Day 5: Change in the Weather........

August 15, 2010
16:08 HST (02:08 August 16 UTC)
Lat: 34 00.2 North

Lon: 154 11.4 West

The good news is that we are still sailing. The bad news is that the situation is likely to change pretty soon. Over the last 33 hours, we have had excellent sailing conditions. Yesterday, we sailed all day under spinnaker. We took it down before dark, jibed from port tack to starboard tack and stuck the genoa out on the pole.  We ran wing on wing. Our course for a good part of the night and today has been directly toward the barn, meaning every mile made has been made toward Cape Flattery. At day five, we are about a hundred miles less than one third of the way there. Good progress so far.

Last night, we had fish again. We decided that fish three days in a row was a enough and kept the fishing lines stowed today so we could enjoy a change of pace. I see that Randy has pulled out a box of chicken broth. I suspect he has something in mind for dinner tonight.

We have really settled in to the routine. At least once a day, we all gather in the salon and cockpit and talk about varying subjects as we get to know each other better. It's a fun group and we are getting along famously. The the wind has been blowing up to 20 knots from generally aft.  The seas quite mellow for that wind speed. This makes for a relatively comfortable ride conducive to hanging out, reading and doing whatever.

For the '”What Has Broken Report”: The thermostat for the fridge stopped working.  I just connected the wires so that it runs whenever we have the genset running. This works fine for now but we will have get a new thermostat as soon as we are plugged into the dock regularly. I spliced a new genoa sheet and now have two custom tapered genoa sheets. When we hoisted the genoa, we noticed a 3' long rip in the foot. We had to lower it again and do a repair using sail tape, a strip of dacron and 5200 adhesive. And other then the Autopilot misbehaving early on in the trip we really haven't had much going wrong with the boat. Now I must touch wood again so as not to jinx things.

Change in the weather.....Ok so it's transition time. We been riding a SSW wind for the last 33 hours or so. This wind has been compliments of a warm front associated with a low that passed well to the North of us. That low and this front are in the process of dissipating. The weather model shows an interesting transition phase where we are likely to have very shifty winds for the next couple of days. At least it looks as though we will have wind to sail in at least some of the time. After that the models shape up for us to do a lot of motoring as we attempt to get to the east side of a building high pressure and NW winds. The good news is this motoring will be mostly toward where we want to go. That is........if the weather behaves as I forecast that it will. Time will tell.

Capt. Brad signing off

PS PJ Bryce and Austin, I love you!