DAY 19 - Modern Tech.............

PLEASE SEE POSTING BELOW THIS ONE FOR NEW PACHUCA LOCATION....
thanks. Stephen

The wind started to die down at about 2 PM yesterday, but I managed to keep the boat moving NNW at about 3.5 kt. At 8.30 PM I downloaded a grib file (six 12-hr wind snapshots for this area) which predicted weak winds for the 24 hours from yesterday noon until today noon. By tonight midnight I could expect good SW winds from a low to the NW. At 9.30 PM I dropped all sail with the true wind under 4 kt.

I filled in the quiet afternoon by rinsing and hanging up the 2 sets of underclothes that had been in the washing machine for days. Then I watched The Silence of the Lambs. Watching movies in the daytime is more difficult because of the ambient light and screen glare. (This sailing life can be tough in ways like that.) Nevertheless I enjoyed the movie very much and I noticed many details that I had missed the first time.

The four of us spoke at the 7.30 PM radio session. Richard was ghosting along toward the east off a northerly breeze. His morale was up because he had had an extra nice meal and a bath during the day. He was looking forward to a quiet night in the bunk. Ryan and his crew were scooting along at about 6 kt. Jeff was in the Kauai Channel with good wind on an overnight passage to the island.

At midnight the wind situation around Pachuca was the same, but at 4 AM I woke up to hear the intermittent hum of the Rutland wind charger. I went on deck in the early light to find fog with visibility down to less than 1 nm, but just enough wind to work with. Soon the boat was headed 350 T on a beam reach doing 4 kt.

I've been thinking of the issue of taking extra crew on these passages. Weeks ago I got an offer from a young man whom I had never met but sounded keen and enthusiastic and very suitable. Then in my last week at Ala Wai I was approached my an older man who very much wanted to experience the passage to Seattle. He didn't drink, didn't smoke, could cook, and didn't know much about sailing but would do whatever was asked. This was tempting because I had last-minute jitters about doing my first solo passage on Pachuca. Two days later I told him that after careful thought I had decided that I really did want to do this passage alone. I had to go solo sometime and I would rather do it on this leg rather than down the fiords of Patagonia. He said that he understood and thanked me for considering his offer.

After almost three weeks on this solo passage I am so glad that I have done it alone. The advantages that I see from extra crew are (1) Safety (in case of injury or falling overboard) (2) Assistance in busy areas and when departing and approaching jetties (3) Companionship (if you happen to get along). But in modern boating, with its self-steering, electronic gizmos, good communication, and convenient pre-packaged foods, I see no other advantages from extra crew on the bulk of long passages. The fact is that I spend most of my time in the cabin, conning the boat at the nav station, doing household chores, cooking and baking, reading, updating the blog, preparing YOTREPS position and weather reports, watching movies, analyzing weather charts, talking on the radio, etc. Fortunately I like my own company and enjoy my little world. Having a stranger on board would change the entire situation, eg loss of privacy, tippy toeing around each other, lots of explanations about the boat, responsibility for his safety and welfare, greater risk of injury due to inexperience. (Which reminds me, Dieter warned me about possible liability for crew injury.)

The final verdict isn't in. Jeff Hansen (who should be on his passage to Seattle by now with his 2-girl crew, but has no HF radio) had told me that I could expect plenty of sleep and rest during the bulk of the passage. However, I could expect very little sleep in the last 2 or 3 days when I am in the busy shipping lane and approaching Cape Flattery. I'll have to get through that with enough coherence to successfully drop anchor in Neah Bay.

Yesterday I got 4 out of 4 successful weather fax downloads. This morning I got 3 failures out of 4. Very disappointing. I have prepared a help message to send to Sailmail tech support. If they cannot help I will with great reluctance swap the ACER for the Toshiba to see if that helps. I also revisited the machine's power saving settings. I had previously increased the times associated with plugged-in power because I normally run the machine off the boat's 12V power via a converter that takes it to the machine's 19V. I increased the "turn off monitor" and "turn off hard discs" times when under battery power from 5 min to 30 min. I then rebooted and got a good fax, for whatever that is worth. I'm still posting my query to the Sailmail organization.

While trying to download the faxes I visited Cape Flattery and Strait of Juan de Fuca on the chart plotter to become familiar with the layout and prepare some strategies. I saw a tide range about 3 meters. More interesting, one location showed a current of 1.3 kt set to east at flood tide, and 2.2 kt set to west at ebb tide. I will have to factor these tide currents in my planning. If I do get caught in the ebb tide current when sailing in I'll hug the shore on the US side to minimize its effects. (I'll stay pretty close to the shore anyway to avoid the inbound shipping lane.)

At noon I was at 41.05N, 144.21W with SOG 3.8 kt and COG 340 T. I was 1370 nm from Oahu and 940 nm from Cape Flattery, at the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I had a noon-noon distance of only 77 nm.