DAY 15 - Bad Coffee Day

The wind died down yesterday afternoon. I probably would have had enough to eke out 3.5 kt if I head been heading NE on a broad starboard reach, but the wind had shifted and I was headed NNE on a broad port reach. This put me beam on to a subtle SW swell that would regularly roll the boat violently enough to cause much flogging in my boom, mainsail, and jib. I dropped the main, rolled in some jib, and altered course to port but there was still too much flogging on the jib for my liking. Before nightfall I rolled in the jib and lay ahull for the night.

I baked some bread that afternoon. I had left Honolulu with 2.5 loaves of bread and it had lasted 14 days with no loss to mold. I couldn't complain about that. I have fresh stocks of flour and yeast but I needed to find out if my old stocks were useful. I dug out the yeast and white flour from our Tahiti days ("Farine, Sans Levure"). The four looked a bit packed up but dry. The dry yeast didn't look moldy. I did the mix using olive oil instead of butter and put the bowl on the cockpit seat in the sun and sheltered from the breeze. I baked a pretty good loaf if I say so myself. The loaf came out with a nice brown crusty top that made a pleasing hollow sound when I tapped it with a knife. I did the baking with the sounds of The Beatles' White Album filling the boat. I jacked the MP3 player to a small amplifier that had been donated by Stephen, then fed the signal to the AUX input of the boat's sound system. It sounded pretty good.

The 7.30 PM radio session included the four of us: Richard north of me, Jeff in Honolulu, and Ryan just north of Oahu. Richard was moving ENE. I had to pass my opinion that his wind prospects for the next few days were not particularly good. Jeff backed this up telling him to expect westerly winds when this latest version of the Pacific High sets itself up in about three days time.

I stuck to my advice to Ryan to make for 160W to make sure that he passes well west of the High that is headed for 32N, 155W. He reported that they were west of 158W and moving slightly west of north at a good speed of over 6 kt.

I tried to hook up with Chris at the agreed later-than-usual time of 10 PM but discovered that our first two frequency choices, 4A and 6A, were being used for broadcasting marine weather. Our third choice, 8A, was being used by Asian voices.

I woke up at midnight and found no change in the wind. At 5 AM it was a different story: winds about 2 kt higher, ranging from 8 kt to 11 kt depending on how the mast swung. I rolled out some jib and proceeded NNW with the autopilot steering, then went below for a breakfast of real ground coffee and toasted fresh bread with butter (Yum!)while there was a short burst of drizzle above. (It was a cloudy day, suggesting that I may have gone through a weak front.) After breakfast I tried to contact Don on "Summer Passage" with no success. (Richard says that he's been off the air for a few days.) It could not have been my radio because I left the radio on that frequency and later heard an Asian female voice clearly saying "Radio Haiphong, Radio Haiphong, Radio Haiphong."

I went back to the cockpit, did some mental calculations, and figured that I had a good shot at gybing the boat and heading NE, which would take me closer to my destination than a NW course. I had only a bit of jib up so I disengaged the pilot and gybed without altering the jib sheets. It looked good. I then altered the jib sheets and took the boat to weather on that starboard tack, locked in the autopilot, and hoisted the mainsail with one reef, boom out.

Then I discovered that the first reefing line simply wasn't there. I left the boat to weather heading SE and pulled in the boom while I sorted that out. I pulled the reefing line back through at the gooseneck and discovered that it was intact - my bowline around the boom had unraveled. Feeding a reefing line around the block at the gooseneck, along the length of the boom, and around the end block is me a bit of a challenge. I passed the 1st reef line around the gooseneck block then strapped it to the 2nd reef line with cord. I then undid the figure-of-eight knot at the end of the 2nd reef line so that it would pass through the cockpit rope clutch. Then I used the 2nd reef line as a "pull through" for the 1st reef line. When the 1st reef line made it to the end of the boom I unbound it from the 2nd. Then teasing the line up and around the top of the end block was seriously difficult - a great way to break a finger if the boat lurches.

I tidied up, fell away, eased the sails, and soon Pachuca was contented again, quietly doing 4 knots NE with an apparent wind of 7-8 kt and Jeff doing the steering. The key was that swell hitting the boat from aft which had become a friend because it was pushing the boat forward.

The plan of skirting the High on its west side and getting north of it did happen, but the winds turned out to be lighter than had been predicted by the grib file. And our wind future is a little uncertain because the top half of this High is being distorted by various Lows marching across the north. I would prefer heading more north than east but at this point I had little choice and will head north at the first opportunity. I must avoid finding myself close to the coast having to beat my way north.

[YUK! I've just tasted a cup of instant coffee that I inadvertently made with sea water. Gross! I'd better try again.]

[It is not a good coffee day on Pachuca. While washing the breakfast dishes I found the coffee plunger to be hopelessly cracked. I have a feeling that there may be a spare one on board. I certainly have a spare s/s kettle that I purchased in Honolulu because the one that we have used since Australia appears to be in its last legs.]

The morning's set of weather faxes showed that in about 60 hours the center of that high will have passed over my present position to the NE of me. By then I would have to be as far beyond 138N, 146W as possible. That meant that I had to keep the boat moving as fast as possible in any direction between E and N.

My position at noon was 35.58N, 147.12W. My distance made good over the previous 24 hours was only 47 nm. Nevertheless I could take heart from my distances of 1040 nm from Oahu and 1224 nm from Juan de Fuca. On the 15th day I was within 100 nm from the halfway point.