Blog from Family Affair

by Paul Michael, July 20th, 2012

Morale is high as we plan repairs, provisioning, and vacations.  We're looking forward to the legendary dock party upon our arrival with the Lahaina Yacht Club and some time on shore with our spouses.  Time will fly and soon Tom and I will be setting sail around July 29th for Kauai and then for home with a new crew.

For most of the day, we had steady trade winds from the east at 15 knots.  Tom went up the mast again to replace a halyard for our spinnaker while it was hoisted.  Once that was done, he attempted to replace the 2nd reef line block on the main while it was up as well.  He walked the boom while tethered to both a halyard and a tag line.  We hoisted him up the leech of the main but it became a bit too rocky to perform the work so we returned him to the deck.  Later, we performed this repair on deck with a partially lowered main. 

On top of the responsibilities as captain, Tom has spent much of his time off watch keep up on boat repairs while underway.  He's done so much that Dave has affectionately nick-named him Tune-Up Tommy.

I tried fishing today without luck.   We're glad to have caught a mahi mahi, but it would be nice to complement that with a few yellowtail tuna.  I still have a lot of fixings for sushi on board.

Some atmospheric disturbance interfered with my ability to report our position and weather at the 6pm daily roll call.  I suspect there is a solar storm in progress as my ability to connect to shore-based amateur radio stations has been poor.  I finally relayed the info to communications vessel Red Sheilla by satellite phone.

After a beautiful sunset played against cumulus clouds, we glided on into the darkness with a sky full of stars.  With the warm 80 degree apparent wind low and to our backs, it was hard to believe such a smooth and pleasant ride was still giving us 7 knots of boat speed.  It was as if some magical force propelled us forward.  We saw many meteors and were even treated to a fireball that streaked down to the north leaving a shimmering tail.

Midnight brought us a heavy squall and rain.  We pushed hard with our symmetric spinnaker up and had one significant round-up.  Once it passed, we had light and fluky winds from every direction.  We languished with boat speeds down to less than a knot for over an hour before the trades could fill in the microburst conditions from the squall.  

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