Family of Six Sailing Across The Pacific Ocean: PART TWO | S3 E4

In the last episode we embarked on our longest sail yet, the Pacific Ocean. We had trouble with a leaking diesel tank and crossed the equator in the dark. We are still floating out here and in this episode we are tackling some strange weather. We also get a surprise visitor. Keep watching to find out who gives us a buzz. Just looking at the second wave of this system. It does look like a string yeah. But look it's so intense and black in there. Crazy. Looks like night time. Yeah take the edge of it. The fact that that's super dark is making Bella nervous isn't it sweetie? Yeah. It's like the biggest storm of us. It's a way around it though we don't have to go through it so that's what we're what we're doing. Happy birthday dear Finn. Happy birthday to you. Hip hip. Do you think this could be it? It's the trades though aren't they? No. But they're going to get us to the trades and I hope they hang in there. I think that might have been perhaps the wrong question I should say. Isn't it lovely? That we're sailing again. It's like a day of two days. Yeah. We're on it a wee bit we're sort of 40 degrees off the breeze but we got through that band of squalls this morning and now the wind's blowing and it's a fantastic day. It's lovely. Tonight we have been a wee bit more brave and have gone full sails up in the ITCZ. Just gotta watch out for squalls and sudden increases in breeze carrying full canvas. Not a place that you want to be caught with your handstands so I haven't had a whole lot of sleep since I've been on ship. Normally I'll chip away a bit keep an eye on things. Every 20 minutes I'll set an alarm and get up check the radar check the horizon Tonight has been a wee bit different. You can see me still scanning the sky at the moment. Thankfully it's almost Easter so the moon is super full which will be a huge help when it's not behind clouds. Also half an hour ago I was down in the starboard hull gilge because we had rain earlier we had to shut the hatches and the smell of diesel and Ted's room in the starboard aft cabin was like not good so I took our wet vac down there and I've done my best to back up any sort of diesel and it's just we've got to fix it. Anyway it's stopped raining the air flowed back through and it's much better. It would seem our hot water cylinder has like a release valve and it releases a bit of hot water when it gets to temperature and so that mixes with the diesel and runs into the gilge. Anyway this is nice. Hopefully this is the last day in the ITCZ area. Still got showers all around us and hoping that we get through this section in the next 24 hours and hit the trades. It's not been too bad mainly just rain and really confused wind. So what is the ITCZ we're talking about? We're referring to the intertropical convergence zone which is the convergence of the trade winds from the northern hemisphere and the trade winds from the southern hemisphere that create a band of low pressure near the equator which appears as a chain of clouds and storms. So to reach the helpful trade winds we need to move through this band as quickly as possible. Today is a slow day. We're doing some painting. Yes. It's very exciting. We're going to paint our clay creations. Yes. I'm going to make some pickled ginger. And we're in the hope of getting some fish. Yeah I want to pickle ginger with some fish. Ten days no fish yet? Yes. No edible. I'm going to change it though. We're now at the stage where we're doing fuel calcs right as we are about four degrees 48 minutes so we're almost at five degrees which should be tonight south that is and the trades are around six degrees we've got a light breeze at the moment and we now have the four knot rule in play whereas if we're moving four knots or more then we sail if we drop below four we motor. I'm gonna make some pickled ginger. Yum. Yum. So but in the meantime I'm just feeding our sourdough. Which smells delightful. Smells sour. Smells like it's gonna work. So that we can make another one for tonight. Absolutely. Yeah. Our sourdough, current sourdough count would be five. Five. There's been one every other day. Yeah we kind of do half of the day. So how do you feed a sourdough? I'm gonna take some of this out and I'm very rough. I know that a lot of people out there that make sourdough are very diligent about weighing and measuring and I'm, I don't have time for that. You just gotta keep it alive. It gives it character. Yeah it keeps you guessing you know like is it going to turn out or isn't it. And then look feed this one some flour. This one being the starter yeah. Yeah and feed the stuff that I just put out. Feed him as well. Couple of big rough tablespoons full. And then I'll need to add a little bit of water as well. There you go. Oh yum. Yummy. And then do the same with this one. All right then I'm gonna leave this one on the bench to get nice and bubbly for tonight. And this one I'm gonna put his lid back on and leave him over here until it's time to feed him again. Beauty. Yeah. So this guy will get made into a loaf tonight. Yeah. And cooked in the morning. Yes that's our current plan because it's like really hot if you have the oven on in the day or um night. So we've just been putting it on in the morning when most people are still in bed. Nice work. The repair is getting better bizarrely. Like it's not dripping anymore. There is still what I'd call like under under the repair if you touch it you uh kind of get like a an oily finger or thumb. So we've taped very very uh yeah world class. A bit of uh paper towel. Just tape that underneath it at the moment to if there is any sort of drip to absorb that. And I'm cleaning the bilge to try and reduce the smell. So uh we don't have any hardcore chemicals on board. So we've got a bit of vinegar a bit of dish detergent and some lemongrass and it seems to be working. That's a bit of an update. What are we maybe three days after? Discovery. Discovery. It's a good update. It's a good update. We still have plans to fix it better than it is at the moment. But we've still got over half a tank in there right? Of diesel. We'll use it. Which we may. We may not. Otherwise we'll pump it across to uh the uh port side and go from there. Oh this is lovely. Appreciate the effort Dada. Well done everybody. It's dinner time. But we just got pumped. We did just get pumped. That's the biggest squall we've had. It wasn't like. Anyway. No it was it wasn't. It was just because we had full sails up still. And we were cooking on the barbecue and and a squall got us by surprise 100%. Because it just went dark. So we couldn't see it any longer. And uh. It wasn't really on the radar. The wind just picked up so fast. So we're just on the other side of it now. But from the time we went oh gee the wind's picking up. To me getting up to the mast and putting two reefs in straight away. We had 21 knots apparent on the boat. Which is not our fault at all. And we only managed to get one reef in the head sail to start with. Before we needed the winch for the main sail. I think in this sort of situation transiting the ITCZ. We were just talking about it. It's not worth the risk on your gear. To suddenly have that load. So either have your reefs in and be prepared to go slower. Or if you see something come turn into the wind drop your sails and motor behind it. Get to the other side and then set your sails again. Yeah it takes time and all that. But it's a lot less Oh gosh. That was not good. No it was not good. But we're through it. We're through it. Let's hope there's no more tonight. Yeah. Or for the rest of the trip actually. Yeah yeah come on. That'll be it. Yeah. That'll be the one. Last row guys. Yeah. That's it school. We're done ITCZ. Let us out. Mate. I hope so. Yeah. Let's believe so. Eggs. Yum. Archie are you doing your job? Yeah. How often are you, how often are we turning the eggs? Every couple of days. They're lasting. They're day 12 and they're still alive. And they're past their use by date. Oh definitely. Like their stamp date. I know. I know. It looks like we might run out this week though. Yeah I had one that was like half of my hand size. It was huge. A really big one? Yeah. Like it's growing. This is the diesel leak update. I'm not sure how many days it's been but it's been a few. It's certainly subsided. So I'm not sure if that's because the epoxy's cured and had more time to cure. Originally I reckon it was about probably a litre, one to two litres a day. About that like quarter of a gallon is what the leak was. It's now almost non-existent. And as I open here actually I'm not even getting diesel smell so that's quite good. But what I am doing each day is I've set up this little pad thing which is ultimately paper towel and some masking tape just to sit under the repair. And so each day I come along and I have a squiz and it's hardly even wet. It does smell like diesel so it's still you know still weeping out ever so slightly. And so we'll replace that. This guy here is the culprit. This one down here was just in case. All this stuff around here is sort of stuff left over from me trying to fix it with some JB exhaust weld which didn't work. So our fuel level is probably about here at the moment. We're going to bring it down to about here and do a proper repair probably over the next couple of days. That's the idea. So we can pump fuel from the starboard tank to the port tank. Looking paw paw. Oh that looks good. I'll cut those bits out. And what else have we got fruit wise? And these bananas. Those are good for banana cake. Yeah. These oranges but they are getting a little bit tired. Still got some gold in there. Look at that. Oh yes. And the limes. There's some limes down there that are looking good still. These limes are from the same batch as these sort of sad looking ones. Very sad. What was the takeaway? So I read that if you put them in plastic like a plastic ziploc bag and put them in your fridge that they'll last a lot longer. So these ones I kind of split the bag in half. I left these ones out on the bench for a little bit and then I put them in the fridge but they're not in a plastic bag. They're just still in the same fridge. That's crazy. And they are not lasting. These are gold. Yeah I think what happens is they actually start to dehydrate and shrink. Like the juice inside them is still fine but they just look really bad. Whereas these ones they still look green and beautiful don't they? They're going to be delicious on our pool pool. 13. Yeah I think so. 13. It was a bit of a rough night. Squalls and one child with a fever. Where do you get a fever from when you're like at sea for 13 days? I need extra sleep today. Yeah I think dad and I will need extra sleep today. Nothing much else that is needing to be done out here so sleep is all right. Hopefully we're through the other squalls I think. I know. We've got to figure out how to avoid these squalls. It's just one each night at the moment. Yeah and don't show up on the radar because they don't necessarily have rain in them. Sometimes it's just wind. We'll work it out. We've just put a reef in and then it just snapped. Sure did. Far out. Still got the end of it though look. Okay. One end is set up. Oh my goodness. Whatever reason first reef chafes the most. Second reef and third reef are our original reefs. We use second and first probably about as much as each other. I'm going to put an anti-friction ring on it. So next time we're full sails and I can reach properly I'm going to put a soft shackle onto this stainless loop in the sail onto an anti-friction ring and run first reach through that. There you go. Shortened our first reef by about a meter. And you've already shortened it once this trip no? Yeah I did that a few days ago. Yeah. But it didn't snap. I was just trying to pre-empt it and then it went and snapped. But we intentionally put a couple of extra meters I think three extra meters up so I need to. Yeah be on your game figure out exactly how much extra we still have. We've got extra but when the mast, sorry when the sail goes to the top of the mast. Yeah. Full sail then. You don't want it restricting it at all. Yeah. That's a solid half way mum. Celebrate the winds. Look at this. Getting it done. Yes. It's been a cloudy one today but you got to celebrate the winds as we go hey so. Yeah well done. Halfway goodie bag. Oh wow thank you. Yes. That's exciting. Making burger buns for our halfway burger celebration. So the ingredients to this dough is two cups of water, four and a half teaspoons of yeast, one teaspoon of salt, quarter cup of olive oil and five cups of flour and two tablespoons of sugar. You do have to leave the yeast for 10 minutes to activate in the water. So now we're going to leave this for 20 minutes or so to double its size and then we will start making the buns. So now we've let the dough rise a wee bit. Just going to knead it out a little bit. Just some flour on the bench just so it doesn't stick and then we're going to split it up into even sized balls. We put our buns and then we'll put the buns on the tray and let those rise until they're double size and then we'll put them in the oven and they take about 35 to 40 minutes. So we have some milk that we're just going to dab on top of all of them and then we're going to put some sesame seeds on top of them as well. 35 minutes started. So after 35 minutes they are done and they're doubled again and that's what they look like. Yummy, favorite burger buns. Yum. Happy halfway to us. Oh my gosh, how are you going to eat that? Happy halfway to us. We made it 2,000 miles. Closest we've been team. All right, something that's quite cool and super simple is this is our down below nav station chart plotter if you like. It's just an iPad but it mirrors up top. Probably the coolest thing is we can adjust our heading on screen without having to go up to the help. So at the moment I'm on watch doing a wee bit of work and keeping an eye out forward with a forward facing nav station and just tweaking our courses as needed. So super simple. Could it be fancier? Yes, you need it. Probably not. Anyway, we're having a good 24-hour run. It's awesome. helicopter came from. We found out that the big tuna fishing trawlers use these helicopters to search for fish. I saw something pop up on AIS but this was the helicopter that came to visit and I was looking at it and then it said he was coming at us at 85 knots and I was like what? What vessel does 85 knots? That's crazy. We've got it up and we're doing really well. Yeah, we're a wee bit like weary so we're both sitting up here watching it like a whore. Because the cloud that's around and the spools that have come in have come in really quickly we're like oh what if the wind picks up really quick and we're not in control and I don't know it's just a precious sail. Oh yeah and I don't, I don't want that scenario. I'm trying to get it So my rule of thumb is 10 knots apparent. I'm like I'm keen to get that down. By that point we're doing about 7 to 8 which means we've got 17 to 18 true. I'll tell you what though, it's hard to argue with. We've been flopping around all morning. It's been awful. We've been doing 5 knots. 5 knots with main and genoa wing on wing and it's just been, yeah. Anyway, big reds up. Yeah, you were supposed to have an afternoon nap. Yeah, I'm gonna have one. I will and you'll just give me a yell if you see 10 knots apparent and I'll be springing out of my nap like no one's business to get this thing down. In this episode we receive a request for help from a distressed vessel and we see land for the first time in three weeks. See you then! Thank you mum! It's to save all your beautiful t-shirts. I'm gonna be wearing that later.