Day 8, 28th Jun, 36 – 25N, 156 – 01E Daily Run 167 nm. Weather, Grey, and rough. 3485 nm to go

Day 8, 28th Jun, 36 – 25N, 156 – 01E Daily Run 167 nm. Weather, Grey, and rough. 3485 nm to go
We have now been at sea for 7 days, 7 days since we cast off in Kushimoto. We have travelled 877 miles, out of 4632, leaving 3485 to go, so we are 20% of the way.
I must say it feels more like 3 days than 7, often the days blur together, last night I was up for a lot of the night worrying about the sails and mast and trying to make sense of the weather, consequently, I don’t have a normal concept of the start and end of a day. 
If we can maintain these sort of speeds, which I think unlikely, we will indeed take another 4 weeks or less to reach our destination. A quick check on fuel, water, gas and food shows us to be well stocked.
The wind continued to increase on the starboard bow yesterday until it was around 20-25 knots. This made for an uncomfortable passage as the waves grew in size as well and we were pounding a bit into the sea. I had put the mainsail up to make the most of the conditions, something that is needed when going upwind. However by the time I came to take the genoa in, due to the force of the wind, I found it was too late and had to winch hard on the furler to douse it, unfortunately this put the sail on too tight and I ran out of furling line. So I had to content myself with a small headsail of about 1 metre for the next day, with its sheet sitting in the way of the staysail. However with the main and staysail, we chopped along at a decent 6-7 knots for most of the day and night. By the early hours, as the sun was rising I was able to put the staysail away and let out more genoa as the wind had turned behind us. I also brought the mainsail down, this had been bothering me, firstly the batten in the sail bag/lazyjack bag was trying to escape aft, it has tried this before and I thought I had sewn the strap on well that retains it, but it has ripped it apart. Secondly there was a groaning sound coming from the mast as we rolled and the big gusts hit us. I spent an age at the mast, being thrown around trying to find the root of the noise, but I came to the conclusion it’s a halyard vibrating inside the mast. More investigation is needed when it’s a bit calmer. The current setup with just a genoa flying at the front of the boat with the wind on the starboard quarter works well, and there are only a few things to break.
We have passed 155 deg W which is the point I had in mind to start our turn towards the great circle path that takes us to Seattle. The great circle path is the shortest distance between to points on a sphere/globe. However when the same route is plotted on a normal mercator projection chart, it looks like a big arc going way off course. (Pic attached). So I have started edging towards that route, but only slowly as I want to try to stick closer to the currents for a little longer. By tomorrow we should be aiming directly at the Juan de Fuca straits some 3500 miles away. All we have to do now is follow the winds keeping as close to that route as possible. Our main consideration is to ride over the top of the Pacific High, that’s a high pressure weather system, not the latest Californian trend. However I don’t know where it is yet, thats a job for later.
Other than that, not a lot to report. we spend our days when the weather is like this just lazing around, trying to read, and downloading wx forecasts. I have put off the water maker repair until its calmer, we put the clocks forward an hour, Kathy didn’t like the sun rising at 3AM. We are now on Chamorro Standard time.
Paul Collister