March 21, 2010 — Yap Island
We have been anchored at Yap Island for ten days now! Our four day/four night voyage in Irish Melody from Lamotrek to Yap began nicely, with Irish Melody sailing “wing and wing” with main on starboard, jib on port and wind directly in back.
The rest of the time was a starboard reach with wind in the 20′s, finishing up with rather rowdy wave trains from two directions pushing us onward
From Dave: “The two produced choppy seas and occasionally generated a couple of “rogue waves” which sometimes would jump into the cockpit. One such wave put at least a half barrel of water into the cockpit leaving 2 inches sloshing around plus a big splash down the companionway and onto Linda who was sleeping in the quarter berth… talk about an “ol’ wet hen”! No worries, though. The cockpit drained and Mom put down several towels to soak up the water and went back to sleep. After that, however, we kept the companionway hatch closed, and the next morning we were coming through the Pass to the Yap anchorage. The sea is full of surprises. On a passage like that the boat doesn’t just rock with the waves, it randomly lurches back and forth on all 6 degrees of freedom (including rotation). Consequently, we both didn’t realize how tired we were until we went ashore to check in. Our energy was pretty much drained and we were ravenously hungry. After checking in we had huge lunches at a nearby small restaurant and ate nearly everything in sight. A day later with big meals my food intake has finally caught up…” We were happy to arrive in this calm harbor, as we always are, and after a full night’s sleep we were ready for exploration.
We had a St Patrick’s Day Party aboard Irish Melody with the other 3 boats in the anchorage; 9 yachties all together. Dave put up a string of green LED lights around the cockpit, there were green munchies and decorations, and Linda made a Mexican 7-layer dip with slices of baby bell peppers that looked every bit like shamrocks on top. And Dave played his fiddle, of course.
Linda's Money, Women's House
