sent the below message yesterday, but had wrong address, so here goes again!
*****
position: 10 degrees 16 minutes north, 153 degrees, 18 minutes west
5 days out of Fanning Island, about 500 miles to go to the Big Island of Hawaii
Things can get rough on the ocean, when you least expect it. We learned that the hard way yesterday, when we had the computer out on the nav table. I had written a blog message, Tim had read it over and written a few emails, and he got up to go the the head while i was getting ready to come in from deck and send out the messages. All of the sudden we hear a boom and a big splash noise. We had forgotten to close the hatch when we got out the computer...it was a beautiful calm afternoon, and no waves had come over the cabintop for hours, and it's really hot inside the cabin without the hatch open. And we paid the price. The ceiling hatch was only open a crack, but somehow gallons of water came in and soaked our bed/settee, and splashed the computer, frying it. As of now, it's still not working. Argh. Luckily we have this old backup computer that has been Tim's. I'm pretty good about backing things up, but i'm not sure if all the pictures i took on fanning made it onto my backup drive... I sure hope so! Maybe the computer just needs a day or so to *dry out* - we've seen that with cell phones that took a dunking!
Otherwise all is going well, we've made good progress and had good winds with the exception of one very light wind night where we motor-sailed for 8 hours. Wednesday was a busy day - i was on watch at dawn when a great big pod of dolphins (i would guess there could've been 50+ really little cute ones) joined us for about an hour jumping and leaping out of the water, and playing in our bow wake. They amaze me how they are able to simultaneously surface, 4-5 in a row next to each other. Quite the synchronized swimmers! Today we were joined again at dawn by a much smaller group (maybe 10-20 dolphins). They seem like they are less than 5 feet long, super cute. We had some calm enough weather where Tim was able to get the big jib winch taken apart and fixed, and he removed the bathroom hatch and re-caulked it to stop the leaking up there. Luckily he finished that job and got the dinghy repositioned over the hatch just before a big squall hit - it rained for over an hour that afternoon. I of course was battling seasickness still and not much use for any chores - finally feeling better as of yesterday though!
Yesterday evening, besides frying the computer, we lost our staysail shroud. The fitting where it attaches to the deck broke, so we won't be able to use our hank on staysail -- which is a real bummer since we're now trying to head as close as possible into the Northeast trade winds where it would be really useful.
So, it's been an eventful first half of the trip. The blog message that got lost on the other computer told the story of the *breakers* we identified on the chart and were concerned about avoiding... we made it through that area and didn't see anything, but it was a bit disconcerting for a while there.
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