DAY 18 - Log Data

Yesterday afternoon was one of gentle sailing in a falling breeze.

I baked that loaf of bread and it came out a bit doughy, probably because I was making a bigger loaf than before and also because I went a bit heavy on the oil. Nevertheless it is fresh bread and is great toasted with butter.

At nightfall I had a few frights with the weakening wind. I was beating into the breeze with full sail trying to keep the boat moving with an apparent wind that would drop below 6 kt at time. That means that the real wind must have been around 4 kt. I was trying to make something out of nothing, but I hung in there putting up with the occasional thrashing of the rig, and by 7.30 PM the wind had strengthened enough to settle the boat down. We were doing about 3.5 kt headed due north.

At our 7.30 PM radio session Richard reported that he had had enough of waiting around in the fog for wind and had motored 58 miles. That is a lot of miles and it must have taken him 10 hours. But it worked. He was clear of the fog and was sailing at about 3 kt. Ryan and his crew on Sonrisa were running up the west side of the High in light airs under spinnaker. Jeff was planning to sail today for ... Kauai, I think. He had had enough of jetty life and wanted to hang off an anchor at a nice bay for a change.

Chris and I had a good session at 9 PM. He had taken the boat for a sail that day and was pleased with the experience. He gave me some good weather information and told me that it looked like I had chosen an excellent route for Seattle. (The Goldilocks route you might say - not too far east, not too far west, just right.)

I went to bed with the boat headed due north at about 3.5 kt, close hauled against a light NW wind. I hoped that the wind would hold up because it was very important to keep the boat moving. Even 2 kt meant another 20 precious miles in 10 hours. The alarm went off at midnight and I was delighted to see that Pachuca was still sailing north at 4 kt with enough wind to elicit a gentle and to me soothing hum from the Rutland wind charger. AIS reported a ship crossing my stern at 15 nm but I could not see its lights. At 5 AM we were sailing at over 4 kt on course of about 340 T. I tweaked Jeff and fell off the wind slightly and adjusted the sails accordingly. At 8.45 AM I was at Lat 39.35N, not far from that Lat 40N that has been so important to me for the last week. It appeared that I had been successful in staying ahead of the moving High and I was now benefiting from the NW winds of its northern quadrant. The visibility was less than 1 nm. I wasn't sure whether to call it fog or a sea-level cloud.

By 8.30 AM I had successfully downloaded 4 weather faxes with no program crashes (YAY!) I rebooted the machine just before the series of downloads and abstained from any grib file work. After the first 3 downloads (24, 48, 72 hour surface analysis predictions) I did a lot of work with the fax viewer inspecting these weather faxes but that had no adverse effect on the 4th download. The evidence points to viewing of grib files as the culprit.

I updated the spreadsheet of Pachuca's cruising log. At the point of arrival in Honolulu Pachuca's log numbers were:
- Total of 226 days since departing Fremantle
- 94 days under sail
- 132 days in port or at anchor
- 8481 nautical miles sailed
- 3.8 knots average speed

When I include my stay in Honolulu some of the numbers really jump. We arrived in Honolulu on 18 Dec 2008 and departed on 22 May 2009. That represents a stay in Honolulu of a whopping 155 days, which brings up some numbers to:
- 381 days since departing Fremantle
- 287 days in port or at anchor

I do not regret the 155-day stay in Honolulu. I enjoyed the culture and climate, met many wonderful people, got a lot of good work done on the boat, and faced the crossing to Juan de Fuca in a calm (too calm, maybe?) time of the year.

For lunch I tried one of the many Maruchan "Instant Lunches" that Ron Beach got for me. Forget the old packet soups where you pour the contents into a cup and add hot water. This is its own cup. Peel back the lid, add boiling water, fold the lid back over, wait 3 minutes, stir and eat. Very nice. (Good one, Ron!) This explains why I had been having trouble finding packet soups in the U.S. They are packaged differently.

At noon HST I was at 39.51N, 144.36W, 1300 nm from Oahu and 990 nm from Juan de Fuca - that's right, under 1000 nm to my destination. The boat was traveling well at 5.5 kt course 015 T. I had a noon-noon distance of 94 nm. [Note: I gave the wrong latitude of my position in yesterday's report. It was 38.20N, not 32.20N]