Day 17 Pacific Crossing

Date: Sunday, April 29th, 2018 Time: 22:21 UTC Location: 03° 33.4′ S 123° 27.9′ W COG: 220° T SOG: 5 knots 24 hour distance traveled: 116 nm Distance to the Marquesas: 561 nm
Cameron here, it’s been a maintenance day around Banyan. In fact just about every day is a maintenance day in our 43′ abode. I was reading a little from Beth Leonards “The Voyager’s Handbook” on watch this morning and she stated that to really maintain a live-aboard cruising boat you should estimate approximately 20 hours per week. Beth and her husband Evan have cruised every ocean on this planet from north to south. They began on a 37′ boat in 1992 and now have a 47′ custom built Aluminum high latitude cruising sailboat. They know their stuff. I would say I spend close to that amount of time and probably should spend more…… Today I was trying to track down the source for our nav. station leaks. I did a temporary patch with some Sikaflex marine adhesive/caulk that will hopefully let me know if I found the right spots. Water travels on boats in weird ways so there are a lot of possibilities for where it’s coming from. If those spots are correct then I’ll grind them back and re-glass or epoxy them once we arrive in port. Annie spent the day doing a little laundry in the cockpit in two buckets. This will be our reality for the next couple months. In Mexico you can get your laundry done for about 12 pesos per kilo, a whole weeks’ worth of laundry was returned folded and smelling of Mexican fabric softener for about $15. We’ve heard that can run you close to $100 in the Marquesas. We will see! The girls enjoy Sundays as they get a little more tablet time. Annie made some crepes with canned fruit on top for brunch and I just busted out a “clean out the fridge” fried rice. We’re trying to eat down our freezer so I can turn it off before we get to the Marquesas, we’ll be close but might not pull that off, especially if we keep catching fish. It’s hard to complain too much about too much food. Annie did a great job with the provisioning and our passage will be on the shorter side of anticipated, provided nothing goes wrong……
On that note I’ll sign off to go knock some wood. Banyan Clear

3 comments

  1. Mary Maher says:

    Close to 500 nm! I can imagine it is a bit of dective work in solving the leak location. Sounds like you have on your Sherlock Holmes hat on (or Benedict Cumberpatch or Buttercup Cabbagepatch). Enjoying your travels and hearing about the day to day details.

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