Rhythms

February 9, 2010: En route to Panama


After a few days at sea, the body, boat, and crew fall into rhythms. With the amenable watch schedule leaving everyone more rested, the mornings take on the kind of summer beach vacation dreaminess, with people awakening as they will, fixing a light breakfast, and acclimating to another day of sun, sea, salt, and the gentle swaying of a broad-beamed catamaran pushing thru Caribbean seas. The days are sunny, with temperatures in the mid-80s. The sea temperature is a steady 81 degrees, and this morning, Jennifer spotted a school of porpoises greeting the dawn by surfing our bow waves. Flying fish scatter the surface, propelling themselves through a wave face, and fluttering their 'wings' furiously as they skim across the surface, only to lose altitude eventually and dive back in. The purplish hue of the tiny Portuguese man o' war colors the occasional wave, their air-filled oblong bladders aligned with the prevailing wind. We are passagemaking, on a boat at sea.

By mid-morning, with the sun already high and bright in the sky, we're all up and about. There are the usual chores - cleaning up any dishes from the evening watches; putting away the long pants and jackets (windy nights are cool even here); and for me, tuning into my ham radio to listen to weather updates, check on notes from family, and send a position report to a tracking service. I also check in on a marine net, which hosts fellow cruisers who share current weather and wave conditions. These nets will prove invaluable in the Pacific, where weather monitoring stations are scarce, resulting in uselessly general 'official' weather forecasts along the lines of comedian George Carlin's famous forecast: "getting warmer toward summer." It's good to practice using these radio-based resources while we're still headed to Panama; after Panama, assistance becomes scarce. These daily contacts become part of our morning rhythm.

We try and have lunch and dinner together, to connect on what's happening with the boat, our route, and our morale. Being at sea, alone on an ocean on a small boat, can be disconcerting in the best of weather - better to stay checked in during good weather, to ease any transitions to less pleasant conditions. Today being the third day since we ran our watermaker, I refilled our 140 gallon tank with pure water - made using our very efficient Spectra Cape Horn watermaker. It uses a reverse osmosis process, where 10 gallons of sea water are forced at unimaginable pressure through tiny membranes that yields 1 gallon of pure water molecules to pass through. The slightly more-saltish waste is discharged overboard, and after testing a sample to make sure its mineral content meets specifications, I flip the lever to send the newly-made water to our tanks. We can shower every day, and use water freely in cooking and bathing - a luxury unheard of in small boats prior to the advent of these efficient watermakers. We run the watermaker every three days; our tanks are full.

Managing energy consumption is also part of our daily rhythm. All in, our routine electrical use includes our autopilot, which steers the boat for us, our navigation instruments, our refrigerator and freezer, and our water pumps and lights. Together, we use about 250 amp-hours a day. Our batteries store roughly 540 amp-hours, so without regular replenishment, we'd be energy-dry in two days. To produce energy, we use a combination of solar panels, capable in these latitudes of creating about 100-150 amp-hours per day and a wind generator that puts out another 100 amp-hours or so a day. For the balance, and for any shortfalls, we can either run our Onan generator - which sips fuel at about a gallon per hour, or one or both of our engines, which each burn about 1.3 gallons of diesel/hour. Today, we are close-hauled, with our sails tucked in tight, making a course of 203 degrees with a wind blowing from about 155 degrees. In these conditions, Grace likes to motor sail (catamarans are happiest with the win aft of the beam). Our batteries are full.

Tonight, we will eat dinner together as sunset colors the western sky. On the menu? Baked mahi-mahi, rice, and broccoli. The night sky is awash with stars, and the moon rises around midnight, half-full of the light of a sun passing over the Pacific Ocean, where we hope to be in a few weeks. Now that we're in a rhythm, the time will pass gently - each passing watch moving us 20 or so miles closer to Panama, in a kind of metronome of passage-making. Our bellies are full. We are passagemaking, in our boat Grace, across a gently rolling Caribbean Sea.

Received via e-mail on 2/9/2010 from Jon Glaudemans