Dominic and I fell into birding as a hobby during a holiday trip to Panama a few years ago. We spent Christmas in Bocas del Toro, an archipelago on the eastern side of the nation extending into the Caribbean Sea. We had a a few days of pristine, postcard worthy weather, but after five days of continuous rainfall we decided to return to the slightly drier Pacific coast. On a whim, we booked a room near the canal in a defunct radar tower that had recently been converted into a hotel. The hotel was a cylindrical, and we had to walk a few hundred spiraling stairs to get to our modest, utilitarian room. Our shower window looked into the canopy of the rainforest. Ascending a few more flights, the stairs opened to central living and dining space, and by climbing a ladder one could enjoy the fantastic panoramas offered by the roof, a viewing deck circling the radar itself, an enormous sphere at least 200 feet in diameter.

Read More

From this angle, you can see why they’re so easy to identify. They’re the largest of the boobies, and have a white body, with elegant, crisp black tail and flight feathers, and a decorative black mask about their eyes. They’re graceful in flight, usually staying about 10 meters above the water, sometimes circling the boat, sometimes resting in the swell, sometimes diving to fish like pelicans. This morning, we think we spotted two juveniles souring through the squalls. They’re full sized, with muddled brown wings and a white nape.

Read More

The singular geographical landmark in our route from Ensenada to the Marquesas was Isla Guadalupe, and we passed it a day and half after leaving Mexico. Since then, we’ve been using meteorological landmarks, conditions of the wind and ocean, to navigate the seas. First we were in the northerly trades off the coast, and then we road the northeasterly trades like a highway into the Pacific. We’re currently experiencing one of the more prominent meteorological trends of note, the ITCZ.

Read More

Since the water rose above 70 degrees, Dominic has patrolled the boat once a day with the sole intention of tossing flying fish back into the water. Except for one that landed in the cockpit this morning that we were able to return to the sea missing only a few scales, they are all long dead by the time he finds them. He finds somewhere between five and a dozen, babies the size of dragonflies and six inch adults with wings that extend the length of their bodies. We watch them skimming the water all day. Some are single long jumpers, others spray from crests in schools of 50 or more, escaping a predator or an uncomfortable wave. Dominic watched a fish fly over the 14 foot beam of the boat, surviving unscathed from a minor collision with the rigging upon descent. Can they sense Helios and her motion through the water? Are the ones we find scattered on the deck the losers of a competitive dare—flying fish playing chicken? Or is the final impact a rude surprise that comes not knowing they have leapt from the water for the last time?

Read More

We have had a very exciting 48 hours—yesterday we put 149 nautical miles behind us! The winds have not only held but continue to grow stronger. We currently have a steady 35 knots behind us and gusts up to 45. As the winds have grown we’ve reduced our canvas from the jib and the code zero, to the jib and the main, then the staysail and double reefed main, and now we are flying just our staysail. We’ve been trying to balance maximizing our mileage with not putting too much stress on our sails and rigging, and staying comfortable ourselves. Comfort is tricky, because as the wind grows so do the seas. So, every four or five minutes the boat pitches back and forth with a great deal of drama. Our possessions are secure at this point, but we can hear pots and and pans going sliding, cups clanking, and one’s feet are apt to go slipping out from underneath them.

Read More

We are one week in and thrilled to finally have the north easterly trades blowing behind us. We’ve had steady winds between 20 and 30 knots for the last 30 hours and moving 6+ miles per hour has never felt so good. In addition, the weather has turned balmy, the nightly mid-sea sunsets are spectacular, and right now the crescent moon is sinking behind some very lazy clouds as the phosphorescence sparks in our wake.

Read More

The rudder remains quiet and happy, and Dominic is expertly adjusting the sails to accommodate flukey and variable winds we’ve been having. Currently we have the cruising code zero and the jib wing on wing headed south west with a northerly wind behind us. Aside from a few spells of totally dead wind (between 3 and 4 am this morning, the wind vane was doing 360’s and we were headed north at .1 knots…yuck) we’ve been having excellent sailing and been making about 120 nm per day; we’d like to be at 150, but we’re satisfied as conditions are calm and we’re comfortably hanging out—reading novels, watching movies, playing cards, and eating up the last of the delicious chicken mole we stocked up on in Ensenada.

Read More

Days 2 & 3 at sea have brought on many firsts. This morning was our first time raising the Cruising Code Zero sail at sea. The winds have been light and fluky westerlies between 6-13 kts, so sailing with our full main and jib on a beam reach our boat speed dropped to a dismal 3.6 kts over night. So this morning we raised Big Blue, our new nickname for the CCZ - after the color and because we already know many jubilant cheers of that theme from our days at Cal. Since then we’ve been cruising at a very comfortable, very stable, 5.5-6 kts ever since. It’s also the first time we are completely clear of Mexico and headed directly for the Marquesas; the first (and hopefully only) time we passed our point of previous return; the first time Dominic has seen an aircraft carrier underway; and the first time we radioed a cargo ship and asked them to please divert their course 4 degrees to starboard to keep a safer passing distance.

Read More