Day 1: Slow But Steady

At about the time I took the watch at midnight the wind began to weaken, which brought the familiar problem of flogging rigging in an agitated sea. The wind had veered to the NW and to avoid a flogging boom and the possibility of an accidental gybe I dropped the mainsail. I rolled in much of the headsail to prevent excessive flogging and by 1 AM the boat was moving reasonably well to the SW at about 2.5 kt. It was a moonless night but the sky was clear and I enjoyed the company of the familiar constellation Orion and tried to become familiar with some of the northern hemisphere stars.

There are plenty of ships in these waters (I am looking at 7 on the screen now.) In the middle of the night I hailed a cargo ship that was going to pass too close and he altered course 10 degrees to pass about .5 mile off our stern.

At 7 AM Arnold took over the watch and I crawled into the bunk for some sleep. At 10 AM he woke me up because there was a tanker headed directly for us. Over the period of 15 minutes I repeatedly tried to contact him, using his name and call sign, but there was no response. We were forced to gybe the boat to the SE to avoid the possibility of a collision. We were irritated at having been forced to take evasive action but soon realized that the incident had done us a favor because we were 60 miles off the coast and it was a good idea to slant back toward it. Our plan was to gybe again when we had closed to 30 miles off the coast, but the wind veered and we are now sailing SSW, roughly parallel with the coast. The apparent wind is about 8 kt off the starboard quarter, and we are making between 2 and 2.5 kt with a small amount of jib. The day is clear and sunny and the swells are moderating.

At noon we were 75 miles from the SF bridge and about 55 miles off the coast.

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