Day 2 Recap – Wind!

Day 2

Wind, finally! Wow, yesterday was memorable. I have never seen the ocean so still for so long. We barely moved for 24 hours between Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening. When the wind finally did come up we could still see 10 other boats. California Condor (for most of the evening, though they started moving west first), Red Cloud, Thirsty, Free Bowl of Soup, Por Favor, Tiki Blue, War Pony, Shoofly, and then I think to north were Aero and Encore. One of the last might have been Avion instead.

We did have another whale sighting. This time a mother and a calf. We were conscious of not going between them, but realistically we weren’t moving and they were real close together. I haven’t looked at a whale book in a long time, but these seemed bigger than humpbacks or grays, with a very small dorsal fin and just a long, slow, lazy curve as they surfaced to breathe. Finback?

Once the northwesterly did fill in we were quickly on to our gennaker close reaching towards our 130W waypoint (likely to be revised today after wx download) and making 6-7 knots. It seems we got going early, because as night I could War Pony and one other boat to windward with War Pony gaining and then lots of lights behind us. Unfortunately, in order to keep moving with the gennaker we were sailing too high and it was clear to two boats to windward had their spinnakers up as they were going lower and faster. We switched to A4 with no problems and that worked out well. Lower and faster, now 7-8 knots. I think that lasted for about 4 hours, maybe 5. I was down below sleeping when Chris called. The spin halyard had let go! Surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard dragging the chute back onboard. It was just streaming along side the boat. A wet mess once down below though. We went straight to work and got the gennaker flying again. By the time we got it up it was the right sail anyway. Now we have 15-20 knots out of NW and we are cruising along at 7-9 knots in the direction we want to go. I think we’ve been like this for 3-4 hours now. No other boats in sight this morning.

No sun since we started. Cold at night and some drizzle. Glad we have a dodger. Not bad during the day though. The moon still shined through the clouds making it easier to see.

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