Good morning! I slept well last night, which is often a bad sign. Sure enough, the reason I was sleeping so well was that the wind had died to the slightest caress during the night. No waves and no excitement on deck. So the weather guru Don was right on the radio when he forecasted very light wind. Suddenly Panama seemed a long, long way off.
So out with spinnaker. It took a while to get the whole rig set up, what with the pole, guys, the spinnaker itself, sheets and so on. But now it’s up and I am happy. The wind is maybe 7 knots max, and I am making a solid 5 knots boatspeed. In the slight gusts or more on a reach I easily hit “Ventura’s” hull speed of 6.5 kts. So as long as the northerly of, say, 5 knots holds, then I could happily take a couple days of this. An easy, long period swell and almost no wind waves, and still making over 5 knots: that’s as good as it gets. Not to mention that “Ventura” is really proud of herself sporting her brightly colored spinnaker.
I found three or four squid on deck this morning. I saw that a couple of days ago when the waves were much bigger and I assumed they had washed up on deck with the waves. But last night there were no waves breaking onto deck, so how do the squid get up there? Surely they don’t fly? Do they jump? More important, can I eat them? (I’m serious here. If anyone knows how to prepare raw squid, let me know via a message.)
I’m now about 80 miles west of Pta Eugenia on the Baja West Coast, and perhaps 450 miles NW of Cabo San Lucas. If the wind were to completely die and the forecast were for three or fours days of flat calm, my backup plan is to motor to Cabo and then refuel there and continue on my way. But for now the spinnaker is doing all the work.
Bye for now!
David