Music to My Ears

Pandora has a way of telling you that she’s moving along nicely.  At just about 7 kts, she begins to hum, a sort of harmonic vibration that you can hear and feel throughout the boat.
I have no idea what the source of this noise is but it is very consistent and depends on the speed of the boat moving through the water, not the speed of the wind.

As 7+ kts is a very nice turn of speed for Pandora, the sound is very much “music to my ears.”

The perennial question that everyone has, including me, when we are on passage, is “when will we get there?”  Of course, as our speed is dependent on the strength and direction of the wind, asking that question is sort of like asking “how much does a car cost.”

Another key question, beyond how fast we are going, is “are we going toward our destination,” which is often not the case at all.

From when we left St Thomas, three days ago, we were basically sailing due north, with the goal of staying east of some nasty thunderstorms that were moving across our path for several days.  A course that wasn’t really toward our destination.

Going the wrong way isn’t great but it’s way better than being stuck in nasty thunderstorms for hours or days.   I will say that getting struck by lightening or being knocked down by 50 MPH winds, makes me very nervous and while a lightening strike is rare, the thought of having all of our electronics fried while far from shore is pretty scary.

Anyway, by heading north for the first few hundred miles, we were able to stay to the east of the storms.  After they passed, we turned a bit farther to the NW and toward our destination.

We still have a long way to go, nearly 1,000 miles, but it is nice to at least be heading in the mostly right direction.  And, we continue to be heading there at a good speed.  I mentioned that we made nearly 190 miles on our first day and I was surprised to see that yesterday’s run was nearly 180 miles.  Very respectable.

So, with about 25% of the run done, and good a good wind forecast for much of the remainder of the trip, it’s beginning to look like we could end up in Deltaville sometime next Wednesday.

Happily, nothing more has broken and the repair on the jib outhaul seems to be holding for now.  With us moving along on a broad reach, the pressures on the rig aren’t all that great, even though the wind speeds are in the low 20s much of the time.

All of this is good as a broad reach is a comfortable point of sail and with the wind in the low 20s, it’s strong enough to keep us moving along nicely.

I guess that the biggest issue for us right now is that we forgot to get cookies so the supply is pretty limited.  I do have a cake mix and as the temperatures seem to be dropping as we get farther north, perhaps I can whip up a cake or cupcakes in the next few days.

Pandora is happy, humming away and that, along with the possibility of cupcakes, is music to Pandora’s crew’s ears.

So far, so good and pointing in the right direction.