{"id":1765,"date":"0202-04-24T11:21:00","date_gmt":"0202-04-24T01:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/?p=1765"},"modified":"2025-06-28T11:41:55","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T01:41:55","slug":"current-affairs-drifting-west-in-good-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/?p=1765","title":{"rendered":"Current Affairs: Drifting West in Good Company"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the gooseneck repaired and the sails once again doing their thing, we settled into what can only be described as a low-drama westward slide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For a full week, from 17 to 24 April, *Sunny Spells* glided along in the company of a generous current, light trade winds, and the kind of quiet routine that long passages are made of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The North Equatorial Current was firmly in our corner, pushing us along with up to 2 knots of extra speed over the ground. Combined with breeze in the 8\u201312 knot range, we regularly made 6\u20137 knots without touching a line. Day after day of this \u2014 no squalls, no sail changes, no stress. Just reading, firmware tweaking, eating well, and checking how far we\u2019d drifted while asleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the 19th we were deep in \u201cmiles quietly earned\u201d mode. The kind of sailing where you forget you\u2019re underway until you check the chartplotter and realize you\u2019ve made 150 miles without trying. No other boats, no land in sight, just the soft hiss of water past the hull and the occasional slap of a lazy swell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From the 21st onward, we began seeing more signs of equatorial life: a handful of flying fish in the scuppers, a few visits from dolphins, and a rising sense that the Gal\u00e1pagos weren\u2019t impossibly far away anymore. The full moon faded, and the skies turned darker at night, which made for stargazing of the \u201cplanetarium\u201d variety. Not bad when you\u2019re brushing your teeth under Orion\u2019s Belt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the 23rd and 24th, the wind was softening slightly but the current held steady. Boat speed dropped to the low 5s, but we didn\u2019t mind. With good power from the sun, steady progress west, and an autopilot that hadn\u2019t glitched since we left Martinique, we were firmly in the groove. We began looking ahead to landfall \u2014 not quite in range yet, but real now. It\u2019s a strange transition: watching Gal\u00e1pagos grow from an idea on the horizon into an actual waypoint on the chart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There will be more drama in time \u2014 there always is \u2014 but this stretch was a rare treat: seven days of silence, sun, and slow, steady progress west across an empty ocean. We\u2019ll take it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the gooseneck repaired and the sails once again doing their thing, we settled into what can only be described as a low-drama westward slide. For a full week, from 17 to 24 April, *Sunny Spells* glided along in the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[215],"class_list":["post-1765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ocean-sailing-passages","tag-pacific-crossing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgewA-st","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1765"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1771,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions\/1771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svsunnyspells.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}