February 25, 2018 - Sailing to Kosrae

February 25, 2018

12 am again and I’m on another dreaded night shift. Seems each time I get on shift Pete says we need to go faster and my whole-body bristles with the thought of 4 hours of banging, crashing, twisting, turning and surfing. I go to the bathroom trying not to fall down and bang into something and there as I flush the toilet with salt water, there are phosphorescent glows flushing as well. It amazes me and part of me wants to keep flushing the toilet to see more, but it is noisy, and I don’t want to wake up Pete as he works so hard and sometimes I have to wake him up for help on my shifts. It’s because the wind has changed or kicked up and I’ve reefed in the head sail as much as I can but were still going to fast or for a few other reasons. Mostly I try to calm my fears and wait things out until it’s time for him to get up, but also know that if I don’t wake him up sometimes, he’ll be disappointed I didn’t. He’s never upset and is there the minute I quietly call to him.  Up in an instant and ready to make things right with the wind and the sails. Hopefully, someday I’ll learn enough to do so much more myself so he can get his sleep.

Four o’clock comes none too soon and since it’s the second night of shifts, I nod off quickly and don’t wake up until the alarm goes off at 7:45 for my next shift except for a few times when there’s a loud crash or banging of waves, but I know Pete is up and I feel safe and quickly return to sleep in the secure, dark stateroom.

I watch the nautical miles slowly go down as we make progress across the vast ocean. We have had no contact with anyone else on our trip and there have been no other boats on the radar screen. It doesn’t seem to bother me for some reason and I don’t feel isolated.

Pete tries different sails today as we’re dead down wind, so first, he puts up the reacher, a beautiful blue billowing sail that’s off to the starboard side. It’s my shift again and I notice the reacher is not working anymore and keeps trying to billow the other way which won’t work with the way it is rigged, so I have to wake up Pete and it makes me sad. He’s, again, up in an instant and decides to put up the spinnaker. It’s even bigger than the reacher and can move back and forth across the bow of the boat to catch the slight changes in the dead down winds. He pulls out and I help him get it set. It wasn’t the right spinnaker, he’d forgotten he still had the ‘pumpkin’ one, but it’s working just fine.

As I’m sleeping on my shift, I hear Pete calling, “Fish on if you want to reel it in.” I’m so excited to try again that as I’m flipping out of the bed – you sleep with feet in and head out in the small stateroom – there’s another big wave and my ankle cracks against the wooden opening to the stateroom, by the time I get my shorts on and get to the cockpit, it is already swollen and hurts. But, with gloves and the reel belt on, Pete hands me the rod as he turns the boat to dead wind so we won’t lose another big fish like the mahi. I keep reeling in and reeling in and can tell it isn’t a mahi this time. My adrenaline is pumping with all the excitement and I am hoping this one doesn’t get away, too. Pete reminds me to keep the rod up while I reel in and sometimes it skips and slips, but I just keep on reeling in. Pete grads his harness/lifejacket and harpoon and climbs over the stern of Miss Kiss onto the steps swearing because he can’t get the safety off to clip onto the boat to hold him if he loses his balance while teetering on the back of the boat. Finally, it’s all good and I reel the fish in close enough for Pete to hit it with the harpoon and we bring it onboard. It’s tired, but still has lots of life in it yet and flips around. Wahoo! It’s and over three-foot-long wahoo and it is beautiful. Pete asks if I’d like to hold it up for a camera shot and I decline as it’s still moving about, so I take a picture of him with my first landed open ocean fish and I like that picture much better than if it were me holding it up. Pete clubs it in the head to kill it while I go inside and plug my ears. We’ve forgotten to close the galley/salon doors and blood has spurted inside. I quickly clean it up and grab a plastic contained and some bins to put the fillets in as Pete goes to work taking care of the wahoo in short order. You can tell he’s done this a thousand times before. With the boat back on course and the waves twisting and turning the boat, he still manages to get the job done and clean up afterwards.

At some point Pete decides to get out the other spinnaker and so we switch out with great difficulty getting the ‘pumpkin’ down and get the new one sailing. It’s been a long day for him with little rest, but he keeps on going.

During the night, the winds kick up and Pete asks me to help him get the spinnaker down so we can go with the head sail. What? In the dark? With the wind and waves? Climbing up front? Seriously, I have barely been out of the scuppers right next to the galley doors for the whole journey let alone climb forward. I put on my harness/life jacket and gloves and wait for directions as my heart skips beats and I try hard to keep my breath steady. There’s a problem getting this spinnaker down too as it seems stuck at the top and I get a brighter headlamp for me and flashlight for Pete. He’s out there, not hooked in trying to yank it down and I wonder how I would ever find him in the dark if he goes overboard. It’s my time to come forward to help with all this and I’m literally shaking like a leaf in a strong fall wind. I try to clip on as I’m going forward, but the handrail is too large. Once I get near the mast, Pete tells me to clip onto the mast wire and I’m speedy quick about doing so. I open the clutch and try to hold on but he’s had to yank on the sail and the rope whizzes through my hands and so I let go to save some skin. Then I open up the anchor locker and pull out the sail bag as we quickly put the spinnaker inside and I begin to make my way back to the cockpit and safety. I’m exhausted and so is Pete. But the head sail is up and we’re moving along in the hopes that we’ll reach Kosrae tomorrow before dark so we won’t have to heave to and spend another night in the open seas.

Pete holds up the wahoo

The Halloween Pumpkin Spinnaker

The North spinnaker