Nature's Bowling Alley

Pacific Crossing, Day 31: Well, what an interesting 24 hours it's been. Mother Nature bowled a perfect game with thirteen squalls striking us, another dozen or so near-misses, and no gutterballs. A quick 360 degree sweep of the sky shows about a dozen squalls all around as I write this in early afternoon, with flat calms or 5 knots of wind in between them. It's Bowling for Sockdolager! You'd think Mother Nature would be getting a little bored by now with all this toying around, because we're south of 5 degrees south latitude, where this stuff shouldn't be happening. But noooo...

Here are some possible strategies for dealing with it:

1. Cuss at the weather gods.
2. Rig the boat for the higher winds you'll get in squalls (25 knots) and go absolutely nowhere the rest of the time because it's not enough sail area.
3. Unreef the sails and let 'em fly, hoping you can get them reefed in time for the next squall (in the dark, of course.) Even with no reefs in the sails, the top speed in the little zephyrs is 2.5, maybe 3. Oh, and the penalty is waking the off-watch for the reefing fire drill.
4. Heave to, take a nap, and then get moving when the wind steadies out a little more.
5. Have the first discussion on whether to turn on the motor when the calms plague us.
6. Drop all sail so Jim can dive under the boat to see if the goose barnacles have fouled the hull so badly they're slowing us down. (They haven't.)
7. Keep sailing and hand steering, hoping for wind.

We've tried all 7. #1 made me feel better, #2 works better at night, #3 resulted in a fire drill, and we loved #4 best, but it got us nowhere. The last three are what we're presently doing.

You must be getting weary of all this weather angst, and if I wasn't so dadgum tired I'd make something up. Like how in the night we rolled so hard we scooped a small Portuguese Man O'War onto the side deck. Really. We did. Jim eased it back into the water with a paper towel.

Squall #14 is hitting us now.

Sent via Ham radio