Winds are light and we have a current against us. We are going 1.8 knots. We despair. Darold calculates that we could literally walk to Panama faster than we are sailing. He puts together a contingency plan for what we will do if we run out of fuel. Fuel up in Guatemala? Honduras? Costa Rica? Hopefully the winds will pick up. Secretly, I hope not too much.
Dante and I do schoolwork and Darold messes with the boat much of the day. However, it is not all leisure. Someone is always “on watch” so even if you are doing a bit of reading, you are constantly checking the horizon and the chart plotter to see if there are any other boats on AIS. AIS is a super handy piece of equipment that allows us to “see” big ships from a long distance. We can tell what the boat name is, how big it is, what our closes point of contact will be and when that will happen. If it looks like we will get too close, then we can hail the boat by name over the radio. I was not shy about hailing ships that looked like they would pass too close, and more often than not they would willingly offer to alter their course to give us more sea room. It is my favorite piece of equipment on the boat.
There is a certain feeling of apathy or sloth that settles in while on a passage, especially the first few days. I don’t know if it’s caused by getting your sea legs, or whether it’s just inherent to being at sea, but it takes a good deal of effort to do just about anything while on a passage. I think about doing all sorts of productive things, but more often than not, I simply stare at the horizon because the amount of effort seems to exceed the benefit I will derive from the activity I am envisioning. Showering. Cooking. Whatever.
In the afternoon, Darold sees ripples in the water about ¼ mile west. He changes Benevento’s course toward the ripples in the hopes of getting more wind. We do pick up a little breeze. We put up the sails and are able to sail through the night. Just enough wind for a comfortable ride. We end the day with “movies in the cockpit” – watching a Christmas movie on our portable DVD player.
Darold