It tooks us six days to journey from Samoa to Funifuti in the country of Tuvalu. This South Pacific trip will eventually land us in Majuro in the Marshall Islands; our choice for avoiding cyclone season in this part of the world. The leg has been great, not so great and just a tad ugly. The great was the almost perfect sailing for three days on beautiful seas for the first half of the trip. The not-so-great are the squalls; some we watch come after us like Armageddon and sailing them can be a challenge while others sit like a mountain volcano and we are granted unmolested passage. The ugly is that the wind died for the second half of our journey and we have been on engine power for two days. While that makes it easier in some ways (less sail handling, a more direct route and ease of squall avoidance), we are burning precious fuel,it's noisy and it heats up the boat. It's been well over 80 degrees with 80%+ humidity and when it rains we zip up the cockpit enclosure and wala; we have our very own floating sauna. When there is wind our time is spent managing the sails with whatever weather comes our way, napping, cleaning, reading and fixing things that break. Squalls can bring huge winds suddenly and/or buckets of rain or they will cancel any wind at all leaving us rolling with the swells in our sauna-on-the-sea. Then we motor or motor-sail and then our time is also spent napping, cleaning, reading and fixing things that break. But motoring we seem to have more time to admire the show nature puts on for us. Cloud formations can be so beautifully dramatic that I easily filled my hard disk with 100’s of every kind of fluffy condensed water mass so you must forgive me for sharing just a few (more than a few?) of the many. The following sequence of photos is what it looks like to motor right into a squall. After the last shot it started to rain, then buckets for several hours. Our nights are mostly spent napping, snacking, reading and fixing things that break but when the squalls and clouds part we are treated to killer sunsets, lulled by the awesomeness of bio-luminescent fireflies in our wake or just star gazing at its most awesome. Mentioned in the previous slog was our new satellite comm device; the InreachSE. I want to share a bit more about it that I didn't have time to do in Samoa. This small handheld device plots our journey by sending our coordinates via satelite to a website called mapshare.inreach.com/doisbrock. It cannot send a plot to the satellite if not outside so you will notice a few blanks on our plotted course; we did not sink, we just brought it below. But if we did sink the unit has an SOS button that sends an emergency text to the US Coast Guard with our location. If they can respond with help, great, if not they inform responders in our area. Also with our monthly fee we get 40 free text messages (extra text messages are .50 so will not break the bank unless you send me 20 texts with emoji’s, in which case I know who you are and I will get even). I can even send an update message to Facebook and Twitter. Very cool. If you would like our text address, send me an email and I'll respond as soon as I find Wi-Fi again or you can follow along here. We both read a lot, collecting and exchanging books from various cruiser book exchanges along the way or kindle finds online. Although I am not a reviewer, I might be a harsh critic because only a few books fall onto my great list. I'm going to add any great books that either Dois or I have read on passage to the end of each slog. Just the titles, I don't want to be a book reviewer. The first one is my all-time favorite; “Cloud Atlas” just because it is so clever and not at all expected. I thought it would be almost appropriate to plagiarize the title just this one time due to my abundance of clouds shots and because I am, after all… I am recommending the book. My first recommending reading is of course Cloud Atlas by D. Mitchell
From Wikipedia: Cloud Atlas is a 2004 novel, the third book by British author David Mitchell. It consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award and the Richard & Judy Book of the Year award, and ... you must see wiki to read more. Peaces
2 Comments
Bob Garrett
7/20/2021 05:09:18 pm
Hope you and yours are all well, Sail through the canal and come visit us in Destin, Florida
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7/21/2021 01:16:27 am
Hi Bob! Thanks for the good wishes and right back to you. We’re in Indonesia since pandemic started. Hope to move on. The plan now is Florida via South Africa and then the Atlantic. But you just never know. Be safe. Dois
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