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8/5- 1000 hours: Winds clocking to the N. My right shoulder a bit sore from pulling upwind so hard and for so long. This trip is like working a construction job 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for forty days. Then when I come home, I have wet clothes on, a wet bed, wet sheets, and a wet pillow. All salty of course! I am not pushing myself now, `cause I know it is too early. I want to have energy to finish strong, with no injuries, and not trying to cover mistakes. 28*01 N 124*13 W 2100 hours The winds and seas became different. Winds came up and the seas have become very confused. First sight of the moon. Got in 11 hours. Feel good. Very rocky. I am glad I am not claustropobic, nor pron to being seasick. How is my writing? 8/6- 0700 hours. Sleeping beauty I am. Getting used to sleeping wet, rocky, noisy, and wild. Had a couple of waves really nail me last night. Being inside here is like being in a wood box with someone hitting it with a sledgehammer. Wild. Noisy. I know the hardest part about this journey is the survival factor! How much can you take? So far alot. It`s sunny and I notice it getting warmer.
1400 hours: Big swell from NW & N combining out here. Sometimes 25' faces on the waves. Really hard to sail `cause it's also very gusty. 10-25 Kts. Doing ok. Going to put kite back up, see if that helps.
2100 hours: High seas. Chef preparing noodles with parmasean cheese, tabouli, and cajun spike. How`s that? The day turned out great! The huge, rolling waves are still here though. In fact , I went off the top of one of them and it must have been a 25 foot drop. Hang on to your belly! Took an hour to get the kite up. It has seven strings and they must like orgies, `cause they are always tied up together. Some vulgar words were used to put them in their place. Sat in the seat for a bit today. Felt great! Will be using that alot these next few weeks. The kite is pulling me downwind at 1-2 knots and the sail is rigged so that if a big wave crashes on us, we be safe! Gonna eat, sleep, and then sail. 8/7- 1600 hours. Well that swell that I thought was out of the NW, turned to be from the SE. There is still a N swell though. When they meet, it is a huge 25-30` rolling mass of water. These are not dangerous, because they just roll along and they do not break at all. Present winds are 10 knots, N. One thing that big waves do, is suck and blow wind. So sometimes I have 5 knots of wind, then I have a 15 knot blast of gusty wind. Makes it hard to sail. 27*14`N 125*57`W
8/9: Today is the 4th day of the big SE swell. It is strange though that the north swell is still here, but no strong north winds. The barometer has been around 29.95, now it is 30.05. If the hurricane is that big, I would indirectly feel some of its winds, but I haven`t. As far as a N/S position, I`m only 350 miles north of Hawaii. The high pressure that dominates the Pacific Ocean should not give me light winds this far south. Maybe this El Nino is really messing up the whole Eastrn Pacific Region. It`s another grey day outside, 3rd in a row. Lucky I have plenty of food. Could stay out here another six weeks. Do I want to, no way, I need a beer.
1230 hours: Time for lunch. Munchin` on dried fruit. Part of my thought pattern to make this trip/isolation easier is to look back at the whalers that plied the Pacific - Alaska and Siberia looking for whales. They had a tough life. How about the missionies that came from New England to Hawaii? They sailed down and around S. America and had to pass Cape Horn. Sometimes it would take two weeks to make it around that point. Plus the missionaries were not sailors at all. Seasickness is what killed a lot of them. The Hawaiians sailed from Tahiti through hurricane zones only using wave patterns and observations of stars. I got it made. Lazy-boy, trampoline, silk sheets, stove, GPS navigation, H2O maker, too much food, stereo(equipped with Led Zep, U2, Stones, Seal, Alice Cooper, Frampton, Pink Floyd, ZZ Top, Sinatra, etc.) Even the great navigators of the world paved real new territory - Magellion, Cook, La Perouse, Columbus, and Bligh`s travels. Amazing. It would be awesome to go back right now to 200 years ago and have a pirate ship come sailing by. What a trip. I bet we would drink some rum together. I`d sail them to some beach named "Dig Me" and buy them a beer. There used to be ships (sailing) that would sail between California and Hawaii delivering sugar, cattle, and goods. Even one of those ships would trip if they saw DS II. 1500 hours. "The movie will begin in five moments", the mindless voice announced. "All those unseated will await the next show". We filed slowly, languidly into the hall. The auditorium is vast and silent. As we were seated and darkened, the voice continued, " The program for this evening is not new, you have seen this entertainment through and through. You have seen your birth, your life, and death, you might re-call all of the rest. Did you have a good world when you died, enough to base a movie on?" Jim Morrision. 26*03 N 127*43 W.
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