Brush your teeth!

My buddy Eric left the islands off La Paz, Mexico yesterday on a singlehanded crossing to the South Pacific aboard his Cal 33 SECRET AGENT MAN. The video above is from the Vic Maui race a few years ago on the Santa Cruz 52 VOODOO CHILD. He's the guy in the companionway brushing his teeth as we surf down huge waves at speeds in the mid teens. I'm on the left grinding the kite. The Cal is a very different boat. It's about 2800 miles in a straight line to the Marquesas Islands where he'll make his first landfall - and anyone who has done an ocean cross knows that you never sail in a straight line! If we say 150 miles is a banner day in that boat (which it is - that's a 6.25 knot average!), that's an 18 day trip. The reality is that it could take a month - give or take - depending on weather conditions. Being in a small boat with limited diesel and water capacity, he's got some interesting problems to confront with the doldrums to cross and only a day or so of motoring capability - and he needs to retain some fuel for charging batteries to run the GPS, electronics, running lights, radios, etc! As you can guess, weather routing becomes a prime concern! He has a single sideband radio with a fancy "Pactor" modem turns the digital signal to analog and allows him to send and receive short email messages and weather reports. He's got a shore crew who will update his blog with these emails. The link is on the list to the right of this post, or you can click here. Below is his post from Saturday evening just before departure. Good luck Rone and catch some fish!

Hey guys,

I am in El Cardonal, and am just about to go to bed. I am going to leave tomorrow. I have been really tired doing boat work the last two days. The scope of the voyage made me really want to do a bunch of things that were coming up on the list before being at sea. Cleaning the bottom down here sucks. You get hundreds of baby barnacles all over you, in your hair and ears. But I got the bottom really clean. I checked the rig, and did full maintenance on the engine, including bleeding the fuel system which I learned how to do today. I also put the check valve in the bilge hose which I wish I had done a long time ago because I can now leave the float switch on all the time. Lots more but I have to keep it short. I joined the pacific seafarers net which is a ham net and why I got my license. The propagation is brilliant right now and I am talking to people all over the world on these frequencies... including people with stations in Washington state like we were on the telephone. You guys should get a station at your house it is a really good spot.

Eric