Almost 600 miles out from Zihua

We are pitching and rolling on Maggie Drum again today and to tell the truth it is very tiring. The wind is so light it will not keep the sails full especially with the swell coming in to our port quarter (behind the beam but not dead on the stern). Each big swell heels the boat over which backwinds the sails so they luff and then fill hard and bang when the boat rocks back the other way. The boat creaks, the sails pop, the boom and cars all rattle and groan, and MD shudders big time. Nerve wracking. I did not sleep well coming off my 8-midnight watch and then had to get up at 4:30am so Cindy could nap. The wind is out of the north and we are going WSW. We would like to be going SW. If the wind would clock around a bit to the NE we can go more south. Unfortunately the swells will follow the wind so we will always have that, but if the wind will strengthen the sails will stay full and we will be heeled over in a steadier postion.

Rocking and heeling makes it very hard for us to deal with food, cooking and dishes though. Cindy does almost all the cooking as she will not let me touch the refrigerator or stores. I like to cook but I think I am better off not now since you really need to have 4 arms and hands - two to hold on to something and two to cook with. The pots will not stay on the burners even though the stove is gimbeled and rocks with the motion of the boat. Everything out slides on you and sometimes that means on to the floor. Yesterday Cindy got ice out for a Ginger Ale and it fell in to the flour for the pork chops. I rinsed the cubes off but not well so we had flour in our drink. Not too bad actually.

Our friends ahead of us on White Swan had their main boom come loose and crashed down on to the cabin and probably the cockpit enclosure (bimini) causing some damage that they haven't described too much yet. Sounds like they lost a cotter pin holding a pin in the linkage at the gooseneck (a swivel joint holding the boom to the main mast). The boom is absolutely critical to sailing the main so they are working to get that right. And, it happened at 0030 (12:30am) last night in the dark, in the swells, probably from all the rocking and stress on the gear. Our gooseneck is pretty strong but I did go check it out again just to make sure.

We had another fire drill yesterday as our cruising spinnaker wrapped hard around the jib forestay in a classic hourglass or "bow tie" spinnaker wrap. The spinnaker (ours is asymmetrical and easier to deal with than an true symmetrical spinnaker) got backwinded and wrapped the stay a couple of times, and tight in the middle with the upper and lower parts still catching air. The chute is a light-weight nylon for light air sailing and we had it up all the previous night and are thankful it did not wrap then. We will not do that again!! We got it unwrapped by getting on it double speed. I had Cindy haul down hard on the chute's sheet and I got the motor on and we spun the boat around two times underneath the chute to allow the wind to untangle it. This worked this time but might not always. It was quite a scare for us as three boats in the Baja Ha-Ha two years ago got their chutes so tangled they had to get to port to get someone up the rigging to unwind it in calm conditions. Not something to imagine doing in a swell with wind. We put the chute back in its back where it will stay until ideal conditions. We are making good time now anyway.

So life goes on. This is day seven of the passage. We both are doing some reading and studying. I just finished reading a junk adventure novel and Cindy is reading a headier but more depressing "novel". We are also studying weather and weather forecasting, stars in the night sky, and guidebooks to French Polynesia. Yesterday we got passed close by a big motor tanker M/T Jutul going north to some port in the states or Mexico. I hailed him on the VHF radio to thank him for altering course so he would not hit us. We saw him several miles away as he was huge but he also saw us with our sails up and seemed surprised we were going so fast. He asked where we were coming from and where we were going and told us Bon Voyage. He had a French accent and it was kewl to chat with him. He said he would make a note in his ship's log about seeing us - presumably to notify the authorities if we turn up missing, which is NOT going to happen to MD.

We may not do everything right but we are learning and building character and memories for when we are too creaky to do this any more.

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