Day 10 - On a Roll

It is now June. The bus-schedule cruising plan with which I left Fremantle called for us being in Seattle way back around September, about 8 months ago. I now know from practical experience why people take up to a dozen years to complete a circumnavigation. Experience cruisers would have smiled at version 1 of my plan which called for a 2-year circumnavigation - which can be done if you limit your itinerary and hang on while sailing in the roaring 40's.

I've been on a roll for the last 24 hours. Early yesterday afternoon I found my self on a beam reach off of a 10-15 kt SE wind and so it has remained until today so far. At dusk the boat was headed directly for Seattle at about 6 kt. After my 9 PM session with Chris I decided to stick to my plan and reef for the night, which I did with no problem under the light of the moon. Just as well I did. I awoke 15 minutes before the 12.30 AM alarm went off because the boat was lurching more than usual. The wind had strengthened and Pachuca was doing over 7 kt. Jeff the wind vane had the wheel over, struggling with the weather helm trying to keep the boat on course. I watched her doing 7.4 kt for a period of about a minute. I didn't want to go on the foredeck to put in a second reef so I had a go at rolling in the jib from a no. 2 to about a no. 4. That worked splendidly. After tweaking the Monitor the boat was on a course of 030 doing about 6 kt. At dawn this morning Pachuca was doing 5.4 kt on a course of Ketchikan, well to the north of Vancouver Island. I want to cross Lat 40 farther east than Richard did: at about Long 140. At 8.15 AM I was at Lat 28.54, Long 153.47, 500 nm NNE of Oahu and 1760 nm from Juan de Fuca.

Yesterday afternoon I took the two sets of underclothes from the washing machine, rinsed them out using 2 liters of fresh water, and hung them up in the cockpit away from the salt water spray. The clothes looked clean and smelled nice. I poured the remainder of the rinse water back into the washing machine and will keep using the same water as long as I can get away with it.

In the late afternoon I hooked my second fish. I got him to the side of the boat, determined to lift him up with one clear jerk. That's easier said than done with a hand line. The fish took his opportunity and spit the hook when he was out of the water and half-way to the gunwale. I let out a shout of frustration, He was about 2 ft long, slender, and had a yellow color all over him (and some dark). Yum. Perfect for an evening meal. ... Fried in olive oil with onions, served with rice, soya sauce on the rice, lemon on the fish. Yum ... I ate spaghetti instead. I need a net for scooping up the fish. This morning I tried to find a fishing book to identify the fish but I couldn't find one. The books I had in Australia were about Australian fish so I probably left them ashore. But we have two good bird books on board, thanks to Brenda. The two birds who spent the night on my pulpit were probably booby's, either red-footed or brown,

I had a good radio session with Richard and Jeff at 7.30 PM, Richard was running off a 35 kt wind heading 025. He didn't want to pound east against the huge seas that had built up and I don't blame him. He wants to get further north anyway,

I then had a long and productive session with Chris where we talked a lot about the weather and tools for prediction. He suggested that I let the weather fax run continuously for a spell to the a more complete set of weather faxes including the wind/wave report and the 500 chart. As I write this I am doing precisely that. As soon as the transmission of a chart is completed it is automatically stored in my fax folder and the system waits for the signals heralding the next chart. At the beginning of the new fax the previous chart is cleared from the screen and the new one begins to form, line by line. Later I will study and interrelate these charts at my leisure. Why didn't I think of that? I still have a tendency to put boundaries on my thinking, probably as a result of a lifetime of frugality (until I retired and started spending money like a sailor) and maybe even further back to my 1950's style Roman Catholic education which was brilliant at teaching the fundamentals of English, science and mathematics, ethics, etc; but fostered a hierarchical view of life where discipline and obedience were paramount, and did little to foster the free thinking to prepare one to, say, invent the PC in his garage.