Recap: Passage Home, The Second Week at Sea...

The second week at sea of this passage has had extremely pleasant sailing conditions, and making good mileage, having covered a total of 820 nm this week. We've hit the major milestone of 42°N and are hopefully close to getting around the high into some steady westerlies to make our big right turn home.

Since the winds picked back up on Day 8, we have been reaching in E/ESE winds in the range of 7 – 15 kts. We started out with a single reefed main and full jib, but by Day 10 we were up to a full main and full jib and have remained that way all week. The winds occasionally gusted up or died down, but nothing requiring more than a bit of sail trimming. Simply perfect sailing conditions with pleasant motion under mostly sunny skies.

The weather has certainly been steadily getting cooler as we progress north. We started the week out sweating in the cabin in our bathing suits, and ending it in jeans, long sleeves, and full foulies at night. At around 36°N there was a noticeable change with a cool morning and dew in the cockpit. Although, what we consider a 'cool' morning in the cabin was actually around 70°F – which is really close to room temperature. We are going to find summer in Seattle to be the closest thing to winter we've seen in a while. At around 39°N our skies became overcast, and at around 42°N we had our first fog and it was actually cold. Although it is sad to be leaving the sunny weather we have been enjoying, this certainly feels like going home.

Our fresh fruit supply is down to about a week left of citrus (oranges, grapefruits, limes), and plenty of green apples. For fresh vegetables, we still have carrots, cabbages, potatoes, jicamas, onions, zucchinis, and cucumbers. We anticipate that we will begin getting into our rather large canned fruit and vegetable stash by the end of next week. Our cheese stash is holding up well, except for the mozzarella, which apparently separates and loses its moisture in the warmer weather, and now appears to be a hard cheese that doesn't melt anymore. With the pleasant boat motion, we have been more inclined to prepare some nicer meals, including an awesome chicken tikka masala recipe from Crazy Love. Our fresh water supply is at 49 gallons, so we have used 11 gallons this week, and 26 gallons total. We still have not started the engine, so have used zero fuel so far.

On Day 9, we observed a cargo ship headed for Panama cross behind us, which is the first shipping traffic we have seen on this passage. On Day 13 we saw 3 more cargo ships on the AIS (headed for Japan, California, and Panama) and listened in on some Japanese chatter on the radio, just to help us not feel so isolated. On Day 9 we also had a big pod of 30 dolphins swimming with us. Other than that, it has been daily weather fetching and a couple of games of Scrabble. We certainly fell into a usual routine much easier this passage, and experienced almost no seasickness (probably attributable to departing from a rolly anchorage rather than a marina).

We will continue to keep our spirits up going into our third week at sea, and are excited to begin making headway Neah Bay bound!

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