Middle Earth

Each morning the past few mornings, I’ve been making myself chai tea using spices from my dear friend Suprita who gave me her family’s spice grinder’s chai mix. This small reminder of loved ones that we have each day, whether in food, texts, emails, phone calls, or memories, has been keeping us going through this ordeal adventure.

Two days ago, we crossed the equator at sunrise after a full night’s sleep under the stars with the staysail (our favorite light wind sail) having kept us toodling along at 2 knots overnight. We sure needed the rest after a difficult few days (errr….entire passage?). The sunrise celebration of no longer being pollywogs and stepping into being shellbacks (ask Neptune what it all means because I don’t!) was a delight, with Conor making sourdough pancakes and us enjoying some Veuve bubbly, our celebratory beverage of choice thanks to a friend sharing this tradition in grad school. The sourdough starter comes from our dear friend Enrico, so we carry friends with us in so many ways. It has been funny now watching the latitude change from N to S and start to increase, after 33 degrees of counting it down.

With under 400 nautical miles to go, and 20 days in, we hope to make landfall this week. We are fully in the doldrums, however, and are sailing when we can and motoring when we must. Last night at sunset, we set the pole for our jib and sailed for 12 straight hours after having motored most of the day, and then the wind died in the morning so we furled in the jib and pole and started up the “iron jenny” again, as motors are known to sailors. We are carefully logging our motoring time so that we can estimate how much fuel we’ve used and how much we have left — we don’t exactly know if we have enough fuel to get us there entirely, so please help us hope that the winds fill back in midweek to push us the final miles to Nuku Hiva.

The Southern Cross constellation has been keeping us company at night, along with the Milky Way, and I am so grateful for the triumphant return of the moon that is waxing finally. It was long, dark nights without her in the new moon period! And Venus keeps me company on the sunrise watch — at dawn one morning, Venus was so bright that she left a trail of shimmering light on the water, just like the moon.