On our way!

As expected it's been a rough start to our passage from Hawaii to the Marquesas. The NE tradewinds are blowing as high as 25 kts at times and it's a bumpy ride trying to keep as much easting as possible in our course. We don't want to bear off to the south too early or we might overshoot and end up in Tahiti!

We both took Stugeron (an anti-seasickness medication) before leaving Hilo and haven't actually been sick, although I've felt borderline queasy. I swore ahead of time not to feed Ziggy a full breakfast but when we woke up at 5 AM Saturday I figured that two hours would be enough for him to digest it all before we were at sea. Of course it all came back up sometime later that morning. When he perked up at the sound of a flying fish hitting the deck this morning I figured he might take some watered down canned food but, 1/2 tsp later, everything left in his stomach came up. We're mostly concerned about keeping him hydrated so I've resorted to force feeding him 1 ml of water at a time via a medicine dropper. We'll see if he can keep that down.

While Ziggy stays put in bed, that's where we wish we could be 24/7. We're rediscovering all those muscles that we use just to hold on, stay on our feet, and keep ourselves from being hurtled into hard objects. I've already taken knocks to an elbow, a knee, and my head, and I'm not even doing a tenth of the work John does. So he's wiped. Laying flat out in the sea berth on our off watches is a welcome relief from trying to sit, stand, or walk. But sleep is difficult when the boat periodically gets launched off an ill-timed wave, goes airborne, and lands in the water with a heavy crash. Or when a different kind of wave hits just right and sends a wall of water cascading into the cockpit. I think that's the worst part for me because I'd like to spend more time out in the fresh air. Except for our quarter-hour horizon checks and occasional sail adjustments we mostly stay below to keep dry.

We had rain to start out with but the skies cleared to mostly sunny once we left the influence of the Big Island behind. By 3 PM yesterday we'd lost sight of land as Hawaii was hidden in the clouds. If the local extended forecast holds true we should have slightly lighter winds this week which would be a nice break. But personally I'm happy to be getting the rougher stuff while we're fresh, knowing that we should be sailing into better weather farther south.

Linda