Pacific Crossing Day 15

Strawberry is doing all the hard work, she and Blueberry are doing all the steering on Bliss, and are our extra pair of crew hands on deck. Tessa came up with these names referring to the color of the blades of the Monitor Windvane. Blue is for higher winds, red is taller and is for lighter winds. We for sure our glad to have a mechanical hand steering device, mounted on our stern. The Monitor, once set up with balanced sails, does not require electricity, just wind to work. We haven't seen many boats with them anymore, just like we haven' seen many boats with SSB radio, most modern cruising boats have electrical autopilots. They are mounted down below, required battery power, and work well, until...they don't. The number one failure on large crossings like these, are auto pilots. Many cruisers carry an extra set, or replacement parts. We do have an auto pilot, but it's mounted above decks, not as strong, and not up to the strong and high waves we have gotten so far. We thought we had the spare parts for it ,so we can use it when motoring in flat seas (will this really happen???), but we don't, so we will have to wait until we in Tahiti to see if we can make it work again. So, what do we do when those flat seas at some point show up in the doldrums? Well, Tod, I admit...when you ordered a part back in Shaker, and I questioned why we need to spend that money, I was wrong, and we will be happy to have the tiller pilot hooked up to the Monitor.

For the sailors among you, we have been flying a reduced main sail and poled out jib at a broad reach for days now. Happy we added the whisker/spinnaker pole at the last moment.

When I spend time in nature, far away from anything, my mind starts to drift, and I get inspired to keep our family on an adventurous track. Right now, I'm very much looking forward to visit French Polynesia, and visit places you can almost only visit by boat. Sure, it's quite the track to get there, and as you get from reading our blog, far from an easy one, but I hope to say in a few months, this crossing has been all worthwhile. Sailing friends of ours have already arrived, and are super excited to be there.

A shout out to my physician sister: thanks Boer for your guidance with the respiratory infection I developed more than a week ago. She has a list of all our rx onboard, and with the ease of the garmin inreach satellite device, we can communicate almost instantly via text. We do carry an actual satellite phone as well, but have that for real emergencies.

Lunch time here. Tod isn't quite up to start making bread (thanks Nicole for the sourdough starter!), but we bought about 100 tortillas, so that with cheese, salami, carrots will do the trick for now.

Jolanda, signing off for the Bliss crew

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At 2019-Apr-05 9:58 PM UTC the position of Bliss was 07°08.41'N 125°39.95'W, with course of 225T (*T) and speed 5.3 knots. Wind speed 11.4 knots from 056T (*T)