Day: 10 July 2018

Day 21, Tuesday 10th July. 46-59N, 173-29W. Daily Run: 135 NM. Weather: 15 Knots SW, Cold/Rain/Fog. 2000 NM to go
Yesterday wasn’t up to much, very cold, damp and foggy for a lot of the time, the wind was light and the waves had a period and height, and were on the beam, in such a way that we rolled a lot, from cap rail in the water on one side to the same on the other. Thats something like a 30-40 degree swing each way. On top of that the winds dropped in the night and the wind vane was upset when a wave knocked the boat right off course causing us to crash gybe. This meant the boom tried to shoot across the boat and the genoa backed. Fortunately, the Dutchman boom restrainer and the preventer line stopped the boom from moving much and prevented any damage, and gave me time to kit up in my oilies and get on deck. The main was backed also and the wind vane couldn’t recover, I hand steered us back on course, reset everything and we were back to normal, rocking and rolling.
By 6AM the wind had backed considerably and increased in strength, and because we were on the wind vane steering, we had changed course automatically and were heading NW, which is the wrong way really. I went up again, and gybed the sails, adjusted the steering to put us ENE and retired to my bunk. The waves are now on the starboard quarter and giving us a more comfortable ride. At 8AM I checked the weather and found the low pressure system a little closer to us, with stronger winds on the way. I adjusted the course to allow for this, despite the forecasts always being wrong, and we are now heading more Easterly. Making around 7 knots, the little ETA window on the computer is saying 10-11 days, which is nice. The current forecasts for 14 days ahead have us arriving into Seattle from the north, if this turns out to be the case then we may well change our destination to Canada and pop in behind Vancouver island, which we would be passing anyway. There is a marina near the north of the island we plan to leave the boat in for the winter, so we can check in there for a few days, do a recky on the place, then head down the inside passage to Seattle.
I cooked us omelettes for dinner last night as it was too rolly for Kathy to do any serious cooking. On the equipment front, we have three wall clocks on board, they have all failed within the last few weeks, two of them on the same day. Is there a saying, “Don’t mess with time”, if not there should be. We had to run the engine yesterday for a few hours to get some juice into the batteries, and today we may have to do the same. I’m getting 100W out of our 700W solar array, that’s at midday, we have 100% cloud cover and some decent rain right now.
We have seen on the AIS a couple of ships within 50 miles or so, generally cargo ships passing from Mexico to Asia or Russia.
Paul Collister