captains blog sea date july 13 2009

Captains Blog Sea Date July 13 2009
Days at Sea: 14
Distance to go: 384nm
Mile traveled in 24: 160?
Average speed: 7.0k
Wind: 8k ENE

First off i have to tell you all just how incredibly HOT it is on deck and how much hotter it is down below!!!! Its hotter then lava.
Moving on, yesterday was pretty uneventful. At some point i was standing on the stern when a part of the RADAR reflector tried to Van Gouh me. Im not kidding, its made out of aluminum and has some pretty sharp edges. Im ok but then we had to hull Mike up the back stay to fix it. Chase got him up there were he sat for about a half hour. he looked like a human wrecking ball.
we also did some jibing. as of right now we are on the port tack, with very light wind. i don't know what the deal is but every weather chart i have looked at tells we there is 15 knots of wind right here and for here on out. i would like the wind to fill in a little more.
Since the wind is light, we decided to put up the Daisy. What is a Daisy? well its a sail that i think you are meant to fly inside your spinnaker. its really light and triangular. so this is how it went down, Mike went up to the foredeck and put it up, Richard tweaked the sheet while i drove. The Daisy inside the shoot looked very wrong, like some kind of weird spinnaker bondage act. so Mike ran the halyard out side the spin and that looked a little better. i was not totally sold on the Daisy idea yet. Meanwhile while all of this was going down i could not help but take a look at the deck, its a yard sale. let me try to give you an idea. First we have the main up, attached to the boom is a boom brake, it goes from the boom to the toe rail then back up to a winch on the cabin top, on both sides. Then we have the kite up with working sheets and lazy sheets all 4 of those lines are ran back to the cockpit, there is also a chafe sheet on the working spin sheet as to keep it from rubbing on the boom. Once you are on the foredeck you have to get over and under the starboard pole that is not in use and the reaching strut, not to mention the spin fence that is run from the bow to the mast. oh i forgot the number 3 head sail that is lashed to the deck drying. then to top it all off we throw the Daisy in to the mix. its a total labyrinth. We keep looking for the talking spider. back to the Daisy, i really did not like the way it was working, so i went up to the foredeck and tied a line to the clue that added about 3 feet and then brought the clue back further on the deck. that worked really good! it looks like a staysail, very nice. but to be honest i don't really think it is giving us that much better of speed.
oh we talked to a car carrier ship on the VHF, he was about 8 miles away. i guess they had left Hawaii yesterday morning on there way to Panama, the man on the radio told me they had seen to other sail boats with colorful sails like ours. he seemed pretty jazzed about the colorful sails. After that entertainment mom made us some chicken salad with tomatoes, cabage and pickles, it was good. she also trimmed Richards beard, he was looking a little wild.
To wrap it up, last nights watch was unreal!! the sky was completely clear and you could she every star in the sky. Chase saw a few shooting stars, and yes D we saw 7 satellites! it was a very nice change from the past few stormy nights. well i guess that is it for now. we are trying to get home as fast as we can!!! LA

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com