1579 nautical miles due west of Santa Cruz, CA
Typically, summer brings a large stable high pressure
zone to the Eastern North Pacific Ocean.
Currents and winds swirl clockwise, circling up past Japan, eastward
across the Aleutians, down the North American coast, and back along the
equator. At longitude 155 W, we are
sailing the western edge of this high at a snail's pace of 3.2 kts. (3.7
mph). We could walk that fast! It isn't speedy, but as we go 24/7, we will
make around 75 miles today. It will be
several days before we are back in the wind, but we hope not to use the motor.
This is the edge of the area known as The Great Garbage
Patch. When we traveled the South
Pacific, we saw some bit of trash such as a grocery bag or a plastic bottle,
almost daily and plastics were splattered on atoll beaches. Here in the North Pacific, we see plastic
almost at any time, even though we are only on the edge of the patch. We look out and see fishing buoys, bottles,
bags, pieces of rope (we had to pull one out of the water generator blades),
packing peanuts, and smaller unidentifiable pieces floating just under the
surface. Very few people have actually
traveled through the center of the patch, as there is almost never any wind there. Motoring through an area that large and
polluted would be problematic. Catching
a line in the prop could be a nightmare.
Imagine having to dive under the boat mid-ocean to cut lines! With six five gallon fuel cans strapped to
the side of the boat and a 35 gallon tank, we have a 65 gallon fuel
capacity. Motoring would cost precious
fuel and possibly cause prop trouble, so, we sail ever so slowly as we edge by
this high. We are led by our parasailor
spinnaker which billows gracefully before us.
Research tells us that China is the greatest contributor
to the patch. Americans produce far more
trash per person than any nationality but we also have the best recycling and trash disposal system in the world. However, we saw scant evidence of recycling in
the towns and cities of the west coast as we traveled down it and almost none
in Hawaii. Most places had residential
recycling, but opportunities for recycling for businesses and public areas was
non-existent. It reminds me to be more
diligent about reduce, reuse, and recycle.
It is getting cooler as we travel north. Ocean temperature was 86 in the Tuamotus, but
is 76 here and getting cooler by the day.
We have started adding layers of clothing to night watch, but day is
still hot. Aside from the plastic, the
sea is also scattered with thousands of small man of wars, their bulbous bodies
blown along by their tiny sails with stinging tendrils trailing below. A
large school of fish are feeding on the surface. We can't tell if they are striking the man of
wars, the packing peanuts, or something unseen.
We drift quietly on at our snail's pace, saddened by the
state of the sea.
Portugese Man-o-War:
The Portuguese Man o’ War, also known as the Bluebottle, is a
jellyfish-like marine invertebrate of the family Physaliidae. Despite
its outward appearance, the Man o’ War is not a jellyfish, but a
siphonophore. Siphonophorae differ from jellyfish in that they are not
actually single creatures, but colonial organisms made up of many minute
individuals called zooids. Each of these zooids is highly specialized,
and, although structurally similar to other solitary animals, they are
attached to one another and physiologically integrated to the extent
that they are incapable of independent survival.
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