Day 23 Panama to Hawaii

Today, a guest writer…

When people think of the Pacific Ocean, they picture gently lapping wavelets on an almost soporific swell, with lovely temperatures and gorgeous sunsets. That certainly happens, but for us, apart from the odd moment, that was already a week ago. After that sudden wind shift and the rain that came with it, the wind has steadily built to around 20 knots, roughly Force 5. It’s coming from the northeast, which is perfect: we’re heading west, so the wind is well aft of the beam. We’ve hardly seen the sun since, and every now and then we get a bit of rain. All in all, not exactly Piña Colada weather. Even the temperature has dropped from above 30 to the mid-20s Celsius. That, on the other hand, is not considered unpleasant on board.

In short, the cause of this weather is the meeting of the warm current coming from Panama and the relatively cold current flowing south from the north along the American west coast. Together they head west towards Hawaii. Two currents of different temperatures coming together like that make for somewhat livelier weather: lots of cloud, a greater chance of rain and more wind. And more wind was just what we needed. Fortunately, this boat likes to get going. Averaging 9 to 10 knots, we’re racing towards our destination. We even thought we’d set a new daily record: 224.4 miles. But when we recalculated the old record between Aruba and Cartagena, it turned out that wasn’t quite the case after all. That one ended up at 240 miles. Naturally, we’re doing our best to beat it.

Otherwise, life on board is ticking along nicely. We stand our watches and take turns cooking and doing the dishes. Kees bakes bread every day, and it keeps getting better, while the fruit supply is shrinking slowly but in a controlled fashion. I still can’t cook rice, though.

We also still have two boobies sitting on the rail. Every now and then they do an inspection lap, then land back on the rail with a great deal of flapping and acrobatics. In honour of the upcoming World Cup, we’ve named them after the Dutch national coaches, Ronald and Erwin Koeman.

On this course and wind angle, I don’t think we’re missing the Hoyt boom all that much. The plan was to order a new hydraulic vang, but that didn’t work out because there are none of this size in stock. Kees is now going to try to have a new part machined in Honolulu. Hopefully that will work, because there isn’t much time in Hawaii if we want to reach Japan before the start of the typhoon season.

In other words: Despite a few minor inconveniences and the problem with the broken Hoyt boom, we’re going like the clappers! We expect to arrive in O’ahu on Tuesday. 950 miles to go.

Regards, Rudolf Onnes