DAY 20 - A Tacky Day

Yesterday afternoon I plumbed the water tanks. I had foolishly missed the opportunity to do the plumbing when the wind was calm and the boat was level. By the time I got around to plumbing the tanks the boat had a moderate heel to starboard. Nevertheless the locations of the bungs resulted in biases in the two tanks due to heeling cancelling each other out. The best estimate that I could make was 125 liters in the port tank and 100 liters in the starboard tank, yielding 225 liters in stock, 55 liters used over 19 days, or 2.9 liters per day. I was so confident of my water situation that I decided not to check again until the end of the passage, to get the best estimate possible. At present it looks like I'll be able to plan on using 3 liters of water per day, yielding 93 days of water supply from the main tanks.

This may have been the middle of the Pacific Ocean but the chart plotter was showing me being straddled by three ships on parallel courses. The one ahead would cross my bow just over 9 nm away. The other two were 8 miles apart and would cross my stern 19 and 27 nm away. All 3 were headed for Balboa, the western end of the Panama Canal. I had no hope of seeing the one ahead because I was sailing through fog with visibility less than 1 nm.

I had a brief talk with Richard at the 1.30 PM session. He had motored for 5 more hours to the east and was sailing again on a beam reach against a weak northerly wind doing 1.5 kt. As he pointed out, he is well under 600 nm from his destination and 5 days of good wind could do the trick. I told him that the 48-hour surface forecast indicated good westerlies for him the following night. He had been out to sea 37 days.

The afternoon was one of marginal sailing on a broad port reach with reduced mainsail and jib to minimize thrashing. Pachuca's course was between N and NNW. At one point I was forced to drop all sail due to lack of wind. When I resumed sailing it was with a no. 2 sized jib only because to put up any mainsail would have resulted in intolerable thrashing of the boom. By dark the wind had strengthened and I switched from the autopilot to the Monitor. There was a steady drizzle and I sealed off the companionway.

We had a good radio session at 7.30 PM. Jeff had made it to Kauai and was safely at anchor in a bay whose beauty is supposed to rival those of French Polynesia. I think it is one of the bays on the northern side: Hanale, Kalihwai, or Kilauea. I missed something by not visiting that area on the way to Seattle but it was getting late in the year and I was anxious to get to Seattle. Richard was becalmed again and dropped his sails during our session. He was planning to use his engine again in the morning. He was only 504 nm from his destination and was getting more aggressive about getting there. Ryan and his crew were under lighter winds and doing about 3.5 kt after doing 6-7 kt earlier in the day.

I had a good session with Chris at 9 PM. After getting weather information from him and discussing route tactics I came to agree with him that at latitude 42 N I had gone far enough north and should head NE toward Seattle. He pointed out the risk of falling into High pressure traps and the wrong side of Lows if I went too far north - traps that Richard had found himself in. I agreed to head NE as much as possible.

After our conversation I put on my wet weather gear and went up top to take stock of the situation. The wind had strengthened to 12 kt apparent and I was still headed about 350T at 4.5-5 kt. I could see that gybing to starboard would likely put me due east which just was not good enough. I decided to leave things as they were and hope that the predicted veering of the wind would eventuate.

At midnight I woke to find that the wind had backed and I was now on a course of 345. I still didn't have enough to justify a gybe but realized that I should be able to tweak Jeff and put the boat on a broader reach. When I went below the boat was on course 350 T.

It was an uncomfortable night of rolling, rolling, rolling, with items making a racket as they slid from side to side. The boat speed must have averaged close to 5 kt which isn't bad considering that the boat was being pulled along by a no. 2 size of jib. A gun crew on a maxi yacht would have been headed directly for Seattle doing 12 kt under spinnaker. And I suppose that an experienced cruising crew would have also headed NE with the mainsail to starboard with a preventer and the jib to port with a pole. Maybe one day for me, after I've tried the technique in daylight and gentle airs. But I wasn't prepared to try a novel setup on a dark and drizzly night. Maybe it will never happen for me under these conditions because it seems to me that as I increase the downwind boat speed the stern will become more "squirrelly", as they say in the US, and the rudder will get less responsive.

At 4 AM I was up to find the boat on a course of directly north. It was daylight and the fog had lifted. Over the next hour while I prepared and ate my breakfast I saw the course slowly but steadily veer to starboard. By 7.30 AM the boat was on course 055. I knew that I could deal with more shifting of the wind by altering my sails to a beam reach and eventually a close reach. I could deal with any wind between SW and NNW. At 8 AM Pachuca was headed NW with the single-reefed mainsail and a no. 2 jib doing 5.2 kt with a 10 kt wind on the beam. If the grib file was correct I could expect good NW winds for 24 hours.

I had two failures out of five weather fax download attempts. I got a glimpse of the error message and it appears to be an illigal address. I have prepared a reply to Jim at Sailmail Technical Support to various questions that he had about hardware setup and software version numbers.

There was a bit of blue sky and sun for about 30 minutes and I sat in it for awhile and put out some damp clothes to dry. I also opened the cabin hatch to air out the boat.

At noon my position was 42.31N, 144.11W. I had covered 86 nm in a northerly direction. I was 1450 nm from Oahu and 890 nm from Cape Flattery.