Day 17 – Motoring through Calm Waters

All last night and all day long we ran the engine as we traveled through calm waters and light winds. We expect these conditions to continue through tonight as well. Tomorrow we may get some wind from the east, which is very unusual for around here. The east wind is a result of the Santa Ana winds that are now blowing in Southern California. If we do get east winds, it should make for some nice sailing conditions for a day or so.

I still do daily check ins with our weather router, John. He is looking at the weather several days out when we expect the wind to pick back up again. He is trying to head us to a waypoint that will give us the best angle to the wind as it picks back up on the last two days of our journey.

We spent the day getting some chores done around the boat since the seas were calm. Dean swept up the floor in the cabin and cockpit. I worked with Luke and Mateo to move fuel from the jerry cans we have stored on the cabin top, down and into our fuel tank.

Showing Mateo and Luke how we siphon fuel from the cans to our main tank.

We still have plenty of fuel, we were just topping off our fuel tank while we have calm waters. We also took a hose and washed all the accumulated salt off our solar panels. The panels were white with crusted salt. With all the motoring we are doing we have plenty of power to make extra water to do this kind of thing.

With our chores done, we stopped the boat and went for an afternoon swim. The cloudy skies and lower water temperatures made it a bit cool out, but jumping in was refreshing and invigorating. I had to encourage everyone to do it, but they all thanked me afterwards. Honestly, it felt good just to be off the boat, even if it was just for a few minutes. Taking warm freshwater showers afterwards was an extra bonus!

Enjoying a refreshing swim!

We covered about 130 miles yesterday, and we have just over 600 to go. The miles seem to be ticking off more slowly now that we are getting closer! I have been keeping our speed down to just over 5 knots while we motor. I normally don’t motor the boat this slowly, but it really saves a lot of fuel, and I am just not sure how much motoring its going to take to cover the final miles, so I am being very conservative.

I really do not like motoring, but I will admit, it is much better doing this through calm waters than sailing upwind in 20 knots and bashing into big waves. So I am grateful for this time!

Patricia Ann in the middle of the ocean. You can see how calm it is!