The Pacific lives up to its name.

From the J World Radio News: The Pacific lives up to its name.

Yes indeed. Well, at least the part of the Pacific that is currently the venue for the 2009 Transpac race. There is a lot of activity many thousands of miles away, but that seems to have disrupted our little party way down here, much closer to the Equator. Team J World (and the rest of the fleet) have been working hard in some really trying conditions. Very, very light breezes have made going painfully slow. Every mile (in fact, every boatlength) seems to take a tremendous amount of focus and patience. There is encouraging news, though, as today we started moving along with a bit more breeze. And knowing that the weather patterns should be changing in the next 24 hours and that boats which made gains now should reap increasing rewards kept us working. It seems to be paying off. We have been holding a strong second place in our class, even taking over the lead for a day…

On board, there is a rumor sweeping the crew about a Sea Mall with an impressive food court. The EPIRB has been re-wired to become the “Emergency Pizza Indicating Radio Beacon,” designed to expedite pizza pie delivery to the remote aquatic regions. And thru it all, Bill just sits on the transom, staring back towards the mainland, continually muttering (occasionally hollering) something about Blueberries…

We have been seeing tons of these small jelly fish, no bigger than a pack of cards, with their little sails up (luckily, none have actually succeeded in going faster than we are!). If you look closely, odds are you’ll see some of the small white (albino??) crabs that scoot across the surface of the water. Not sure what they are doing out here, over 500 miles from the nearest patch of land, and in water some 60,000 feet deep! Occasionally, flying fish surprised by our presence (and probably our keel), take flight, arcing away from our bow, but other than that, it’s pretty lonely out here…

Other happenings: The raspberry crumble served up at 3am last night seems to have been a hit. Nothing like some tasty treats to take make the graveyard shifts a little more pleasant. We made a sacrifice of Rum to the wind gods today; it wasn’t much, but we are hoping to get credit for the fact that it was 100% of the rum aboard. Josh has been threatening to light all sorts of things on fire in honor of the holiday. Luckily his hurricane proof lighter seems to have run out of butane… can’t image how that would have happened…

Anyway, late at night now and I am taking the chance to catch up the latest weather faxes, and we are all cheered at the fact that the big spinnaker went up this afternoon, and we are able to fly it from puff to puff… and although the holes out here are still big, it’s looking like the worst is behind us. We are all looking forward to surfing in the tradewinds in the upcoming days…

More later, and happy Fourth of July from all of us out here at our quiet outpost at 20 25’N by 126 35’W…

Wayne Zittel and the J World Team