Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Day 15: Pacific Ocean Crossing

All is well aboard SV Terrapin

My, my the doldrums are a welcomed treat. The first full day we actually had enough wind to throw up all of our canvas and sail. The seas were so smooth and with all the sails up it was like gliding over a melting pad of butter. With the boat smooth we all took good naps, I was able to cook a meal and the girls hung out all day in the cockpit.

The girls are getting us ready for the equator crossing. Yesterday Jessica made the cutest crown for King Neptune. Emma made King Neptune's beard out of construction paper and cotton balls....so cute. Jess create beaded necklaces for each of us to commemorate our crossing. Emma got out a calligraphy book that Journey from SV Namaste gave her, studied it, then made each of us beautiful certificates that the Captain will be presenting us at the time of crossing. Today the girls will be creating King Neptune's triton.

We're not entirely sure when we'll be crossing the equator as we've started a rhumb line for Nuka Hiva..last we heard shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Originally we said we would cross around 125 degree longitude.

We had begged Jessica to cut her hair before we left and having just dyed the ends of her hair pink she didn't want to. Fast forward two weeks on a sailboat with hair blowing everywhere and she was all but begging her father to cut it off. Using our sharpest scissors, Phil cut off about 4 inches. It doesn't even look bad.

We haven't caught anymore fish, just the one.

We did however have a helicopter come visit about an hour ago. We could hear the helicopter well before we could see it. It flew close to us, circled us and then started to make a water landing. Paranoid that someone had accidentally hit a SOS button we all waved and gave the thumbs up. The pilot returned our thumbs up, waved good bye and started to ascend before taking off. We got it all on video too.

How's this for awesome? My high school friend Dina McClellan who's a 4th grade teacher in OK has her students watching our progress on the blog. Dina sent us a message last week with some of her student's questions. They wanted to know if we had swam in the open ocean, what type of animal sightings and what's our favorite part of the adventure. I responded to let her know we have swam in the open ocean so far on this passage and that we've seen blue, brown, yellow and red footed boobies. She took back the information and her class is now studying the different colored boobies. Her students have also learned what and where the doldrums are. We think it's so awesome that kids are using our blog to study from ! With regards to her students wanting to know our favorite part...I said it will be when we see land.

Two nights ago on my 2-6am shift, I came out to the cockpit where water was like glass the stars and moon were out and we were motoring as the phosphorescence were drifting by. I couldn't help but get nostalgic reminiscing about motoring in the Sea of Cortez. Made me a little sad. I told everyone the next morning about how it felt like we were in the Sea of Cortez and everyone got a little teary eyed. We hate to think about how we're not sailing the Sea of Cortez again. So...new rule on the boat. No one is allowed to get sad about missing Mexico or the Sea of Cortez till we're sitting among tropical islands in the middle of the Pacific. Here's to hoping lush tropical South Pacific islands will make us feel better for missing one of our all time favorite places. To all our friends in the Sea...enjoy for us too.

Time to chill some champagne for our equator crossing.



-- Sent via SSB Radio


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At 4/18/2017 2:36 PM (utc) our position was 02°16.00'N 125°26.63'W

2 comments:

  1. Terrapin Crew- my kids are loving this! We are going to be researching currents tomorrow. Will be sending more questions and the days coming.

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  2. A couple aspiring scientist sailors and I are following your progress from the Wynn lab at the NIH. We love your posts!

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