Our 1am position: 05-40N 86-49W

The last 24 hours have been both beautiful and frustrating.

Beautiful because the weather is fine and we're going through an area of abundant sea life. We've seen big sailfish skipping along on the surface, sea turtles, several kinds of porpoises, red footed boobies (birds) and big frigate birds. We caught a nice fat yellowfin tuna... had a few hunks raw as a snack with lunch, and then some nice 'seared tuna' for dinner.

Here Comes Supper!
The water is a blue blue blue color. The stars were awesome last night. And there's phosphorescence in the water, so our wake glows.

But it has also been incredibly frustrating, because there's been virtually no wind. We did try to put the Code Zero sail out at the change of watch in the middle of the night, but the wind died again just as we finally got it rigged, so we rolled it back in and motored all night.


Every day the forecast has been saying 'tomorrow there will be wind'. Finally about noon today, I convinced Dave that the wind had come up enough to try again. We ended had a nice (slow) sail all afternoon, except a few times when the wind died off and Janet, our autopilot got confused. We're both doing other things and letting Janet steer, and next thing we know it, the sail is collapsing and we're in a hard turn the wrong way. You can't tack this big sail (it would have to thread thru the other headsails, etc). So we just let it backwind and come on around. It takes about 10 minutes to do a 'loop-de-loo', a full 360 degree turn, and get it settled down back on course again. We did that 3 times this afternoon.


By dinnertime, the wind had died and veered, so that we were only going about 1.6 knots and headed about 45 degrees off our proper course. And Janet was having a really hard time holding course. We held off until we finished a nice a quiet dinner in the cockpit and a nice sunset. But after dinner, we took the sail down and turned the engine back on again. We didn't want to get too far off course, because the wind is SUPPOSED to come up tomorrow.

Of course, as soon as it was my turn to sleep, the wind came up again and it got a little rough. I couldn't figure out why I was having so much trouble sleeping, until I got up and realized how lumpy it was. At the change of watch, we rolled out the staysail and turned the engine off again. The staysail is a small sail--just the right size to keep us jogging along at about 2-3 knots, with a gentle motion. Our ETA at the island is now close to dawn.

We could see the island vaguely in the distance just before sunset (at about 25 miles) At 0100 we were 15 miles out. I can just see a hint of the island on radar, but don't see any lights.

The moon set about midnight, so it is now pitch dark. But the stars are just amazing. Billions and billions... Just seeing the stars so clearly is worth this whole trip. You just can't see them like this, with no light pollution, in the civilized world any more.

As soon as the sun came up, we could see Cocos ahead of us, green and lush.

Labels: Cocos Island, Costa Rica, Fishing, On Passage

The only problem with Golfito is that the fish are too plentiful.

The guests staying at Land n Sea's bungalow caught ANOTHER big Mahi Mahi yesterday. Everyone else they knew were tired of eating fish, so they shared it with the cruisers.

We had a nice grilled Mahi potluck last night.

Labels: Costa Rica, Fishing

Our 2007 / 2008 fish-bragging is here:

http://www.svsoggypaws.com/blog2008/labels/Fishing.html

Labels: Fishing