All of these waves are doin there own thing, none of theses waves are quite the same

24 hours into our passage to Magdalena bay and the sea state is all over the place.  Words can not do justice to the experience and picture or video has been unsuccessful at making it easier to share. I am left with only words on how to describe what I see in front of me as I am on watch and Lincon is piloting away. There were times last night and yesterday that Kimi and I were thinking that hand steering was going to be a big part of this leg as it was hard to find a tac that Lincoln would accept and follow.  With the sea coming up from behind us as we run down wind, the waves would send us off course by as much as 50 degrees in both direction. Our trusty auto pilot could not turn the big rudder fast enough to recover with an unbalanced sail patern that we are flying (Jib on whisker poll and mizzen with a preventer) In our last down wind run we tried the spinnaker and found this to work well at about 130 degrees off wind but as it is a cruzing spinnaker and n0t a true down wind tool.  We do not have it out right now. One other reason we are having challenges is that it’s blowing 20-30 knots.  With our sails out and traveling at 5-8 knots we are still registering a wind speed of 17-26 knots.  Back to the waves and what I see.  Im fairly good judge of length and height so I would wager that the more extreme wave top to valley bottom would be 18′. There is no real “average” for that word would make it sound as if there were some consistency. As I have been typing it has settled to a calm 3-5′ sea but last night at midnight to 3 am a batch of 2-5 waves that would be 12′ in height would come at our back side throwing us to and fro. Flo as Kimi calls our boat is doing great at taking the waves in stride by lifting (one cheek) and catching a bit of a ride on the front and the back side. It all reminds me of that Sesame Street song…. One of these people is doing his own thing…All of these people aren’t quite the same….

We went into this cruzing life style with the understanding that it was to be a roller coaster ride of ups and downs.  I still think we’re in the kiddy park and the big coasters are still out there just beyond the clowns, ballons and stuffed animals.

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