning is extremely dangerous for a sailboat. I didn’t want to go too far west too soon, since the tradewinds could easily carry me west later if the ITCZ was narrower over there. In addition to hurricane and ITCZ considerations, I wanted to sail as close as possible to a direct course because this is a long passage and I have a limited water supply. I chose the Marquesas islands as our first landfall because they are the furthest east and north, and it will all be downwind sailing from there across the south Pacific.

Every morning, I begin the downloads while I make coffee. (Downloads regularly fail, or the connection drops, so this process is a lesson in patience.) I start by downloading a 72-hour wind, pressure, cloud, and swell forecast (GRIB file) for a 10x10 degree square around me in the highest resolution possible, in four different weather models. I use this to make minor adjustments to my course: deciding if I should go a little more west or south for better conditions, and anticipating when winds may pick up or decline so I can prepare myself to manage sails at the right times (napping when they are steady, so I’ll be awake when they are supposed to build or drop).

After I finish with the GRIBs for our area, I visit forecast web pages, which each take five to ten minutes to load. I check the National Weather Service’s annotated Pacific image forecast, the National Hurricane Center’s High Seas text forecast, NHC’s Eastern North Pacific Tropical Weather Outlook, and then read the corresponding discussion. Sometimes I also download a 7-10 day, low-resolution wind & swell GRIB forecast for the eastern Pacific to observe general trends, paying special attention to the behavior of the ITCZ and any developing lows or highs. I use all of this data to determine what’s likely coming, what is questionable or conflicting in models, and whether I need to adjust anything about my overall approach to this passage. (Between passages, I still do a daily subset of this, so that I can keep improving at forecast interpretation.)

I knew nothing about meteorology before I left for Hawaii less than two years ago, so if I can do this, anyone can. Often I tell nervous but aspiring cruisers that if you are willing to study a little and interested in learning, you’ll pick it up easily along the way and other sailors will always be happy to help. It’s the same approach I try to take to life: no matter what, just stay curious and go after what interests you; people will help you, and then you will help others.

wishing you fair weather, ☔ ☀️

elana, zia, & SV Windfola