Spent the whole afternoon with absolutely NO wind. Just bobbing around. Spoke to the weather guru on the radio who thought I’d see more of the same for weeks. He predicted four more weeks to get the last 1,200 miles to Panama. I give up. Time for a new plan. I turned on the engine […]
Visitors
I gave in and started the engine last night. I needed to charge my batteries, so I figured I could run the engine in gear for a few hours during the middle of the night and at least make a few miles headway at the same time. So between midnight and 3:00 I motored along […]
Stuck
I am completely becalmed. It is just before midnight. The spinnaker hangs limp, moving only when the mast sways now and then in the old swell. It is 1,400 miles to Panama. The weather forecast for the coming week is discouraging: very light wind in this area. I may be here for a long time. […]
No wind
Ugh, Panama is a LONG way off. The good news is that I am now at the half way point between Ventura and Panama. I’ve got 1,500 miles to go. The bad news is that I have no wind. It is very hot, maybe 85 or 90 degrees (my thermometer broke yesterday when a spinnaker […]
A WHAT landed WHERE?
Some stories are too strange to be true. I wasn’t planning to post anything tonight, but this just happened…. It’s been an uneventful day, which is just the way I like it. The only thing that broke was my Xantrex Link 20 battery monitor. That’s more a nuisance than a real problem. But I have […]
Not Now! I’m Naked!
It started reasonably enough. I was naked and about to pull the pop top on a can of corn. Those two things were unrelated. I was naked because I had noticed that I stunk. There are two kinds of singlehanders: the punctiliously clean kind and then, well, the other kind. I belong to the other […]
An Evening with Boris Brott
The wind is warm. Finally. We are well into the tropics. The moon is waxing, now more than just a sliver, in the west. The moon is my reassurance. She throws down silver feathers on the sea, calming the waves and my nerves. She is above Venus. Orion stands guard, but idly, since the moon […]
You’re Gonna Go Blind!
It’s a small ocean. You never know who you’re going to meet. Well, OK, it wasn’t really out here on the ocean, but it was in the slip next to me when I was in Cabo several days ago. “Ventura” was resting in slip B-26, next to a sport fishing boat named “Diamond Cutter.” The […]
You’d Think All That Time at Sea Would Have Taught You Some Patience
A grey and windless afternoon. An occasional creak from “Ventura.” The sea is the lifeless color of steel. Even the birds have given up. I am alone and Panama is 10 million miles away. The wind has been unusual the past day. I left Cabo in perfect wind, a beam reach of about 15 knots. […]
Finally Left Cabo!
I got out of Cabo late this morning. I had received a depressing weather forecast showing little wind for the next couple of days south of Cabo. But I can’t handle any more Cabo San Lucas, so I figured I’d just head out and bob around at sea. As it turns out, as soon as […]