Today, in the middle of the Pacific ocean miles away from friends, family, cake, ice cream and all the rest Will turns 17. Happy Birthday!

We plan to celebrate it more properly when we are someplace the cake batter won’t slop out of the pan before it can set in the oven. In the mean time we’re trying to acknowledge it a little. This morning I took the unprecedented step of making doughboys for breakfast, one of Will’s favorite foods. Frying things in oil isn’t something you usually do in a seaway; it was mild though and I put on protective clothing.

Tonight Danielle has made brownies and frosted them for our little celebration. Will has a few small things to open and a nice gift from his sister, Mom and Dad aren’t exactly with the program yet.

One thing we’ve not adjusted to in this lifestyle shopping ahead, and shopping for some things when you can as opposed to when you need them. As in thinking REALLY ahead. You can’t think about things like Birthdays when you are someplace like the Galapagos where many items are unavailable and those you can find are low quality and/or three times the cost as a mainland store.

Instead when you are in someplace like Panama, months in advance, but with excellent shopping and good prices THEN you need to think Hey, it’s Will’s birthday in three months we should buy something for him now even though he’s given us no indication what he wants or needs! Then and only then will you not have to give your kid some chocolate and cash and say we’ll get the rest to you later.

We do look forward to a more proper birthday celebration when we stop moving.

Progress

We’re now in the home stretch, the last 1,000 miles (less, really 2,131 miles as of our last log entry). We can see a possible time for landfall that is looking more firm – probably the weekend which is more narrow than when we started when it was Early June-ish.

The winds are getting a bit lighter and starting to shift to the East. This is about what we expected though, if you’ve been following along you remember we’ve been holding North in anticipation of this eventual shift.

Safety Update

From a safety and security perspective the worriers in the audience can also be assured of one additional reality. We’ve reached the point now where we have enough fuel to get there even if there is a catastrophic rig failure.

Evenstar carries about 1,300 liters (about 340 gallons) of fuel with a full load. At Cruising RPM we consume around 10 Liters (2.5 Gallons) per hour. So from a full load of fuel that gives a maximum range of a bit over 1,000 miles of straight ahead motoring at a pretty fast cruising speed. That does not account for the fuel used by the generator, but it also doesn’t account for the fact that if I go only a bit slower (say 6.5 knots instead of 8.0) I will also used a LOT less fuel. The generator uses .9 Gallons/hour at full load, we rarely have it at more than half load so fuel consumption is a but less than at, but we’ve still probably used 50 gallons on the generator so far. We also carry an extra 20 gallons in jugs on deck that won’t get us far motoring but it will keep the generator running (and the food cold, water tanks filled, instruments on, etc) for 5 or 6 more days.

Of coursethis is a 3,000 mile trip and we have 1,000 miles or so of motoring range. But we are a sail boat so far in 2,131 miles of sailing we have had the engine on for less than three hours, including getting the anchor up and motoring out of the harbor in the Galapagos. Hopefully this will be the case right up until we pull into Nuka Hiva decent winds keep us sailing and not motoring.

If the wind were to die on a long trip like this we still would not likely motor except in the last couple of days of the trip. We literally have food on board for months, and can make our own water so long as we can charge the batteries. So it the wind stops early in the trip you suck it up, go slow, and wait for breeze. Otherwise you might find yourself at the end of the trip with no windand no fuel to run the generator.

But from a SAFETY perspective, from where we are now we could make it back to land under power. So hopefully a few people will rest more easilynot that we’re about to start motoring.

Sailing is generally faster, more comfortable, quieter and far more pleasant. The engine is an auxiliary power source its really all about the sails.