A windy night, a calmer day

A good chance, a good day for maintenance.

Maintenance is an ongoing project on board a ship, furthermore having in mind we sail an old tall ship like EUROPA, which is about 115 years old. Some of her sails need mending, her ropes and lines require attention, some equipment needs repair or altogether needs to be replaced by new spares. She carries in her belly almost all that is needed to keep her up and running out at sea: spare parts, replacement gadgets, paints and varnishes, coils and coils of different diameter ropes, steel cable, wood, canvas and sails. A true seagoing ship as she is, with spaces both below and above decks crammed with all those materials, with enough room for provisions for long sea voyages, with the capacity to make drinking water and store it too.

Wind force has eased, the seas have abated as well after yesterday’s blasts at the end of the day. Even though by then we had a spell of harsh conditions again, we managed to avoid the worst of it.

The evening welcomes us with just about 10kn of wind, our speed has decreased to 4kn. Less wind means setting more canvas too. In that manner, during the last 24 hours we have sailed 146 nautical miles, 142 of those in a straight line. Ahead of us, just over 3000 miles to Cape Horn, behind us, 1946 already done since departure.

Speed up, try to dodge the worst of what the weather prediction computer software tells us, look ahead on it for what’s to come. Plan the sailing, sail configuration and routing accordingly after checking the GPS, which gives us our accurate location. On the computer, check the distance sailed in a period of time, have an accurate idea too of the miles left to deal with until the next goal.

Have a good look at the ship’s radar for the next bunch of squalls travelling to cross our way.

All modern-day technological advancements that help navigation. But again, we are sailing the largest ocean on the planet. With its 165,250,000 square kilometres, the Pacific Ocean covers more than a third of the planet’s surface. “A sea more vast than the mind can conceive”, quoting Ferdinand Magellan when he ventured into the unknown open waters west of Patagonia. It was in the 1520s, the trip, one of a kind indeed, the first circumnavigation of the planet.

The vastness of an ocean that was already home to a seafaring culture of great navigators. Captain Cook, during his three expeditions when he sailed the Pacific, realised that many of its scattered islands and small archipelagos were occupied by people who shared a common cultural base. The Polynesians.

Their expansion out at sea began from Taiwan about the year 4000 BC when the ancestral Lapita culture set sail to the ocean, first crossing Melanesia and Micronesia, then facing the unknown and unfathomable open waters of the Pacific.

They used solely skilful “wayfinding” for sailing, methods based on oral tradition and memory, knowledge built over years and years through stories many generations old, repeated word for word. Tales, traditions that teach how to interpret and read the environment and wildlife behaviour. They tell about the night sky; the reactions of swell and waves to the wind, open water or proximity of land; the forecasting of the weather, what the different sorts of clouds mean, how to judge the drift and currents affecting the sailing of their canoes.

They didn’t count on any modern technology, they didn’t even know the use of metal, no compasses as we know them nowadays, no satellite positioning, no computers to show them the models for weather forecasting, no barometers to track pressure changes, no radars to indicate coastlines or passing squalls. And yet, they did it. They sailed eastwards and north and south, from Hawaii to Easter Island, to New Zealand and the tropical islands between them.