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October 24, 1998
San Francisco to Hawaii, Second Attempt. Update #33
33. Date: Sat, 24 Oct 98 04:02:15 GMT
Latitude: 27 degrees 58.432 minutes North
Longitude: 134 degrees 27.933 minutes West
Wind South West, Force 2-3
Heading 180 degrees (M)
The high spirit's of the last few days have been slightly dampened by wind shifting this morning to blowing from the South West -our exact heading for Hawaii; fine for sail boats and not a problem for power vessels -but death for little human powered vessels like us. So it has been one of those days spent watching bubbles move amazingly slow or not at all past the window of the pedal seat. For most of the day we punched just North of 270 degrees (M) -loosing ground to the North but still making good ground to the west. Even if we make zero miles in a day -it's kinder on morale than a minus figure.
On reading the 48 hour weather forecast on the Galaxy of 'little change' to wind direction, we started steering 180 degrees (M) about two hours ago to make progress toward the elusive trade winds -even at the expense of loosing miles to the East. We have reverted to old two hour shifts of the Atlantic crossing to save our grinding knees and have a tangible goal, time wise, to work toward for each stint.
On the flip side, our South Westerly -as if in compensation for our pains-brought some unusual beasties to show us from the warmer more Southerly latitudes. A beautiful golden and purple turtle -about two feet in diameter-drifted effortlessly past about 11am this morning -almost close enough to exchange a high five. It's languid 'going nowhere in particular' pace making it all look so easy. Earlier this morning while greeting the dawn with a cup of Tetley's finest, I caught sight of what looked like at first to be a translucent butterfly wing flitting on the water. At second glance, however, it revealed itself to be the sail of a baby Portuguese-man-of-War, its deadly tentacles barely big enough yet to be visible. But the sea creme de la creme was a strange multi-colored creature with a unique spine about 6 inches in length and red in color hanging from underneath its bright yellow throat. "Wow" I call to Steve "Take a look at this crazy looking thing!" Sticking his head out for a closer look he exclaims "Looks like one of those deadly Scorpion fish." On closer examination however, it turned out to be half a very much worse for wear flip-flop, made in Taiwan...
Lewis & Smith,
The Moksha crew
Posted on October 24, 1998 6:17 PM