Recap: Passage Home, The Third Week at Sea…

We certainly have not made as much progress as we had hoped in this third week at sea, having covered only 668 nm. Despite being in the 'westerlies', we experienced several days of light conditions, with only a couple of days of strong westerly winds. We are still feeling pretty good, with only 843 nm left to Neah Bay.

Days 14 and 15 we had the light air sail up in light S/SW winds for our last bit of northing to come around the high. Day 16 we crossed our halfway point and began easting on a broad reach with full sails. In the early morning hours of Day 17, we were becalmed and motored for 11 hours to reach some forecast strong westerlies. Day 18 found us running downwind with the jib in 15 kt WNW winds with big waves, lumpy seas, and uncomfortable motion. By Day 19 the waves had calmed down and the wind settled down to 10-12 kts from the NW, and we were reaching with full sail in very comfortable conditions. We rode out this configuration in lightening winds until the night of Day 21, when we were again becalmed and motored for 14 hours to reach some developing SW winds from the NW quadrant of the high.

From Day 15 onward, we have regularly seen cargo ships on the AIS headed between Asia and North and South America, as we presumably skirted through the shipping lanes. We have visually observed 5 cargo ships this week, and in the middle of the night on Day 18, we even had to hail one at six miles out headed directly at us to ensure that he did actually see our navigation lights. On the morning of Day 16, we spotted the lovely spinnaker of another sailing vessel to our port, and had a radio chat with S/V Pandora, also departed from Hawaii, headed for San Francisco. At our encounter, they were 8 days out of Nawiliwili, Kauai, and we were 16 days out of Hanalei, which was somewhat demoralizing, although they are a catamaran. Still, it meant that all the northing we had done was indeed necessary to get around the high (we were at about 44.5°N), as seasoned passage makers were on the same trajectory. We were slowly sailing along yesterday afternoon, and a HUGE whale surfaced about 50 ft off the port side. He was on about the same heading and blew three or so times before diving off...One of those take your breath away moments.

Our food stores are still amply stocked, as we have been working our way through the canned protein, but still haven't really gotten into the canned fruits and vegetables. We still have a few citrus fruits left, lots of green apples, and plenty of fresh vegetables to choose from (cabbages, cucumbers, zucchinis, potatoes, jicamas). We have definitely been eating a lot more soups as we get into the cooler climates, and with the light conditions, meal preparations have not been difficult. Our fresh water supply is now at 39 gallons, so we have used 10 gallons this week, and 36 gallons total. Our fuel supply is now at 22 gallons, having used 8 gallons to motor for 25 hours.

The wind coming with the strong westerlies was bitterly cold, and on the downwind tack we had to close up the companion way to retain warmth in the cabin. We had overcast skies from Day 15 to Day 20, with fog for Day 15 and Day 16. Today at Day 22 we have some actual sunshine and blue skies. The cabin temperatures are around high 50s to low 60s most of the time, and we are now more or less accustomed to the lower temperatures. Even doing nighttime watches from inside the cabin, we are wearing puffy jackets and tuques. We have also both noticeably lost our lovely tans, so should be ready to return to the pale Pacific Northwest when we make landfall.

We have had a few minor equipment failures this week, with the breaking of our Windex (wind direction indicator) and the alternator not putting out much current to the batteries with the motor running. Also, on Day 19, we stopped being able to use our satellite phone to make data calls for email and weather. Fortunately, the satellite phone was still working for phone calls and text messages and we contacted Matt's dad for weather information and the tech support line for our satellite phone email compression interface UUPlus. As it turns out, apparently the carrier (AT&T) has changed to VoIP technology, which does not support the circuit data calls that UUPlus uses, so we needed to change from direct dialing to using satellite gateways. We were very lucky on Day 21 to eke out a data call and receive the email from UUPlus with instructions for modifying the modem connections. The new gateway modem connection seems to be working, though it is trying to pick up a backlog of large emails somewhere in the system and clogging up our connection for getting weather. The old modem connection also seems to be working again, so we are back to being able to do weather fetching and emails.

With the light conditions and spending so much time in the cabin, we are getting a bit restless with books, Scrabble, and the occasional movie to keep us sane. More entertainment would definitely be aboard a next passage – a few TV series would be ideal to give just an hour of entertainment as needed.

Now we just need to keep morale up to make it through hopefully the last full week of the passage. We are hoping to have a few days of consistent S/SW winds and get moving!

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