Saturday, March 27, 2010

Enroute Easter to Pitcairn - Day 4

It seems to be always too much wind or too little. We've gone from 20 knots to 5 knots to 25 knots to 5 knots, with very short 'reasonable' periods in between.

Right now we have about 5-7 knots from the SE, and we are headed WNW (almost dead downwind). We could almost sail this if the seas were as flat as the wind. But we still have about 6-8 feet of swell coming from the SE. We can't keep any sail full. Here is my logbook entry for the last hour:

Engine off, main and genoa out, making 3 knots.
Genoa in, Code Zero out
Main down (trying to keep the Code Zero full)
Code Zero in (can't keep it full)
Main up and engine on

Each of these line items entails about 15-20 minutes of screwing around with sails.

At least it isn't hot. Air temp is 70 degrees at night and 75 degrees during the day. Yesterday we spent all day in 100% overcast but today at least we have a nice sunny day with a few puffy clouds.

At our weather conference last night (among our 3 boats), we discussed the next big weather event--a low and a cold front approaching from the west. We're now heading for supposedly north of the NE end of the cold front, to try to stay out of the 25-30 knot winds forecast further south.

We are all thinking longingly of sailing in the tradewinds, where the wind is more or less steady.

I am trying to get a GRIB file in to see what the revised weather outlook--unfortunately we are so far 'out there' that it's difficult connecting with any of the Sailmail stations at this time of day. The closest and easiest station to connect with is Chile, but it is having internet issues and quite often just doesn't pass traffic. I've given up using it, and the rest of the stations are too far away. Thank God we thought to get the Iridium phone as a backup.
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At 3/26/2010 6:31 PM (utc) our position was 28°46.71'S 114°58.00'W

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