DAY 9 - Wishy Fishy

I woke up from a deep sleep at 6.30 AM. I don't know where I had been but it certainly was not on the boat. I looked through the cabin hatch and saw blue sky. Great! Prospects of a drier boat, charged batteries, and a more pleasant day. The boat was gently humming along (literally, from the wind charger).

I went to the chart plotter and looked at the track and numbers. I was 350 nm NE of Oahu, 27.07N, 155.28W. My track was still NNW, apparent wind 11 kt, speed just under 4 kt. This boat sometimes amazes me. It was doing almost 4 kt into a moderate breeze with two reefs in the mainsail and less than a no. 2 jib. I had thought of Pachuca as a dog in light airs ever since a Van Der Stat left me for dead on a beam reach of maybe a 5 kt Easterly off the Western Australia coast. (The Van Der Stat was a much lighter boat and he must have been just over his threshold while I was just under mine.) Anyway, Pachuca is lighter than a pure cruiser of similar length and has an extremely slippery hull design.

After breakfast I rolled out the full jib, gave the boat time to settle down, then went to the chart plotter to see that I had gained 0.5 kt. I then spent some time pumping out the bilge (about 20 strokes of the Whale Gusher every 3 hours) then shook out the second reef. That gained another .04 kt. There seem to be diminishing marginal returns from increasing sail area - at least when I am going to weather.

The BEP meter reports that I am down to 779 A/H on the House batteries, representing 84% of the 920 A/H capacity (for whatever that estimate is worth). The House batteries are at 12.9 V. This drop is due to the cloudy weather during the last two days, though I must say that the wind charger gave a significant contribution, putting out about 1 amp day and night. Last night after I bedded the boat down, running only the chart plotter and the mast head light the net usage was a loss of 0.5 A. Anyway, I expect these numbers to improve dramatically today because those panels will put out about 8 A from 10 AM until 3 PM on a sunny day. (At 8.45 AM they were putting out 5 A.)

Yesterday I received from Chris via Sailmail the WFAX transmission schedules out of Kodiak Alaska and Pt Reyes California. It was a bad day for reception from Alaska and California but for the first time in over a week I received extremely clear faxes out of Hawaii. I could see that I was the beneficiary of a "squash zone" between a Low NE of me and a High further to the east. Right place at the right time. These winds were happening while Honolulu was pretty dead wind-wise.

Yesterday's GRIB file showed very favorable SE winds over 10 kt going to SSE over the next 3 days. These GRIB reports are pretty slick. The 24, 48, and 72 hour projections show the track and position of the boat based on the information from the GPS receiver connected to the laptop at the time of my request.

Unfortunately I could see that Richard would still be smack in the middle of a High, which would mean no wind. He confirmed this during our radio session last night. He asked me to drop off some food as I sailed by him. That's a gross exaggeration. He is almost half way to his destination and well positioned to take advantages of Westerlies. He has prospects of good winds from a gigantic Low approaching from the east - a Low that will happily pass north of him. He should get a lot of mileage out of that, doing his best to keep pace with the Low. Richard said that it was his birthday. Jeff wished him a happy 60th and I seconded that. Richard replied along the lines of "I Wish" but I agree with Jeff that he appears to be about 60, whatevert his true age. Having a trim build helps. So does his sharp and lively mind.

At 9.30 PM I had a session with Chris on Orisha. Reception was good and we tried different frequencies to get a feel of the best prospects. Among other things we discussed my radio grounding issue. I think that we all agree that the loose linkage to the Monitor water vane made it a poor choice for a ground. Richard suggested a 2" copper strap to a keel bolt. However, someone said that this was not a good idea because it will lead to deterioration of the keel bolt. I'll have to look into this. Chris described his ground plate. It measures about 6" by 18", is indeed gold plated (to minimize marine growth I suspect), and is fixed to the hull with a conventional thru-hull fitting with a big nut and sealant. I am leaning to this solution. The trick will be to find a location that will always be immersed no matter what the angle of heel but also be accessible to me, who does not have a very long dive time due no doubt to a lifetime of low grade asthma and bronchitis.

At 11 AM I noticed that I had hooked my first fish since Australia. I had tried trolling a large hard lure for two days with no luck. Chris and I had discussed fishing the night before and I told him that I didn't want to bring in a magnificent huge fish if most of him would go to waste. Chris also questioned the practicality of lifting a 200-lb sail fish on board. Because the lure that I had been using was designed to be dragged at higher speeds and would attract larger fish I tried a smaller "feahery" lure. In less than two hours I hooked the fish. I got him within 20 ft of the boat and then he was gone. I thought that he had bitten through the trace line but no, my rig was intact. He managed to get unhooked and I salute him. I put the lure back in the water.