Blog of the Masquerade

Out on the water

2010-05-10T02:05:00.001-07:00

We have completed the required steps and are now allowed to use the boats at Kwajalein! The classes and tests are mainly geared towards safety and the local conditions and rules, so it was not a big deal for us to go through. I went out last Thursday to take the practical class in one of the marina boats. You need to show that you can handle one of their rental boats properly. This was actually a new thing for us as these are twin engine powerboats (Twin V, and Boston Whalers). We have never spent much time in powerboats (other than our dinghy). Maneuvering with two engines can give you a lot of control but it also gets more complicated. Our thanks to Mike Herrington for taking us out on the police boat for our orientation and his sailboat for the sailing test!

The marina here is a very popular spot especially on the weekends. There are several power boats that can be rented out for fishing and diving (or whatever), also a ski boat and several small sailboats. One of the entertaining parts of this occurs when the fishing boats return. There is a cleaning station set up for the fishermen to process their catch at the top of the dock. The carcasses and waste parts are tossed into the water to the eagerly waiting sharks. The sharks know where the cleaning takes place and even know the sound of the fishing boats. When the boats are returning to the marina you can expect several sharks to come out to meet you and follow the boat back to the dock. At first it is a little disconcerting, but they are not aggressive sharks. It starts to remind you of feeding time with a couple of hungry puppies running around.

On Sunday we went out with John, a friend of ours for the Mother’s Day race. The Kwajalein Yacht Club puts on monthly races, but this one is different as there is a requirement for a Helmswoman. A woman must be steering the boat for the entire course. If a male touches the helm, the boat is required to perform a penalty 360 degree turn. So Cindy had the tiller while John and I manned the sheets of one of the marina’s Capri 22 sailboats. There were 7 boats in the race, ranging from 22’ feet to 40 ft. We had good wind, everybody had a reef in the mainsail, and nice flat water as we were in the lagoon. We started out a bit slow but we got faster as we learned the boat and the course. It was a good race and everyone had a lot of fun. Once the handicapped times were calculated out, we found ourselves in 2^nd place! The race took about 2 hours, but the next 2 boats were only 50 seconds behind us! It was fun to sail the smaller and more responsive marina boats, but we might get Masquerade out for a race once in a while.

My camera is currently out of commission so not much for photos. There are a few on the website; I will put up more once I get the camera fixed.

Bike to work day

2010-04-21T02:22:00.000-07:00

Here on Kwaj everyday is bike to work day.

There are no private cars on the island so if you want to get somewhere you walk or you ride your bike. There are two problems with riding your bike on Kwaj, both weather related.

The first is the wind: the strong tradewinds make it easy for me to get to work, but difficult to get back. The winds makes it feel like you are riding up or down hills.

The second is the corrosion. The exposure to the salt air does terrible things to our bikes. Rust and corrosion will destroy a bike quickly. We soon found out that after just 3 weeks the brake and gear cables can become so rusted that they no longer work! We have heard stories about bikes where the handle bars or seat posts have corroded so bad that they broke off while being ridden. We will need to set aside time to keep up on our maintenance.

There is a wide variety of bikes here. Many people decide to go with a single speed beach cruiser style bike so that the maintenance is less. The fancy bikes don’t last. There is a also a common Marshallese variant where the gooseneck is very long, this brings the handle bars up to about shoulder level. The other thing you will see here is the bike trailers. Even your large or heavy items need to be transported via bike power. There are trailers varying in size from carrying a bag of groceries to holding large ice chests. We will need pick up one of these ourselves.

Tale of the tape

2010-04-01T03:37:00.000-07:00

Masquerade is now off the dock and out on a mooring. We are currently borrowing a mooring from couple while they are not using it. It is a good place to keep the boat, but it will not be quite as handy as on the dock. In fact Cindy and I need to take a class and take a test to be able to use a boat in the Kwajalein atoll, we also have to get a sailing endorsement. It seems a little silly to have to prove that we are safe boaters and know how to sail after a 5000 mile passage, but the rules are the rules. So until we pass the test we cannot even use our dinghy here!

Looking at our log book, I did some calculations. We came up with the following numbers:

Days underway: 44

Shortest day’s mileage: 102

Longest day’s mileage: 155

Average miles noon to noon: 124

Johnston to Kwaj avg 137 We made better time the last 12 days.

Total miles made good 5405

Total miles traveled 5504

Total miles as the crow flies 4698

As shown above there are many ways to measure the distance traveled. We did not travel in a straight line due to leaving the Sea of Cortez first, and because we headed more southward initially to find better wind. As a sailboat we often sailed in a direction other than directly towards our goal so that the wind/waves were more favorable. It in interesting to see the difference in mileage.

All distances above are in nautical miles. 100 nautical miles is equal to 115 statute miles.

Island Life

2010-03-18T02:35:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who has been following our adventure and have been leaving comments or sending email to us. We appreciate hearing from everyone and we will be working on catching up on our emails over the next few days.

We worked to get our boat speed up the last day so that we could make it to Kwaj before dark. As I said earlier the weather was cooperating, and when we sailed into the lee of the atoll, it was nice and flat for the first time in a long while. However, we had a bit more sailing to do. Because tradewinds always blow from the NE the pass (on the southwest) always has current coming out. We motored slowly into the pass against the wind and tide, looking for the buoys that mark the channel. We ended up bashing to weather almost all the way to the dock, the atoll is so large that the wind waves build up inside the lagoon. We arrived wet and salty, instead of the planned showered with clean clothes. We were met at the dock by our sponsors and the Harbor Control and Kwaj Police. They did a quick check with the K9 unit (while the kitties were hiding in the head), then took us to Security Control to get checked into the island. After that we did a quick tour of the island, and had dinner. We then were shown our room, and headed back to the boat to grab some clean clothes so that we could shower and pass out.

Oh, and I was expected to meet my sponsor for breakfast at 7am the next morning!

The last few days have been hectic. I have been getting set up for my new job, and running around to the various departments filling out forms. Cindy has been back on the job hunt and trying to get the boat cleaned up a bit and keep the cats happy. We are looking forward to the weekend so that we have a chance to catch our breath.

So far we are liking Kwajalein. This is a pretty small community and everyone has been very friendly. We have a great view of the ocean from our room. The view is to windward shore, of course the winds have been blowing salt spray on the window making the view a bit obscured! The weather has been pretty warm but the constant wind makes it pleasant. More later…

Island Life

2010-03-18T02:33:00.001-07:00

Oh, and I was expected to meet my sponsor for breakfast at 7am the next morning!

Landfall!!!!

2010-03-15T21:01:00.000-07:00

Masquerade arrived in Kwajalein on the afternoon of the 15th (14th west coast).
We were met by our sponsors and were welcomed and checked into the base. We sailed 5504 miles according to the GPS.
More of an update later.

Land Ho!!

2010-03-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon we sighted our first Marshall Island! It was Erikub Atoll, we passed to the south of it and continued on towards Kwajalein. We should be arriving at Kwaj this afternoon. We put up extra sail yesterday and last night to gain some speed so that we could make it in before dark. The weather cooperated with us and gave us smaller seas and no squalls overnight. We need to maintain good boat speed but should be good to make it to the dock before sunset.

Looking forward to making our landfall, stretching our legs and seeing other people for the first time since the end of January.

In the home stretch

2010-03-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

We are now just about 200 miles from Kwajalein. If we try and hurry and make exceptionally good time we might arrive the afternoon of the 15th, but will most likely have to wait till daylight and come in early on the 16th. We would like to avoid another evening at sea, but we will just have to wait and see what happens. We are definitely looking forward to making landfall (and a nice long shower).
The seas are starting to mellow out some and we are not rocking as much. We sail along for a little while pretty smooth, then all of a sudden we get some waves from the beam. This causes the boat to roll side to side, far enough that we get water on the decks, and anything not secured goes flying across the boat. It will be interesting to see if the seas are smaller once we get into the island chain.

90 miles to tomorrow

2010-03-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

Masquerade should be crossing the international dateline later today, at which point it will become tomorrow. This will be a bit weird when communicating with people back in the US and Mexico, when we are a day off.

According to sailing tradition when a sailor crosses the equator they graduated from a Polywog to a Shellback. There is often a little ceremony to mark the occasion and a toast to Neptune. Is there an equivalent for crossing the dateline? Do we get a new title? Are we missing a ceremony? I guess we did not do our research before we left.

More lumpy seas that are are rolling us quite a bit. Our course is Dead Down Wind so that makes the rolling worse. We may have to sail a longer course so that the ride is more bearable. About 830 miles to go.

Getting back into a routine

2010-03-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

We are sailing again and trying to get used to our watch schedule again. We had a few rough days after leaving Johnston atoll, the waves were still large and confused. The exit channel leaving was a bit more exciting than we like as the wind and waves were making it a wet and bouncy ride. It would have been easier if we had waited another day.

Johnston Atoll was interesting, but with boat jobs and the bad weather we did not get too explore too much. It was fun to make landfall at a deserted island. The island appearing on the horizon and slowly growing details. Watching the water change colors from the deep offshore blue to the lighter blues and greens of sand and coral, with patches of brown coral heads was beautiful. The island was full of birds, every tree and bush had a bird nest in or under it. The de-commissioned base could have been a set for the "Lost" TV show.

Less than 1200 miles to go.

Getting underway again

2010-03-03T14:08:00.000-08:00

We are planning on leaving Johnston Atoll today. We had to wait till some bad weather passed through. A front and a shear line sat on top of us for several days. We had 45k of winds and the weather forecast talked of 22 foot waves. We decided to wait. We could see large waves breaking on the reef around large portions of the atoll.
We have 1400 miles to go, this should take us about 11 days. Hopefully we have good weather.

Tsunami warning

2010-02-27T21:23:00.000-08:00

We checked our email this morning to get the weather and mail. We soon realized that we had quite a few messages waiting for us. The six warnings for the tsunami was a bit disconcerting, but we also realized that we have quite a few people keeping an eye out for us and we appreciate everyone's concern.
We considered heading out to sea (where tsunami's are harmless), but decided to anchor out here in the atoll. We thought that the open atoll should be safe from any breaking waves, and the surge (the main danger) would not be too bad. We think that the tsunami only caused about two feet of surge here, barely noticeable.

The day was a bit stressfull, and we did not get our jobs done, but all is well here on Masquerade. Thanks again to everyone who showed concern and provided information for us.

R&R stop

2010-02-25T19:33:00.000-08:00

Repairs and Rest on Johnston Atoll. We made a slight detour to make landfall at Johnston Atoll, this used to be run by the AirForce, but is now a wildlife refuge. We will take a few days to fix a few things and to wait for a weather system to blow through. This will also give us a good tack down to the Marshall Islands. We have now completed 4000 miles and have about 1400 left to go.

(no subject)

2010-02-22T20:08:00.000-08:00

We are all fine and making good progress, the last few days we have averaged around 130 miles despite having to jybe several times a day. Being a sailboat, we do not always go exactly the direction we want to go. The direction of the wind and waves affects what course we sail. It is slow and uncomfortable to sail directly down wind, which is the direction we currently need to go. This means that we sail to one side or the other of our desired course. This is longer but faster and less rolling for the boat.

We chafed through some lines to the monitor and had to swap in a replacement. We also broke our whisker pole. I was able to cut of the bent end and rebuild it, but now it a few feet shorter than it was. It is still usable, but we may need to reef the genoa when we pole it out.

We are now 28 days out and have about 1700 miles to go.

3000 miles sailed

2010-02-18T10:14:00.000-08:00

Still making good progress.
Still having breakages/wear and tear.
Still fixing problems as they come up.
Winds are picking up again, hoping for a nice uneventful day.

Half way there!!!

2010-02-15T13:26:00.000-08:00

Early this morning we passed the halfway point to Kwajalien! 2650 miles done and 2650 miles to go.
We had to have a small celebratation drink to mark the occasion. This also coincided with the time of time of the Amigo net (a net on the SSB radio for boats cruising Mexico) so we got to share the event with our friends back on the mainland.
We have been underway for 21 days, and have been averaging about 120 miles a day. Our longest day was 151 miles and our shortest was 102 nautical miles. Our longest day was actually made with the least amount of sail and the most wind!

We are now getting tradewinds a little more like we expected. The winds have been about 25 or so and fairly consistent. The waves are smaller and the sailing is much more pleasant. We still have to be careful for the sneaker waves that occasionally come and splash water into the cockpit, but it is nice to sit outside on watch. Of course there has been nothing to see for quite a while.

2400 miles sailed

2010-02-13T11:26:00.001-08:00

We have been making good progress west. We are currently planning on skipping Hawaii and heading straight to the Marshalls. The winds and waves are subsiding some so we are a bit more comfortable. We had a few rough days and took a few large waves broadside which was a bit startling and these forced some water inside through the closed hatches making a wet mess below. Luckily the laptop was put away or it would have been soaked in salt water!
We are doing fine, getting caught up on our sleep, and trying to avoid new bruises.

2400 miles sailed

2010-02-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

Too much wind!

2010-02-11T10:09:00.000-08:00

We have a moderate El Nino occuring this year, so we are supposed to see enhanced tradewinds. However we are also being affected by a surface trough and are seeing higher winds than expected or forecast. For the last 2 3 days or so we have had winds 35kn and up. Last night we were seeing 45 and gusts to 50. The wind by itself is not bad, it is the waves that build up. And build up they did. We saw some 20ft swells roll under us. It got pretty rough and quite noisy inside the boat and out.
Happily this morning things have settled down a bit. The winds are back down to around 35 and the swells are a bit more regularly spaced. Hopefully things will mellow out a bit more, and we can get some pleasant sailing in.
Marty is out of commission once again. The tube that attaches the rudder to the steering gear is made to be sacrificial. If you get too much pressure on the rudder the tube breaks, not the important parts. This happened last night . We probably got hit on the side by a wave and off it went. We had the rudder attached by a safety line so we did not loose any parts. I have a spare tube, so I can fix it. Once conditions are smoother I will take a look, not sure if I can reach what I need from on the boat though. It might have to wait till we see a dock or we can launch the dinghy.

Anyway, not much fun the last few days but we are fine (though tired and bruised) and still making progress.

Found the tradewinds!

2010-02-04T09:47:00.000-08:00

We are now getting the NE winds that we have been expecting. Yesterday we had nice sailing all day.
We are now sailing wing on wing, which means that the headsail is to one side and the main is to the otherside. This allows sailing directly downwind. The only drawback to this tactic is that the boat tends to roll a bit as the sails do not have as much steadying influence as they do when both working on the same side.
Life is tradeoffs.

Where are my tradewinds?

2010-02-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

We are where we are supposed to be, now where is the wind?

Last night around 2AM (of course) we hit a squall or some type of front and get rain and winds 35k+. Down went all the sails except for the staysail and we still went 5.5-6 knots. This lasted for several cold dark hours. Felt like being back in the pacific NW.

This morning after the sun comes up the wind dies than backs to the NW. Northwest? We should have NE winds. Nice downwind sailing is what we were told! Hopefully the wind veers and we can head more west and less south.

We did get some NE winds yesterday and spent all day sailing wing on wing with a poled out Genoa. So not all bad winds. Good thing we had the pole down before the winds kicked up though.

Marty is alive and well!

2010-02-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

Marty is nickname for our monitor windvane, and he is the helmsman for most of our sailing. We like him because he uses no electricity and he does not hate the HAM radio (like the auto pilot does).

I was able to make repairs using some scrap sheetmetal, a bolt, and a bunch of JB Weld, thanks to a good drill and a Tap & Die set. The monitor had failed just at sunset, this gave me something to keep my mind occupied all night thinking of how to make a repair. It is important to have a good tool kit, spare parts and some raw materials (skills at problem solving also help).

The monitor has a good manual which came in handy since I had to partially disassemble it to make repairs. It was a good thing that we had the rebuild kit also. While taking apart the offending piece, 3 dozen tiny delron bearings all made a run to escape. The tiny bouncing balls, were aided by the boat lurching at inappropriate times. I managed to capture all but one from their hiding places in the cushions, clothes, catbed, and corners of the floor. The one elusive ball, meant that I had to dig out the rebuild kit to obtain a full set of bearings. After allowing the epoxy to set and reassembled the windvane, we tested it out and has steered about 70 miles so far. Yeah!

BTW Marty received his moniker because we bought him used as a salvage from a boat (Spirit Healer) that sank in a hurricane. The hurricane was named Marty.

Masquerade is heading mostly west now. We are getting better and more consistent winds. We have been averaging over 120 miles a day (I will calculate this out later) so we are doing well. We are both healthy and happy though tired. We hope that the ride gets a bit smoother as we are rolling more than we would like.

Current position as of 11am pst 2/1/2010
18'10N 118'00W

Working our way SouthWest

2010-01-30T10:59:00.000-08:00

We are sailing towards the tradewinds. The winds that we have have improved but are still inconsistent in speed and direction. It will be a few days till we reach the true tradewinds.
We have been making good progress while trying to avoid motoring if possible. We have been busy on board working on a few new projects. We found water in the (so called)dry storage locker. This is a cabinet in the galley reached through a hatch in the counter top. It appeared to be salt water so I figured it was leaking in around the deck fuel fill. I pulled it out, cleaned it, then re-caulked and screwed it back in place. We won't really test the fix till we get water on the decks again. We have also had several screws backing out due to vibration and overall movement of the boat. We noticed and fixed these before anything bad happened.
Last night around sunset our Monitor windvane stopped working. A weld failed and broke in two, completely disabling the system. The windvane is very important as it steers the boat for us, freeing us from having to be at the wheel constantly. The windvane had steered every mile that we had sailed since leaving San Carlos 500+ miles ago. We have the autopilot but it uses a lot of electricity and only steers a magnetic heading, whereas the windvane will steer relative to the wind. This insures that the sails are always set correctly and is safer. I am currently working on getting a jury rig fix going. Hopefully we can get it working again. If not we will need to stop in Hawaii for a new part. We shall see.

We have made about 680 miles so far.

Feast or Famine

2010-01-27T20:19:00.000-08:00

We have definitely gone from too much wind to no wind. No new bruises since yesterday. We are motoring towards Isla Socorra (Mexico), we are heading south rather than west so that we can get to the NE trade winds quicker. Once we hit the trade winds we will head west. This course is a bit longer than the direct route, but with the better winds it is the quicker route.
We hate to motor, but the flat seas are nice and are allowing us to catch up on our rest and clean up the boat. We thought we had everything secured, but the rough weather the first day proved us wrong. We had items flung all over the place. The boat was a mess and we were spending a lot of time picking up items and putting them somewhere they would be safe. A few broken glasses and some very bruised fruits and veggies, but no real damage (a few bruised sailors also).
We are now south of Cabo San Lucas and the last land we will see for a while has disappeared behind us.

Underway!

2010-01-26T09:47:00.000-08:00

We are now officially underway and headed for Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. Once we get to the trade winds we should have an easy trip. Getting to the trades may be difficult. The last 2 days were spent with gale or near gale winds (30-40k) heading south from San Carlos, with some 10-12ft seas. We hope that that is the worst weather we get on the trip. We made over 120 miles in 24 hours with only the staysail up. We now have a forecast for several days of calms, so we will need to motor south till the winds pick up.

200 miles down, a whole lot more to go!