One month milestone: knot for naught

“One month ago right now....” is how we’ve begun several conversations today. This morning one month ago I awoke in a bed. This afternoon one month ago we spoke to an audience of at least 300 people bidding JUNK farewell. Though we guessed 6 weeks at sea, looks like there are 8 more to go. We’ve accepted this reality, necessitating that we plan well. Nothing like some long hours at sea for divine inspiration....


We’ve been sailing South-Southwest 190 degrees at .7 knots. We want to go west, in the direction the wind is coming from, the direction of Hawaii. Yesterday we took a section of mast from the deck, lashed it to a spare rudder, and vertically plunged it 4 feet below the boat. This makeshift dagger board improved our progress to 200 degrees an 1.2 knots! This morning Joel finished fabricating a sail from scrap pieces, lots of string and duct tape. That improvement got us up to 215 degrees at 1.8 knots. We’re shaving off the miles and days from Hawaii. Now we’re sailing! But there are cyclones nearby.

Eastern Pacific Tropical Storms are hovering 200 miles south of us. We are hoping that their counterclockwise spin will give us the east wind we need raise our downwind sail. We’re anxious to see what downwind/downcurrent sailing feels like. How much faster will we be able to countdown the miles? As a crow flies, we are 2095 miles from Hawaii. That’s two months or less.

Then there’s food. We’ve done our inventory of food and figure that we can live on what we’ve got, provided we make another spear and get some fish. In the meantime we consume primarily our consumables. Tonight’s dinner we will share one can of beans with half and onion cubed on top. Several large chunks of cheddar cheese will float and melt in the middle of the bowl. Bon appetit!