Day 15...Got my gills wet!!!!!

June 24th 2009 6:47 pm
Position:
22 Deg 26.68 N
153 Deg 45.82 W
2300 miles traveled, under 200 miles to Honolulu.

Today started with our second encounter with a passing ship, only this time is was 3 am and I was on watch. The “Horizon Reliance”, a 237 meter cargo ship in route to Hawaii, passed within 6 miles of us crossing our stern. It goes to show the level of things that rank as notable when you are 14 days at sea…”hey look, a boat, yipee!”

Later as we were discussing the current conditions, the captain decided to swap sails and go for the spinnaker again…but he also decided that we needed to learn how to set the sea anchor….sea anchor???? Does that mean what I think??? I get to go DIVING!!!!

The seas had diminished to a 6 -8 ft swell and the winds were down to 20 knots so I finally got a chance to check out the full underwater video system with lights and everything on a scuba dive.

I gave Capt Moore the honors of the first chance to check out the Camera Mask provided by Liquid Image Inc.


Joel and I suited up for our first blue water dive of the voyage while Jeff, Charlie, Nicole and Christiana opted for a snorkel. 200 miles from the nearest land is a pretty cool place to be able to dive. I think we had about 12,000 ft of deep water below us so we still had to make sure we didn’t drop anything…yes my new housing was tethered to me.

The first thing I noticed was there was a lot of debris hovering at various depths all around me…

This is very concerning, we aren’t even in a high concentration zone and I am seeing the same amount of plastic underwater as I saw in 2002 when I was in the middle of the Gyre. I never had to look for more than a few seconds before spotting another piece of debris floating past me....Nylon string, plastic bottles, and parts of plastic bags. It was disgusting!!! I am afraid at what I will find when we finally make it to the collection zone area across the Dateline.

I did get some good footage of a few pelagic jelly species.

Even with the sea anchor however, the boat was moving pretty good in the wind so we had to keep our wits about us and not "wander" too far away. We always kept the sea anchor in our visual range. I was just so happy to get into the water after so many days being "on it"!!!!

After our romp in the ocean, we set the spinnaker and got back on course for Honolulu, hoping to arrive sometime Friday. I spent a little time pulling in yet another Mahi Mahi…that makes 8 we have caught. No plastic in this one. After sitting down to a meal of, you guessed it, Mahai Mahi, we had a brief bit of craziness when the spinnaker blew out the tack and had to come down. It was made for a few tense moments!!! So now we are heading wing and wing with the staysail and Genoa.
Good thing we are going to Hawaii…we can get all this fixed. Ahh the life aboard a sailing vessel!!!