DAY 17 - Knowing the fax...

It was an interesting 24 hours.

From noon yesterday onwards I sailed into a relatively strong 15 kt wind from the NW. For most of that time I was able to steer NE at between 5.5 and 6 kt. An hour before dark I found myself heading at course 100 so I tried tacking with a dismal result: I found myself on a course of 290, heading practically west. I tacked back and hardened up the sails to improve my course and until past midnight the boat rock and rolled as she punched hard to the wind with boat speeds of up to 6.3 kt and apparent winds up to 23 kt. The boat was hitting the waves hard but she was not heeled over too much and the double reefed mainsail and no. 4 jib was about as small a sail plan as I could get and still make decent way.

At the 7.30 PM session I spoke with Richard on Firewater and Ryan Sonrisa. Richard had done some motoring that day but was still becalmed. He did mention, by the way, that he has a radar alarm that goes off when a ship is several miles away. He did not hear the alarm during that recent close call because he had been tending to the engine.

Ryan gave me good information on anchoring at Port Townsend. I asked Ryan if I had heard correctly that he was hoping to make Juan de Fuca in 14 days. (I'm hundreds of miles ahead of him and I'm hoping to make it in 14 days.) That sounded optimistic to me and I didn't want him to be disappointed. He replied that he realized that 14 days was a bit optimistic but he needed to get back to his work by 1 July. I responded brightly with "I used to work once." He was slow to respond and explained that his companions had been having a loud laugh.

The Rutland wind charger had earned its keep that day. I had started the day with less than 700 a/h in the house bank and had planned to run the engine for an hour. However, I was reluctant to run the engine while I was scooting along at over 5.5 kt and would prefer to run it when I can get useful propulsion and put a healthy load on the engine. I need not have worried. The wind charger put out a steady 1-2-3 amps all day and at the start of the evening I was up to 725 a/h.

At 2 AM I woke up to find Pachuca veering toward the south again in a lighter wind. The sea had calmed down a lot since sunset. There was work to be done. I moved the port jib car aft, tacked the boat, and rolled out some jib. This put the boat on a course of 285, not exactly ideal. It was taking me away from Seattle but on the other hand it was taking me west and slightly north. I cannot let myself close in on the continent south of Seattle. The prevailing winds in that area seem to be from the north, not to mention the south-set current. It appears that over the previous 24 hours I had hitched a ride with a small Low just to the east of me, and I was now entering a "nothing" zone of variable and light winds.

I woke up this morning late, at 8 AM, due no doubt to the nocturnal activities. The boat was on a course of 280 on a light breeze so I put out the full jib to give myself time to have breakfast and download some weather faxes. I did my first deck inspection in two days. As usual, I paid particular attention to the shrouds (ie side stays), running my fingers around the joint between the wire and the turnbuckles looking for broken wires, and inspecting the turnbuckles for cracks. I especially look at the cap shrouds (ie the outer ones that go to the top of the mast) because they take the heaviest load. At the bow I noticed that the lower part of the luff (ie leading edge) of the jib was loose near the tack (ie the lower front corner of the sail where it is attached to the deck). I knew that the halyard was tight because I had checked it, but attributed the tightness to the sheer weight of the sail. I gave the halyard another turn of the winch and that did the trick.

I may have managed to work around a problem plaguing my weather fax downloads. For about two weeks I have had the weather fax program randomly fail with an illegal instruction. Before I know it the program is aborted taking what there is of the weather fax with it. Very frustrating. I was reduced to viewing them with a magnifying glass as they developed trying to glean any information before they were lost. At first I thought that it was caused by a jittery mouse that was moving around the table during the download. I removed the mouse and used the touch pad but that did no good. I tried rebooting before the downloads and that seemed to help but did not cure the problem. I figured that it had to be a resource problem, so this morning I got the performance meter running and looked at what log files might be available. Then it occurred to me that in the last few weeks I have begun to inspect grib files and weather fax (wfax) files while downloading weather faxes. Grib files must be fairly data rich critters requiring some computer grunt for zooming and panning around. I don't know if graphics capabilities are required but if so, this teeny machine (let's not call it a laptop ... why not call it a crotchtop) may not even have a graphics card, and certainly not much memory. I restarted the machine without doing any grib file work and the faxes came through OK. Time will tell.

At 9.45 AM I began an engine run. It was a good time because the wind was from the north and the boat was heading south of west at about 3 kt. I started the engine, turned the boat to north into the wind, engaged the autopilot, and rolled in the jib. I motored for 90 minutes at 1200 rpm making speed of 4.5-5 kt. At the end of that run the meter was reporting the full 100% 920 amp hours. More reliably, the house bank was at 13.3 V. After stopping the engine I disengaged Vistar and swung the wheel hoping to find a useable wind off the port bow. I was in luck. Soon I was sailing at over 5 kt on course 045. I was hoping that this was a wind from the High chasing my tail, which meant that it would be reliable.

At noon I was in position 32.20N, 145.07W, 1230 nm from Oahu, 1060 nm from Juan de Fuca.
I had made good a modest 62 nm in the direction 032, mainly because from 2 AM until 9 AM I was thrown back 32 nm to the WNW. I was feeling pretty good. The weather had improved, the wind was moderate, the sea was calm, the sun was out, my batteries were topped up, and the boat was gently ambling toward Seattle. I figured that I would bake a loaf of bread later in the day.