Well, we are having quite the sailing ship pasage towards our desire – Pitcairn’s Island.
The first half of the passage, all 1,350 miles of it was straight up great sailing. Seas not so big, yards on the backstays, braced fairly sharp to the SE breeze, but good sailing all the way from Sanata Cruz, Galapagos. Then we sailed into and out of a few days of calm and the wind picked up. And “picked up” it did, at times reaching Force 7 (28-33 knots) and seas 15-20 feet high. This began to lay down a couple days ago. Now we have Northerly winds at a low Force 3 (7-10 knots).
Now we are about 850 miles from Pitcairn Island. that’s about the same as from Bermuda to Saint Martin in the Caribbean. Looks like this weekend Pitcairn is going to be getting a strong westerly wind – this is something we need not at all. And we expect calms and light winds here for awhile. At our usual 100-110 miles a day we should get to Pitcairn in about a week to 8 days but who knows? No sense in getting there just to be blown off by a gale. We will see.
Today is nice. Warm, light winds making 3 knots just now. Small projects here and there. Rachel and Dirk seaming on sails on the quarterdeck, Nick filling in the log after his trick at the wheel, the watch with Violet, Samantha, Curtis and Edmund are scraping the well deck from spots of paint and linseed oil in preparation for new oil. Good for the wood this is.
The seas have laid down now and the warm sea at 75 degrees is warming the air again. Keep on keepin’ on…