90 miles to tomorrow

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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.