Thursday Noon
More wind late in the afternoon signalled the need to take down the drifter. With the exception of taking down the spinnaker, taking down the drifter is one of the more complicated things we have to do on NAKIA. It takes two people, one at the mast to let the sail down slowly and another in the bow pulpit to gather/control the sail as it comes down. We accomplished the task without getting the sail wet or damaged, which are the only real goals, so I guess we were successful.
We've been resting so well lately because of the light winds I really wish we could 'save' our rest. Something tells me Friday and Saturday are going to be difficult days to sleep.
We started to see some real 'trade wind clouds' today. These are light fluffy medium to small size clouds that march along with the winds. I usually curse them for getting in the way of our solar panels, but with the tow generator it hasn't been a problem. In fact we're once again in danger of over charging the batteries and I may have to disconnect one or both of the solar panels to keep that from happening. This after I let the batteries get down to 60% charged, something we NEVER do at anchor, before putting the tow generator back online. Today during peak sun time, when NAKIA was moving at 7 mph I saw 25 amps on the charge meter. On a normal day we see 15 from the solar panels alone. I have got to get a charge controller for the tow generator!
Our brand new Windex (an arrow that is mounted to the top of the mast to indicate the wind direction), which Linda's sister carefully hand carried from the US - and I waited until the last minute to install so some stupid bird didn't break it - has been bent by SOME STUPID BIRD! Usually Frigate birds are responsible for these things getting bent. They like to try to land on it to roost even though the mast head is whipping back and forth like mad as the boat rolls in the sea. But in this case it must have been a booby. Booby birds are aptly named because they are as dumb as posts. One was responsible for breaking our guest spider's web when it tried to fly behind the mainsail and ran smack into the backstay. They always look at the thing they ran into with an expression of 'whoa man, how did that get there!' No doubt one of them was concentrating on the 'pretty white sails' when 'WHAM' someone put a pointy wire thing in its way. The windex will be bent back into shape when we get into the Marquesas and I can go all the way to the top of the mast without getting killed.
{GMST}15|59|N|115|38|W|Mexico to Marquesas Day 9|Day 9{GEND}
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