Blog from Family Affair

by Paul Michael, July 16th, 2012

We pushed hard through the night with our asymmetric spinnaker.  The weather was squally and rough.  We continued to put a lot of side loading on our rudder and at night it began to complain with a heavy groan of parts not rubbing well together.  Tom inspected it the best we could while underway and the prognosis most likely is that some shivs are working loose.  The noise slowly dissipated in the night and the rudder felt normal for the rest of the day.  We plan to lower it while at anchor in Lahaina to inspect it before our return trip.

The morning started off with beautiful sunny weather and more great sailing.  Sharina drove for most of my shift and every time I checked in with her during the 4 hours, she was grinning from ear to ear. We had an albatross that came in close and circled us a few times.  We were able to get a really close look at it.  They are amazing birds and masters of aerodynamic slope soaring very low over the ocean swells.  They stay airborne for most of their adult life, landing only to mate and raise their young.  Many of them have stomachs filled with small pieces of plastic junk that we find floating past us and it can be lethal to them. 

If there is one take-away from this trip that I wish to share with my friends on shore, it is to avoid single-use plastics.  Recycle when possible.  Be personally responsible for the products you purchase and use.  It makes no sense for something that serves us only a month or two yet lasts for hundreds of years.  These complex hydrocarbon chains of polymers are not easily broken down into smaller molecules.  Furthermore, once they do, they mimic chemicals required by life on earth with damaging consequences to an unknown level.  In layman's terms, plastics suck.  Some Pacific Island beaches contain more plastic sludge on their shores than coral sands.  It is one of humanities most daunting time bombs.

We've been seeing some patterns to the junk that we sail past.  One curious item has been a lot of red light bulbs.  They all look in relatively good shape.  I asked Dennis back home to do a Google search and he says they're tsunami debris from Japan and that a lot of them are now washing up on the beaches of Oregon.   I guess the red light districts of the world are lit by factories in Japan.  Dennis joked that barefoot beach combing will be ruined for a while with all that broken glass.

The remoteness of our location is something to contemplate.  We are nearly 1,000 miles from anything.  Here there is no governance, no society, no culture, no police/fire/medical support.  Nothing that we take for granted every day.  We are starting to long for unavailable things although some of us came up with funny answers to what we miss most.  Tom said milk.  Greta said cottage cheese.  Dave was on the foredeck with his cell phone and joked, "hey, I've got three bars!"   From the helm I replied, "awesome... order some pizza and have it delivered!"

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