T1 Ocean Crossing Entry #5: Half-way to Maui!
Day 7 and 1200 Miles to Go!
The Crew of T1 are half-way to home. Weather has been calm and crew are in good spirits! A few days from now, they should be sighting Hawai’i!
We’ve made it past the halfway mark now, only 1200 miles to go. We celebrated by taking a mid-ocean swim at 16000 ft deep! The dead calm conditions made it spectacular. Swimming in one of the remotest places on earth was a real treat. Just a few feet down the water was quite chilly but on the surface, was a nice sun-baked layer (very close to the same temperatures we have on Maui). After our quick dip, the conditions were perfect to conduct another Manta Trawl. An hour later, we were all shocked at what we found: an alarming amount of micro-plastics, most likely from fishing net-line/s. In an hour we collected over 120 pieces. Quite depressing really when the water looked so pristine.
Spirits have lifted among the crew with the reality of home getting closer each day. Calm days and the wind on our quarter have forced us to go back to motoring 1250 rpm on both engines, keeping us steady at 8-10 kts. The easy seas have allowed us to get more creative in the kitchen, each evening meal is getting more complex (not necessarily more tasty). It’s one of the few creative outlets we have left. Shrimp wrapped in bacon, bacon in pasta, bacon and cheese sauce, bacon burgers, in fact bacon in most everything!
Most of us have read through all our books and as such, we’ve resorted to reading the info on the back of cereal packets. Who would have thought a cereal box could provoke such lengthy conversations with each other!
Just a few more days until Mauna Kea appears on the horizon!
Aloha, Rich and Crew
Written by: Rich Foster