We have now been at sea for eight days and have settled into a pretty good routine. People often ask sailors if they get bored on long ocean passages. Frankly, being a crew of two, it is hard to imagine becoming too bored as the days pass surprisingly fast. And each day brings new opportunities for learning based on the weather, sea state, and any issues that have arisen with your boat so no boredom allowed!
We maintain a four hour watch cycle and one of us is always at the helm and on watch, 24/7. Because of this and the need to keep fatigue away, some of our time off watch is obviously sleeping, especially at night and in the early morning. Usually from late morning until after dinner is the time we are both up and spending time together as well as doing the daily chores. Every day we need to complete the following chores and checks:
Weather check – We check weather throughout the day and when the forecast updates on our weather sites.
Routing check- We look at our anticipated route and make adjustments based on wind, currents, or advice from Jamie and Behan at Sailing Totem whom we check in with daily.
Chafe and deck check – We inspect our sails,rigging, mast, deck level fittings.
Bilge pump check-We ensure bilge pumps are working correctly.
Battery management- We check our power levels, put out our portable solar panels as needed.
Water management- We run the watermaker daily to refill our water tanks.
Fuel management- Bob computes our fuel use and we also refill the fuel tanks from our jerry cans as needed.
Engine check -We check oil/coolant levels, bolts on mounts, and alternator brackets.
Communications check- We make sure our VHF and Starlink are on and functioning.

Provision check on perishables – We check our fresh produce baskets to see if anything is starting to over ripen or needs to be used that day.
Trash management: We keep our paper, food waste, plastics, and cans/bottles in separate containers. Each day we empty the food and paper waste that is appropriate overboard and condense the other items as much as possible.
Laundry: We do a load of laundry each day in our Scrubba bag. We don’t use our washer underway as it needs the boat to be pretty flat or it will use a lot of water. Instead we bought a Scrubba bag and we do laundry the old fashioned way. It works pretty well actually!
Apart from our chores there is also meal preparation. We have our meal calendar as a guide but will vary from that depending on our fresh produce that we need to use or if there is too much rolling to use the stove or cook safely. For fun, we both like to read and listen to music or podcasts. We also do Wordle, Spelling Bee, and the NYT crossword daily! We check in with our kids daily (definitely a benefit of Starlink☺️) We also try to put up some updates on social media for family and friends. On days when it is calm we get much more time to do the fun things but if it is a squally day we may not get to do much more than eat and sleep. Hopefully, this passage will live up to its name as the Coconut Milk Run, named this as it is known as a nice downwind passage in the warm weather of the tropics and the consistent breezes of the trade winds. Just waiting for those consistent winds to kick in. More soon from the middle of the Pacific!

Our cockpit bin with our daily chore list.
Produce baskets to check for items to use that day.
Different containers to condense each type of waste onboard.
Crushing the cans is a great way to take out any frustrations!
Getting ready to do the laundry in our Scrubba!
It’s not a bad leg workout!
Hanging it to dry and hoping the squalls stay away.
Naps are essential!
Fixing things, like the whisker pole,is also a daily occurence.
Doing a little grilling for dinner
Reading is a great way to pass the time
Enjoying God’s creation is the best part.