Day 1 Recap – We’re Off

Aloha!

Well, an “interesting” first day for sure. Not typical, but not surprising, given the forecast. The start wasn’t quite what we hoped for, but I don’t think it really mattered. By the time we set off the breeze in the Bay was blowing 25-30. We knew it would be lighter out in the ocean so we had our biggest headsail (#2) hoisted. Unfortunately, 25-30 meant we needed a reef in the main and partially furled the genoa. That worked, but we weren’t as fast as we should have been and couldn’t point very well. We were the 6th of 7 boats out to the ocean, but out there the conditions moderated and we were able to quickly switch to full sail area and started moving really well against the other boats. Throughout the afternoon we sailed on port tack almost due west and slowly picked our way through most of the boats that started on Tuesday. Early in the evening I could see all 17 other boats and we were right in the middle, by night fall, we had caught up to almost everyone except California Condor, Encore, and Sweet Okole. The night wasn’t so great though. We spent pretty much 12 hours going less than 2 knots and a lot of time going 0.00 knots. Blech. The good news is apparently we can drift with the best of them as we continued to move forward through the earlier starters, albiet very, very slowly. Now today we are alternating between 0.00 and 2-3 knots. For some reason we seem to converge with other boats. At one point this morning we were within 100 yards of Free Bowl of Soup and Red Cloud and right now we are within 0.5 miles of War Pony, Shoofly, Avion, Por Favor, Thirsty, and Tiki Blue. Encore and maybe Aero are to the northwest a bit and I think Red Cloud and Soup are east of us. This would be pretty miserable, but having other boats around makes it tolerable as at least some of the time we are going faster than them and the competitive spirit takes over.

We managed a sad 65 miles in the first 24 hours. A good day for us would be 200.

On the bright side, the swell really hasn’t been bad. Drifting around in no wind on the ocean could be much worse. We are both getting plenty of rest. I think the autopilot does a better job of driving when it is super light and that may have helped us last night.

I don’t think I’m even going to bother downloading the weather gribs until we start moving. There’s no point in knowing what the weather is like west of us if we can’t get there for awhile.

Out in the natural world we saw a few whales, and one huge whale swam pretty much underneath our boat. We heard it blow ahead of us and then sailed right through the slick it left when it dove. It surfaced again 100 yards away, headed wherever it was headed. We’ve also seen lots of sail jelly fish. They have a small “sail” that they stick up above the water into the air, to ride along with the breeze. Sadly, I think they are going faster than us sometimes.

Pray for wind.

2 comments