Hawaii to Vancouver - Part 2 - Finding the High

As we said in the last post, it was more a matter of the high finding us! While we motored for the first day, it was slow going due to the seas whipped up by the front that had passed. By then we had used up our fuel allocation (we always keep some in reserve in case we need it in the later stages of the passage) so we had to try to sail as best we could.

Our daily average plummeted as we only managed 50 or 60 miles in 24 hours (almost as slow as we could swim). We busied ourselves as we literally drifted along by reading and doing lots of baking. The smell of bread baking at sea and fresh hot chewy cookies will lift any dampened spirit! We also had two black-footed albatross and a couple of storm petrels that kept us company daily, following us for over a week. One morning, Lo was apparently the entertainment for the morning for the albatross couple sitting on the water a couple hundred yards away, as she was patiently trying to turn the boat around by pumping the wheel, to at least FACE towards home, in the glassy calm seas. Each morning at around 6 am, they'd do a ritualistic fly-by Demelza - literally only 15 ft from the stern or bow - to scope things out. Amazing birds. After seeing so many of them for so long now, their wing span (at least 10 ft) still amazes us.

We also spotted two pods of dolphins doing amazing aerials while feeding at the water surface, both times just a couple of hundred yards ahead of us. It was so calm that we could hear their splashes! They apparently don't like whales, as they took off while we were screaming our best whale impersonations at the top of our lungs like the couple of crazed lunatics we were after 10 days of bobbing.