It's day 20 and we are about 4 days out from land. Most of the crew is getting anxious and dreaming about pizza, beer, ice cream and the feeling of solid land under our feet. The past few days have been fairly uneventful. We burned a lot of diesel, but also have been making great time. The seas have been mellow and we are now finally getting into some decent wind. A couple of days ago, we had our second visit from a helicopter. It was the same type of chopper as before, but different pilots. They swooped in to check on us and flew away after we gave them a thumbs up. They had a Mexican flag emblem on the tail, so we assume they are spotters for Mexican tuna boats. That same day it was calm enough for us to all stop the boat and jump in the big blue to cool off.
The next couple of days we spent playing "dodge-squall" as they were popping up all around us. We saw a few today, but nothing came in close.
We did see every sailor's worst nightmare: a partially submerged shipping container. Aimee spotted it about 50 yards away off to port. These things are really scary because they sit about 3 inches below the surface and there is no way you would see one until after you hit it. If you saw that god-awful movie with Robert Redford, you know what I'm talking about. After Aimee saw the shipping container, she also noticed that it was surrounded by a pod of sperm whales! Not kidding. Later in the day, we saw a second pod and several of them were breaching clear out of the water. I didn't know sperm whales did that. It was very cool the see them up close.
In other news, two of our boat-friends made landfall at Hiva Oa today: s/v Slow Flight, and s/v All Day. S/v Wiz is also expecting to be coming into Nuka Hiva tomorrow morning.
So all is well aboard s/v Terrapin, just some salty, sore sailors ready for some solid ground!
-- Sent via SSB Radio
-----
At 4/24/2017 2:10 AM (utc) our position was 04°42.39'S 133°26.24'W
No comments:
Post a Comment