Toau to Hilo: Day 17

Monsoon Trough? What is that???
It sounds like a place on a board game that you need try to roll doubles and avoid.
According to the gribs, we weren't supposed to be anywhere near the one looming a few degrees away...but there we were, weaving our way through thunderous clouds and shifty, blustering winds and rain, rain, rain. Who knows if this was the edge of the trough or maybe more ITCZ following us along like the pesky, neighborhood troublemaker that just won't get lost.

We have been in twice daily SSB communication with our friends on Nakia, comparing notes on our crossings and giving position reports and daily updates and while we were laughing with Nakia's skipper, John, about the sometimes completely unexpected, weird weather that we get, compared to what was forecast, he told us that one of the weather satellites that's in charge of gathering data for these gribs we all rely on, actually went off line like a year ago! I guess there are supposed to be two Government controlled devices up there, noodling around in the stratosphere, that are designated for CIVILIANS like us, and when one went down, well, Washington needed a place to make some cuts anyway...

Scatterometer-equipped satellite diagram (borrowed from Wikipedia)

So, about once a WEEK the working hunk of junk in the sky scoots past our spot on its orbit around our blue marble and feeds the computer models with accurate, current sat. data and the rest of the time...it just makes stuff up. A "best guess" version of the gribs, based on models deduced from averages about what SHOULD be out here.
This all just goes to prove the long-standing, salty, sailor, saying: "If you want to know the weather-go look out the window".

(We might also want to ask our local congressmen to launch a new scatterometer-equipped satellite!)

We listen on on the HAM radio net and are disturbed to hear concern has been raised for a boat who has missed their daily check in on their Iridium phone. Someone's worried parents have alerted the fleet and we all listen in as their Boat name is called out over the radio waves...
there is no answer.

I think about them often, during the dark night.
Many things can happen out here; thoughts one does not entertain for long, when standing guard over precious, sleeping children, nestled in their berths.

As the hours pass to dawn, I stand on deck and watch the sunrise over a lavender-grey, tumbling sea.

The wind has been hooting along above 20 knots all night, and every eight seconds, massive, dark rollers, the size of semi-trucks, barrelled down on Pura Vida. Their foaming white crests dangle menacingly over her rail for a moment. They seem intent on intimidating, making you feel that any one will surely come crashing aboard and engulf us in its salty maw but our faithful old girl ignores them utterly. With a smart twitch of her white transom, she tucks them under her wide keel and chugs along. She reminds me of a sturdy little white duck. No matter how much crazy wildness is going on around her, this is her element and she rolls on, completely nonplussed.

God breaks open his box of spray paint cans and tags the sky in neon.

I look around with my jaw hanging open, no matter how many of these things I see out here, it just boggles the mind, that every one is original.

The past few days have been pretty sleepless and Jon and I are both beyond exhausted but it is these odd hours, a sky full of cloud formations defying comprehension, this bullying sea and the complete and utter audacity of us actually being out here...that makes your blood rush with your own boldness.

A rainbow arcs out of the black cloud off my leeward rail and looking forward from the transom, my view, is our tightly reefed sails, taut against the fresh wind, the sun-kissed waves flying by and Pura Vida, literally, sailing under a rainbow.

What a crazy way to meet a day, this is.

In our morning check in, we hear the missing boat has reported to the fleet, 
vessel and crew are fine.

All is well.

We are relieved and life goes on, as it has for seventeen days and will do for another four or five more...

There is no moment to let down-not until that anchor drops, somewhere roughly 482 miles ahead of us.