Syzygy Sailing

(refers to events on July 9th)

The dinghy has provided a constant source of amusement for us.  Matt and Karen probably would chose a different word from ‘amusement’.  Like ‘hatred’.  This has only increased since I arrived.

Since we have an inflatable dinghy, it does not deal with rough water well.  A hard bottom dinghy would do better. In rougher water with larger waves, larger being over 6 inches,  a blast of water will spray up over the boat.  The spray only increases with speed and wave height.  Luckily our dinghy, handicapped as it is by a poor engine, never goes very fast.

I’ve noticed up until this point that to combat this spray, Matt or Karen will stand at the bow and pull up on a line connected to the bow.  The idea is that you pull the bow up so that a: waves more easily pass underneath the dinghy and b: even if they don’t a higher bow will block some of the waves.

Now, I generally thought this dubious at best.  The bow, in my opinion, seems to get pulled up about one inch.  Better to just grin and enjoy the spray, a reminder that we are not cooped up in an office, working our 40 hour weeks, dressed in slacks and a button down, and paying lots of bills.  However, on one fine day in Rangiroa, I decided to give my hand at trying this, if for no other reason than everyone else on our boat was doing it, so I wanted to be cool too.

As we pulled away from the dock, I grabbed the line and stood up.  Another boat passes by.  I note the wake (the waves eminating from behind the boat) they create, and think: not a problem.  Their wake reaches us and rocks us side to side.  I then think: this is a problem.  I stumble from side to side, and as there is not much room side to side on our dinghy, I proceed to be clipped in the calf by the sides of the dinghy and tumble backwards overboard.

Man Overboard!

I am perfectly O.K. save a bruised ego, and once Matt has ascertained this he immediately starts laughing.  I am not laughing.  Not yet.  I am frantically trying to get things out of my pockets that I don’t want to get wet.  Money.  My journal with months of entries I don’t want ruined.  Two long letters to Allison.  If those get wet, oh I would be so upset.  Hence my franticness.  However, the journal and letters are in a waterproof bag that I had remembered to seal, and the money was in a ziplock.  After fishing those out of my pockets and realizing they were fine, I too laughed at myself, treading water and just laughing.  Two cheapo glasses I had bought so you could look directly at the sun during the solar eclipse are within reach and I grab at them.  The third has already started to float under.  I pull myself back into the dinghy, sopping wet and laughing.

I take inventory and as Matt is starting to pull away, I realize I’m missing something.  The handheld VHF radio.  The extremely-nice-christmas-present-from-Matt’s-parents handheld VHF.  Matt is displeased.  Both of us without even telling the other simultaneously start trying to take a bearing on land.  If you line up two points, say a pylon and a tree, then you return to this spot you can again line up the pylon and tree and know that you have returned to somewhere along that line.  Do that with another 2 objects, preferably two which form a line perpendicular to the first two, and you have two lines which can only intersect in once point.  Theoretically you can return to the same spot.  As long as you don’t use a mooring ball which might move with a shift in wind and current.  And you don’t forget what you used.  Both of which happened to me.

After going to the boat to pick up snorkeling gear, we return to where we think I might have fallen in.  I flop out of the dinghy, and swim around, frequently diving down to the bottom, it’s only about 15 feet, looking around.  Matt moves around in the dinghy to scan a larger area, dunking his head in the water periodically.  Ten minutes of searching.  Twenty.  Thirty.  It seems inconceivable to me that we can’t find anything.  I know other things fell out of my pockets.

And then I see the pair of glasses that had had been out of reach and sank to the bottom.  Here’s the right spot!!  Ten more minutes of searching.  Search time no longer feels fruitless.  The VHF must be here.  I find a coin, 100 francs, about 1 US dollar, bright and shiny.  This must have also fallen out of my pocket.  And there is a AA battery I bought for the GPS.  it must be here.

And finally there it was.  A swell of relief first then a swell of apprehension.  Would it work?  I pop up out of the water.  The smart thing would have been to take it back to the boat, rinse it with fresh water, let it dry out thoroughly, open it up and continue to ensure proper drying.  I didn’t do that.  It was still on, and so as soon as I popped up on the service and waved to Matt and pushed the boat to call Karen back at our boat.  “Syzygy, Syzygy, this is Jon.”  Karen replied.  It worked.  Thank you to Matt parents for buying such a nice VHF that it withstood being in 15 feet of water for over an hour!  Misadventure part 1: a success!

(concerning events: July 3rd -July 6th)

People have lived in French Polynesia for around 2000 years and ever since have been eating fish.  Lots and lots of fresh fish.  We have not been eating lots and lots of fresh fish.  We have been eating little to no fresh fish.  This vexes me to no end.  We had fresh fish once in the two weeks I have been here.  Native Tuomotians Ken and Martin caught it for us.

Karen is a fantastic cook.  She probably cooks the most dinners, though I cook my fair share.  Matt and Karen seem to have tired of their repertoire of recipes.  I certainly haven’t though and everything that Karen makes I think is delicious.  Everything that Matt makes I think is delicious.  Everything that I make…. well Matt and Karen eat it, so it must be edible.

But we all acknowledge that our meals are with drawbacks.  Nearly every meal is ‘x’ number of cans + [either] pasta or rice + alcoholic beverage of choice = meal.  Sometimes this is canned spaghetti sauce plus canned chicken plus pasta equals a meal.  Sometimes this is canned roast beef + canned corn + canned mushrooms + canned yams + canned gravy + boxed potatoes = meal.  I think they are delicious every time.  But something fresh would be wonderful.

When Karen makes various fresh bread, it’s a little slice of heaven.  Sometimes sourdough english muffin.  Sometimes tortillas.  Or sourdough french bread.  Or puffy donut holes with cinnamon and sugar, oh sinfully delicious.  So bread, bread we can do fresh.  Otherwise, cans.

I feel like we should be eating fish.  For one, it’s free.  For two, it’s not cans.

Matt and Karen reported no luck fishing while sailing across the Pacific and while cruising the Marquesas and the Tuomotus.  This poor showing on the part of the fish to readily enjoy our lures, combined with Matt’s reticence at the idea of cutting up live things with guts in them has led to a decline in fishing attempts onboard s/v Syzygy.  Who can blame them?  They never caught anything.  With my arrival, I bring fresh hopes and renewed vigor to the idea of fishing.  And an indefatigable arrogance that it has to be possible to catch something.  Anything.

And I have failed.  Failed as all other attempts at trailing lines has failed on s/v Syzygy.  Please other cruisers who are able to catch fish regularly,  tell us your exact set-up of trolling lines and how you catch fish, down to the minutest detail.  Because we are incompetent.  We have read a book and we have not learned.  Nearly all things done on this boat, all the sailing knowledge, all the boat projects completed are because we read a book and learned about it.  We read a book about fishing, but we cannot seem to learn how to fish.  Please tell us everything about your set-up.  Length of line out, type of knots, length of mono-filament.  Type of lure.  Color of lure.  Number of lures.  Depth of lure.  Time of day.  Depth to ocean floor.  Distance to land.  Boat speed.  Wind speed. Current. Hook size.  Hook placement within lure.  Allowable rust level on hook.  Bait used or not.  Leader weight used or not.  Chum used or not. Teasers used or not.  Pagan gods to whom you might give sacrifice in order to make the ocean share its bounty.  Please include video of ceremony, text of chants and incantations, list of all incense types used and step by step instructions for actual sacrifice.

I have, actually, caught some fish.  But I was only able to do that at anchor.  When we were in Apataki, and in having beer and an excellent lunch at the cargneage(boat haul-out center)/pension/restaurant/happy hour/pearl farm establishment, fishing was brought up with the family who owns all this enterprise, Alfred and his wife.  They said they had a surefire way for us to catch fish involving hermit crabs as bait and that next time we come to shore, they would show us.  The next day, we show up but Alfred is off fishing and his wife is gone.  Karen manages to relate to the very nice ancient lady that met us at the dock (Alfred’s mom??) our intentions.  So before we know it, this 80-ish year old woman has grabbed a hermit crab.  Matt and I are hustling around trying to watch every little step of what she does.  She then gets a hammer, one shot smashes the shell, grabs the hermit crab, one hand around all it’s legs and claws, the other around its guts and rips it in two pieces.  She threads it on the hook and done.  30 seconds have passed.  I am in awe.  In a couple of days, I will no longer be in awe of the process.  Instead, I will be a one-man professional hermit crab death squad.

We collect a dozen hermit crabs and head back to the boat.  At dusk, apparently good fishing time, I retrieve a hammer, a cutting board, and a hook.  I ask Karen to retrieve a video camera.  The nice ancient lady completed the steps in about 30 seconds.  It takes me 30 minutes.  So despite that it is now dark, I try to fish anyway.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.  I take solace in the fact that it is pitch black out and vow to try again in the morning.

In the morning at 6 am I begin setting up to try again. Success!  Within a half an hour I’ve hooked two fish.  Karen comes on deck.  I ask her what to do now that I have a fish flopping around in a large green bin.  She says I have to kill it.  I don’t know how to do that I reply.  She fetches the book.  We read it.  We learn.  The fish dies.  Knife shot to the brain, one inch behind the eye.

After reading the book for each step in the process of gutting and cleaning we take the fish into shore to make sure that we can eat them.  Some fish you can’t eat because of a nasty little disease called ciguterra  I refer you to a blog post from our good friends Mike and Hyo aboard Io, Mike is a marine biologist and so can explain all the nastiness of ciguterra better than I.

Matt gets the job of cooking the fish and that night we finally dined on fresh fish.  The next night we again dined on fresh fish.  It was wonderful, albeit a bit bony.  Then we moved anchorages, losing our source for local knowledge of ciguterra (Different fish on different atolls have it) and we have not had fish again.  Back to cans.

So fellow cruisers, please help us become better fishermen and fisherwomen.  Please help us spare the cans.

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We just arrived in Nuku Hiva after crossing the pacific.  Good lord was that a long time to be out in the ocean.  I’m going to ramble on and on now.  Let me tell you, there’s not much of anything out there. In terms of tourist attractions, you’re not missing anything. I had expected to see a fair amount of wildlife, different views of the ocean, something. Nope. It all looks the same. For 25 straight days one of us checked the horizon at least every twenty minutes–over 2,000 instances of climbing out of the cabin to check the horizon, and every time seeing exactly the same thing: nothing. The only thing we saw during that entire time were a few birds and a bunch of tiny flying fish. Not even other boats–for three straight weeks we saw no other boats.

The pacific ocean does have boobies, I’ll give it that. Near the coast, at least. We had an exciting Booby-caused moment that I will now relate in entirely too much detail. A booby is a very annoying bird. For the first 5 days of the passage, we were frequently targeted by boobies. They want to land on the boat, hang out, and shit. There is no equivalent to a floating island in their evolutionary history: they do not need to do this. What I am saying is: don’t feel bad for them. Moreover, they have a hard time making the landing, but they are stupid and stubborn enough to continue attempting it without regard to the bodily risk. They will get smacked by the sail, tangle in the rigging and bounce off the deck into the water–then get up and try it again. The first time one landed on our solar panels, I was nice and let it hang out. Then a river of bird poop spilled into the cockpit, narrowly missing karen. Booby’s welcome expired. I took our boat hook and gently nudged him off (he didn’t like that–kept pecking at the pole and squawking at me). He came right back. I pushed him off again. A few dozen more times he came back, with progressively more aggressive expulsions on my part and angry squawks on his part. Eventually, I was flicking him a good ten feet off the boat before he would fall in the water and repeat his attempt. Like a bonk-the-booby video game. He landed high up on the spreaders; I duct taped all my long poles together and continued to battle him. Finally, at dusk, he landed on our spinnaker pole, from which our spinnaker (largest sail on the boat, by far) was flying. I shooed him out along the pole (funny image, a squawking sidestepping out of balance booby) until he was over the water and not the boat–i.e. a poop safe zone. The sun sets. I hear a noise. I look over: the booby has fallen off the pole and has his foot stuck in the tripline running down the pole. I know what’s coming. As he drops like a stone into the water, he triggers the release, opening the jaw and letting the tack of our spinnaker fly free. This is not something you want to happen to you in the dark with 15 knots of wind and a big spinnaker. Anyway, it took a half hour to get everything contained and put away–a frantic half hour reminiscent of racing on the bay when something goes horribly wrong. Boobies, man. No booby love, no more.

What we did see: we saw beautiful sunsets and blue water. Moonless nights were very dark; you could see bright stars reflecting off the calm ocean. The milky way was prominent. The moon would often make a dramatic appearance–sneaking up from behind a cloud, bright orange until it got some searoom off the horizon.  Lots of sky, lots of water, that about sums it up.

All in all, this passage was not as hard as our 9 days from Ensenada to Banderas Bay, but nevertheless it was harder than I expected it to be. I had heard great things about the trade winds and I was expecting good, consistent wind. Not for us, my friend, not for us. Two days out of La Cruz the wind died on us, and we sat bobbing around for a few days, not wanting to waste our fuel (we battled boobies during this time). Once the wind came back, we had a few good days of sailing before we hit the ITCZ (i.e. doldrums) and then the wind died again. Then we had 5 days and 5 degrees (300 miles) of doldrums, with no wind, occasionally punctuated by weak, unimpressive squalls and rain. On the other side of the ITCZ, the wind picked back up right in our face, together with a contrary current pushing us backwards as well, so we beat upwind and up-current for five more days before we could point towards our destination. Then, finally, the last week was glorious wind and glorious sailing in the southern trade winds.

Boats both before and after us had better luck with both the wind and the ITCZ; most people had less than a hundred miles worth of doldrums and experienced solid trade winds on the north side. We just got unlucky in that regard. The result was that we ended up doing a lot of work, putting sails up and down, changing things around constantly, etc, until the last week.

We crossed the equator in the middle of the night on May 3; Karen woke me up at 4 in the morning with a mixed drink (rum and jumex). Dutifully in my delirium I drank my drink.  In my state I was confused about what I was supposed to do. I watched karen pour some rum into the ocean. I believe I expressed gladness for our progress, and passed back out (memory of this event is hazy).

At no point during the passage was I bored. Both of us read at least 10 books–best way to stay awake during a night watch. I did some boat projects. I got out karen’s sewing machine and made myself a pair of shorts out of a pillowcase. I relearned the turk’s head knot. I studied french. I learned some new constellations. I consolidated my lists. We watched some movies, listened to music. I made iced lattes. I made iced tea. I drank beers. Karen read, wrote, baked bread. During a dead calm, karen cut my hair on the foredeck. I got the best tan of my life (better have–I was butt-ass-nekkid most of the time).

We made hundreds of entries in the log book.

Much of my time was spent messing around with the boat. Trimming sails, changing sails, changing the lead of lines, adjusting the self-steering, tweaking the course, reefing, unreefing, furling, unfurling. At best, this business–the business of sailing the boat–would occupy only a few hours each day (spread out). At worst–when conditions were constantly changing–it took all of my waking hours to keep on top of it. The primary attribute of “great wind, great sailing” is above all consistency–conditions that don’t require constant changes.

Watching our little boat depicted on the chart on the computer was strangely addictive–even though it was just a big blank white screen.

At least once a day we participated in a net on the ssb radio with the other boats out there, all watching out for each other and tracking each other’s progress. I would estimate about 10 boats participating each night. The community was solid; we made a number of friends over the radio, people we had never met in person. Occasionally we would even set up a radio date where we met on a particular frequency at a particular time to chat. I was surprised by the enjoyment to be found via the radio.  And now we already have friends to meet up with on land.

It was no problem staying clean; whenever we started to feel dirty we would take a shower with buckets of seawater. Maybe even use a little bit of freshwater to rinse, if we were feeling luxurious.

Lack of sleep was an ongoing challenge. Usually each of us would be on watch for half the night, so we could get a decent stretch of sleep. Even so, that meant that neither of us slept more than 6 straight hours in a row during the entire passage. We always had plenty of time during the day in which we could nap–but it’s not so easy to go to sleep on demand.  The lack of sleep wasn’t dangerous,it just sapped our motivation, made us cranky at times.  Both karen and I found that the surest way of getting sleepy enough to pass out was to go on watch–all of a sudden it seems like all you want to do is sleep!

During the final days, more than anything I just wanted the rolling to stop. I grew furious at the boat for constantly throwing me against the walls whenever I moved around, the same way one might get mad at being randomly shoved as you try to walk down the sidewalk. Didn’t matter that the boat is inanimate, still I blamed it for causing needless suffering. You try to walk from the head to the galley, and you get thrown on your ass on the settee. On your way past the mast, you get hip-checked into it by an unpredictable lurch of momentum. You’ll be slipping through a doorway and get a doorknob shoved in the gut. You’ll be standing at the sink and lose your balance, ending up all the way over on the nav seat with your feet in the air. The motion was incessant, inescapable. At the end, I just wanted to be still.

We made landfall (feels sweet to be able to say that–the expression itself indicates a serious passage–after all you can’t go out sailing in the bay for a day and then “make landfall” back into the marina, no you need to sail across an ocean and then you can make a landfall) at Taioe Bay on Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas, french polynesia, on the morning of Saturday May 8–a few hours ago.  We are both ecstatic to have the passage behind us.  I’m glad we did it; I’m more glad that it’s over.

After getting the boat in order, I had a beer, then slept for 6 hours.  Just woke up in fact.

Now it’s time for us to go explore land.

(post dated–this post generally refers to events on 3/29 and 3/30)

At midnight Karen grabs my foot and gives it a shake. I take off my eye mask and take out the earphones I’m wearing which along with my I-Pod and Sarah McLachlan, had me asleep in minutes three hours earlier despite the noise of the engine.  I was surprised at how much louder the engine sounds at night versus during the day.  I suppose the new soundproofing in the engine room was doing something, but I couldn’t tell.  I stumble around for about 10 minutes, getting dressed slowly and wobbly.  I can’t find my headlamp or my sailing knife.  I want some light and so switch on a light in the cabin, and quickly move the switch to the red light setting that is supposed to preserve your night vision.  The cabin now resembles a submarine on high alert.  I half expect Gene Hackman to barrel down the companionway yelling “down ladder!”  I imagine us on high alert.  Matt is up, walking around and off-handedly comments that he and Karen stopped using the red lights.  They don’t really provide enough light to do anything, which I quickly found to be true, and your eyes adjust fast enough when you are up on deck. High alert deflates immediately.  The engine continues to groan away as we travel through unfortunately light winds for our passage.  I plop down at the nav station to look at the log book and the AIS chart on the computer.  My night watch is about to start.

Before I even arrived, we had started talking about sailing a day or two north to San Blas.  However, the weather seemed to be less than ideal to the north, so Karen found a entry in the cruising guide that talked about a fine anchorage to the south that had some snorkeling and a fantastic sounding dinghy river trip.  South it was.  Next came talk of who was going to take what watch.  I knew this conversation was coming.  And i knew exactly what I wanted.  The night shift.  Wake me up at midnight or 1 am and send me out.  I wanted this for a number of reasons.  One, I feel, (it’s not just a feeling, I definitely am) behind in this obscure scale of mine that measures “personal discomfort” investment into the boat.  I don’t have much of this.  Matt has, well it’s somewhat amazing he hasn’t collapsed under the weight of how much he has endured.  Second, I wanted to experience as much of the cruising experience as possible.  Taking the night watch fit nicely there.  Finally, it just seemed the nice thing to do, to let Matt and Karen sleep together through the night.

After examining where we were on the AIS, I head up on deck.  Matt joins me and says we should put up the main sail and the drifter.  I’m super excited that we’ll actually be sailing on my watch, at least to start, instead of motoring.  It feels so much more pure.  After Matt helps me put up the sail, he heads off to bed, and I’m left alone on the night watch.  An alarm is set to ring every 23 minutes.  After two iterations of the alarm, I’m starting to get tired, and so lie down in the cockpit, realizing that I’ll be sleeping during some of this watch.  I’m looking directly up at the stars, and soon I’m dozing off, 1/2 awake, 1/2 asleep, dully waiting for the alarm to go off.  It does, I go through the watch routine, and quickly get back to lying down.  This time I’m out quickly.  Thirty minutes later Matt is in the companionway reaching out to the cockpit to hit my feet saying “Dude, you slept through the alarm.  You can’t do that.  Put the alarm closer to your head.”

On the night watch, there is one main responsibility.  Make sure the boat doesn’t hit anything.  Two lesser responsibilities are to 1) sail the boat well so you get to your destination faster. 2) control the boat so that it is easier for others to sleep.  Matt and Karen’s system they developed uses a watch that goes off at set intervals.  Pretty much all cruisers have an alarm set for certain intervals.  Matt and Karen have the watch set for 23 minutes.  So every 23 minutes, it’s the job of whoever is on watch to stand up, or wake up if necessary, look all around the horizon for other boats or land, and make sure you aren’t about to hit either of those.  It’s fascinating what you can see at night on the horizon.  All night we were in sight of shore so lights from there abounded.  At various times, other boats were on the horizon.  It’s enjoyable to spot lights on the horizon and watch over the next hour or two as they slowly move in relationship to the boat.  Of course if they are moving that slowly, it’s probably another sailboat.  The fast lights are the ones to worry about.  The cargo ships.

Matt disappears back down the companionway, leaving me alone fuming at myself.  My first night watch and I’ve made a HUGE mistake.  Damn it.  Not how I wanted to start.  Not the impression I wanted to make on Matt and Karen that I was a competent addition to the sailing team.  I am furious at myself and embarrassed.  Sure, the likelihood that at the exact interval I fell asleep 1) another boat would be just over the horizon that I couldn’t see on the last sweep, 2) wasn’t on the AIS that would alert me to boats further out, 3) was headed on a collision course with us and 4)  did not veer off that collision course because they of course don’t want to hit us…. yes the likelihood of all that happening is low.  Doesn’t matter.  Sleeping through a watch interval is way out of line.  I was not happy with myself.

Later in the night, the alarm goes off.  It is strapped to the band on my headlamp now, directly next to my ear, and so it wakes me immediately.  I get up and start to go through the routine I began to do at every alarm.  I rapidly check our compass heading and speed.  I then spend longer than necessary gazing in a slow 360 degrees off into the distance, looking for lights.  Each time I see lights, I get our binoculars (Thanks mom and dad!!!) and using the internal compass of them, note the heading to the lights and try to discern where it’s going.  If I see a red light, it means I’m looking at the port side of the other boat.  If I see green, I’m looking at the starboard side.  You can also tell things by the location and height of the white lights from a boat, but I’m not as sure about those. Need to learn that.  Next I slide down the companionway, moving as quietly as possible past the quarterberth where Matt and Karen are sleeping, generally with the door open to increase airflow and keep it cooler in the cabin.  I  have a seat at the nav station and take a look at the awesomest part of the night watch routine: checking the AIS transponder which is linked into the navigation software MacEnc, on the computer.  Matt has discussed his love for it in the past, and I have to back up that opinion 100%.  After checking the AIS both for ships and to ensure we are headed in the correct direction, I head back up on deck and do a quick scan of the horizon.  Finally, I look at our sails and see if they need adjustment.  Then it’s back to reading, writing or sleeping.

At 2:30 am on the second night, I watched us thread the needle between two 900 foot long cargo ships doing 14-18 knots.  I had seen the two ships when they were 20 miles away on the computer, long before I would be able to see them on the horizon.  Nonetheless, as soon as I saw them on the computer headed straight for us, I excitedly hopped up on deck, grabbed the binoculars, and stared out into space to where the boats should be.  I was met with nothing but blackness.   A black sky with foreboding moon and a glistening, flat, black sea.  An hour later however, I could see lights.  Lots of lights.  High, towering lights.  That still seemed to be coming straight for us.  The AIS, though, showed their actual heading, and ours.  We would pass the first to our starboard, by a mere mile.  The other, five minutes later, passed to port by even less, about 1/2 a mile.  I didn’t sleep at all for that hour, and gained an enormous appreciation for the additional safety the AIS brought us.  I saw them when they were over an hour away and knew their exact heading relative to us.  If we didn’t the AIS, they would have been twenty minutes or less away on an uncertain course that would have looked extremely troubling.  With the AIS, we didn’t have to divert our course, and I felt no danger to the boat, though I did anxiously watch the AIS and the horizon for the entire hour.  I certainly was too excited to sleep, this being only my second night watch.  But I felt confidently safe.  Without the AIS, I would have had to hail the vessel, not always possible, and try and figure out a way by both ships.  I can envision this being a confusing hail, with both boats so close, heading in the same direction and with the approximate same speed.  With the AIS, there was minimal concern.  The rest of the night passed uneventful.  My second night watch slowly winding down, I finished most of the novel I was reading, enjoying the near full moon as it arced lazily across the sky.  My first real introduction to cruising.  I think I’m going to like it.

Jonathon here.  I thought I would post a couple of screen shots of Matt and Karen’s progress.  I know a lot of you have clicked through to the marinetraffic.com website with AIS tracking to try and find Syzygy.  Like Matt has said, if they aren’t in AIS range, you won’t see them.  But here’s two pictures of where they have been.

The first is from when they departed until I went to bed around midnight California time.  They had been sailing about 13 hours at that point.

The second is a somewhat overlapping track of their progress until about 6 am Thursday morning when they dropped off the map.  At this point they had gone about 110 miles in about 18 hours.  If they keep going through Thursday night they might be in the Santa Barbara/Los Angeles area Friday during the day sometime.  I imagine they will keep pushing through since wind and wave height seem to indicate good weather all the way down the California coast and Baja Mexico for at least the next 7 days. There are a number of AIS stations in Los Angeles and San Diego areas, so they might pop back up!