OUR SECRET WEAPON:THUNDER CHICKEN

Day 9th – July 15th

2 am on deck – an uneventful watch with the exception of a deep sea vessel
that passed Turicum’s stern not too far in the distance. We first saw a
single light appearing every now and then over the horizon, then a second
white lite and a red light at which point we knew it was a large boat. From
the time we first saw the vessel until she crossed our stern less than half
an hour passed. This is one of only handful of big ships we spotted since
being off-shore.

6 am – the smell of fresh pancakes greets us as we get off watch. What a
treat.

We just passed another interesting way point. The point where we were the
furthest from land on this trip: More than 1,000 miles from any land: Just
over thousand miles to go to Hawaii and over thousand miles off the coast of
Southern California. This is a long way from anywhere.

The afternoon greats us with splendid weather, a nice breeze and we even saw
the first flying fish. They carefully avoided  landing on deck, wisely so as
they might very well end up in a frying pan. The sea color changed from a
very dark blue to indigo with sprinkles of white caps.

Sailing in the trade winds comes with a new weather phenomena: Squalls.
Black clouds and rain repeatedly approach Turicum and each time we manage to
keep them on our port corner for a while we get a nice boost with wind
speeds of typically 20 to 25 knots. A light sprinkling of rain is a welcome
cooling off after baking in the Pacific sun.

Everybody was looking forward to homemade Shepherd’s pie yesterday. What a
treat . . . . with full bellies we head for our bunks.

I suddenly woke up as I got tossed violently from one side of the bunk to
the other. Immediately, I noticed the motion of the boat was much stronger
than usual and from the voices on deck I could tell the wind picked up
considerably. No sooner did I get my eyes open as I heard John yelling “ALL
HANDS”. Out of our bunks we jumped, get our PFDs & harness on and half
asleep we struggled on deck while Turicum is rolling fiercely in the waves
kicked up by a stronger than usual squall. 30+ knots and big waves threw
Turicum almost out of control. The spinnaker pole dipped into the water and
once again, Jake (the downwind running spinnaker) jumped free of the pole.
Unrestrained, his big shoulders would fill with air and then collapse with a
painful bang each time, having us worried he would get shredded to pieces by
the gusts or wrap himself around the forestay.

With all crew on deck, Jake came down, up went our genoa and on we sailed
under control again. A job tremendously well done by our foredeck crew John,
Mike & Dave. A quick damage assessment showed no harm was done and our
skipper decided to get our secret weapon out: Thunder Chicken. A strongly
built, narrowly cut spinnaker - perfect for these conditions. No time was
lost and up goes the new sail.

Red watch gets down for some well-deserved rest and Black watch takes over
the deck. For the first hour or two the wind stayed around 25 knots and then
settled around 20 kts making it a comfortable ride. The squalls kept on
coming, but none as dramatic as the one that brought down Jake.

It’s 2 am now and we hand over the cockpit to Black watch. Good night.

Aloha!