Excerpt
August 27, 1980: 416 miles at sea. Notes from Quarks logbook: Thunderstorms all quadrants. Angry squalls surrounded us. We spent half the night dodging those huge explosions of energy, making little headway towards Honolulu. In the morning, the wind picked up off the beam, driving us at five- to six-knots with 115 jib and double-reefed mainsail. My noon site logged us at 100 miles, having made good 87 towards our destination. It was in and out of heavy weather all day, with the wind from sixty-degrees at twenty- gusting to thirty-knots. We were exhausted. August 28, 1980: 517 miles at sea. Another night was spent dodging squalls, with the wind out of the same direction and about the same strength, with seas four- to six-feet it was slow, hard going. The morning squalls disappeared, leaving behind the wind and sea. About ten oclock at night, a fishing boat appeared off our port quarter. It slid around our stern and sank below the horizon, off our starboard quarter very unusual. We tried to raise them on the radio, with no response. It worried us, but nothing further came of the encounter. August 29, 1980: 666 miles at sea. The wind was holding its direction, but now gusting to thirty-knots, causing the seas to gradually build up to six feet. We averaged two-knots all night.
Our good Timex watch failed three days ago; a new battery did not help. I dropped and broke the backup quartz watch this morning; I was unable to fix either watch. We now took sites using a twelve-dollar dive-watch and a Radio Shack time cube.
September 5, 1980: 1294 miles at sea. Today we opened all the hatches to air the boat, and both of us showered it sure felt good!
The noon site showed 101 versus 95 miles. Finally, Quark was holding forty-five- to fifty-five-degrees magnetic, giving us quite a bit of easting. We must be getting into the Doldrums, as the oceans swell and wind have dropped off. To our east should be Palmyra Island; we were eighty-miles southwest of it. Quark motored again all last night. September 6, 1980: 1409 miles at sea. It was spooky last night. About 1:30 in the morning, I awoke and noticed the sea felt strange. The motion of the boat was different. I went out to the cockpit. It was pitch black ahead, no horizon. Quark was racing along at six knots. I felt several blasts of very warm air, with a faint smell of land, but I neither saw nor heard any breakers. I called Vickie on deck to give a sniff (she's got a better nose than I have). She said she was not sure. Then all of a sudden we got a real blast of hot air, and even I could smell the coral and sand beach! Vickie yelled, "I smell it!" We came about immediately and sailed a reciprocal course for six-miles until the sky started to lighten, then reversed on our original course.
Dawn brought a high overcast with low broken clouds and rainsqualls everywhere. The wind came out of the south at twenty-five, gusting to thirty-five-knots very squally. We never saw a thing! Later, when checking our charts, we thought it might have been Kingman Reef, a low, uninhabited atoll. The experience put us on our toes it scared us. Imagine going aground in the middle of nowhere. Nobody would have ever known where to look or found us.
Quark was scurrying along at five-and-a-half- to six-knots with three reefs in the mainsail; she had a bone in her teeth. Honolulu in eleven days, if our luck holds. No sights today no visible sun.
September 8, 1980: 1577 miles at sea. Angry wind and constant rain have been our companions for the last few days. We are less than fifty-miles west of our north/south rhumb-line course to Honolulu. Quark was 745 miles south of Honolulu at noon we were very tired. September 9, 1980: 1664 miles at sea. We were now running wing and wing as the wind shifted to 210 degrees last night crazy weather! The sky was overcast with a steady rain. Then the wind moved around to the north with rain. No sun, no fix just overcast and unrelenting rain.
Early in the morning, Vickie rolled out of her bunk to announce she was going to bake bread why, I did not know. We seldom eat bread. I think baking on a boat is to a woman what Capistrano is to a swallow it is an instinct. There was much rattling of pans and "damning" of the boat while she fought the constant motion of the sea. Lying in my bunk, I buried my head deeper into my pillow. Finally, there arose the strong, sweet, aromatic essence of freshly baked bread. She opened the oven door and produced a perfect loaf of bread except it was only one inch high and was so tough I later dulled a hacksaw blade trying to slice it.
"It didn't rise," she said with a hurt expression. I thought, That is the end of that. September 10, 1980: 1735 miles at sea. Today Vickie was up again at 5:00 A.M., rattling pans and cursing the boat. "What're you doing this time?" I mumbled while trying to sleep.
"I've got another recipe; this one will work." Once again the cabin filled with that delectable, warm, pungent odor of fresh baked bread. And once again the oven door was opened and out came a perfect loaf of bread except, of course, it was only one inch high.
After much consoling, patting, and clucking, I eventually convinced Vickie not to bake any more bread until we got home (where I could use the loaves as bricks for a patio I was thinking of building). She reluctantly agreed to refrain when she realized how much propane it took to fire one of those bricks uh, I meant loaves.
It was just as well; I only had two hacksaw blades left.
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