fetchinketch

Yesterday we covered 155 miles in 24 hours. The strong trade winds are pushing us along at a fast clip.

It might be worth mentioning what that distance means. There are a number of different ways that a distance like that can be measured. The boat’s speed and distance through the water are measured by a little paddle wheel that sticks down in the water. The GPS also totals the distance that it has moved. Both of these suffer from a similar problem. They don’t care if the boat is moving in a straight line, or in circles. They total the distance moved. Since the boat doesn’t travel in a perfectly straight line, both of these tend to overestimate the distance covered, at least a little.

When boat’s were guided across the ocean by sextant and stars, the “noon sight” taken when the sun was at it highest position in the sky for the day was usually the best fix taken during the day. So distance sailed was reported as the distance between the two noon fixes. This is basically what I do, although with GPS I can pick any 24 hour period.

I have a little spreadsheet that I use where I enter the longitude and latitude positions of two points and I get the distance between them. I double check with the dividers on the chart to make sure everything agrees.

Of course, I could run 100 miles in a day and get no closer to my actual destination if I wasn’t going in the right direction, but that is a whole other problem.

Today’s run is 146 miles, with 853 to go. Six or seven days left. We are both looking forward to life on a level floor where we don’t have to hold on every step!

The Honolulu branch of the National Weather Service says it best:

.SYNOPSIS…FRESH TO STRONG TRADE WINDS ASSOCIATED WITH HIGH PRESSURE NORTH OF THE OFFSHORE WATERS WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE WEEK.

.”Fresh to Strong” translates as 20 to 30 knots, which is pretty much exactly what we are seeing.

We are settled into a routine for the stronger winds. The boat is set up to ride them comfortably, and we are on a fast course straight to the Kaiwi Channel east of Oahu. We are now closer to Hawaii than San Diego, and moving faster, so we should be more than half way by time.

This afternoon was a study in blue. Of course out here there isn’t much in the way of other colors, but the variety of blue can be breathtaking. It was sunny and bright, the waves big, but more awesome than scary. There was the deep rich blue of the sunlit ocean, the darker gray-blue of the ocean shaded by a cloud, the infinite variety of light blues in the sky, and the very light blue of the clouds. I know, you are going to argue that clouds are white, but that word has to be saved for the patches of foam on top of the waves. When it comes to “white” they put the clouds to shame!

Last night was slow. Winds were light and in consistent. Never totally calm, but there were times where we struggled to keep the boat moving at more than 2 or 3 knots.

Most of the day was glorious. The first day we really had horizon to horizon blue sky. Not a lot of wind, but enough to move the boat steadily. Fishing lines out, ocean calm, boat sailing smooth and happy. Warm, but not hot. Pretty awesome!

Before lunch we hooked our first mahi-mahi. We get him up to the side of the boat and then lose him in a bit of a Chinese fire drill at boat side. It’s not easy getting these wild fish up on deck! He wasn’t a huge fish, maybe 15 pounds. A few minutes later before we get lines sorted out and back in the water Karen spies another one taking a pass at our teaser.

Shortly after we finish lunch: another bite. Right away it is obvious this is a bigger fish. Fifteen minutes later we have another mahi-mahi alongside. This time we both have a better idea of what to do, and soon we have a 30 pound bull mahi-mahi on deck and, shortly later, cleaned and in the fridge. (Pictures when we get to a real internet connection!)

A spectacular sunset capped a beautiful day. The evening weather forecast had a fast moving cold front developing nearby. It was not clear at the time if we we going to skirt it, or end up in the middle of it.

Now, at about 2AM, we know. The last couple of hours have been quite gnarly. Wind to 35 knots and buckets of rain. On the bright side we are moving fast! Hopefully it will settle down before too long.

The passage from the west coast to Hawaii is one of the longer open water passages. Almost three weeks of continuous sailing. Something both quantitatively and qualitatively different from regular day sailing.

Imagine a sailboat in San Francisco Bay. One that is sailed three days a month for eight hours a day, quite a lot by most standards. Every month this boat sails for roughly 24 hours. It would take a year and a half for this boat to accumulate the sailing hours of one trip to Hawaii.

It’s the little things that add up. Things you would never notice in a day. That line in the steering system, it rubs against its block just a little tiny bit. Not hardly anything at all. Except… It it happens for every minute of every hour for a week, the line chafes through and breaks. If you see that first little fuzzy spot that tells you the line is chafing, you can fix it before it goes all bad. But you have to look.

Every day I spend an hour or two going over everything on the boat I can see or touch. Is it exactly as I expect? Is anything loose? Any two parts rubbing that will damage each other? In the category of learning from past problems, yesterday I saw a loose bolt on the wind vane steering system. If it had come loose all the way, it would have lead to total, unrepairable failure. Tightened early, non issue.

We covered 136 nautical miles in the last 24 hours. We are now 904 from San Diego, and 1385 from Hawaii. Some of you more anal retentive types might have noticed that these distances don’t always add up in a rigorous way. The reason being: we don’t always go in a straight line!

For the past couple of days it has been a very empty ocean. After two days without a single contact, today we did have a cargo ship make his presence known on our plotter. Not coming any closer than 16 miles, we never had a visual contact. Every day we’ve had one huge graceful albatross glide by and check us out. One desiccated flying fish carcass on deck. And… That’s about it. Since we left the coast we haven’t seen but one airplane. Which brings me to the urban myth…

It circulates through the sailing community in San Francisco, and maybe other places. It comes in all sorts of varieties, like any good urban myth. The heart of this story is that you can find your way from California to Hawaii by following the contrails of jets carrying tourists to the islands. Like any good urban myth it sounds so plausible. I am here to tell you it is total balderdash. There are no contrails to follow, and you can’t see the jets. Now you know. If you cared!

We had a good day, covering 135 miles in 24 hours. 784 miles from San Diego, 1519 to go. Weather looks great, boat is performing without a hitch.

When a sailboat is running before the wind, with the wind from behind, it is a very different feel than when sailing upwind. The wind across the deck is lighter, and it is warmer because the boat’s speed is subtracted from the wind you feel. It always feels like you are going slower than you actually are.

The motion of the boat is also very different. When you get close to going nearly straight downwind most boats have a tendency to roll from side to side. This is caused by a complicated interaction of the aerodynamics of the sails, and the waves coming up from behind. It can vary greatly depending on the exact size of the waves, the wind angle and wind speed, and the boat speed.

The Fetchin’ Ketch does this some. Less than most boats, more than others. Here is what it is like at its worst…

Stand in the middle of the room. Hold your arms straight out to your sides, horizontally from your shoulders, fingers pointing at the horizon. Now raise each hand 12 inches and hold it there. From your waist, tip your body down to the left until your left fingers again point at the horizon. Pause. Now repeat to the right. That’s it. Left… 1, 2, 3. Right… 1, 2, 3. Now continue while you go about all your daily chores. Oops.. Big wave! Going WAY to the left this time, and hold it….. Hold it… Ok now Right… 1, 2, 3. You get the idea!

This morning the wind was light, the boat slow, and we spend a couple of hours doing the Tropical Twostep. Since then the wind and boat speed have increased, and things are a lot more stable

We had a little bit of a slow day today, only 119 miles. 1655 miles to Honolulu. Right now I’ll forecast an arrival in Honolulu on November 17. With good winds, maybe a day sooner.

The wind did finally slow a bit, and has start to clock around toward the northeast, the normal direction for the tradewinds in the eastern Pacific.

I took the time today to rig the whisker pole and set our sails “wing on wing” as we headed off more downwind. This afternoon’s fix has us 680 miles out of San Diego, about 1/3 of the trip behind us. Boat speed is good, and all runs smoothly.

But there is always a “but”, isn’t there? Our “but” today is our inverter. The electrical device that takes 12 volt DC power from the batteries and converts it to 120 volt power like you have at home. It has decided to shut itself down in an overload fault even when not connected to anything. A mystery of the universe. It might be a simple bad connection, but getting to it to pull it out for a look is quite the challenge. Maybe on the next quiet day…

It’s not a big loss in the grand scheme of things. The only thing we use it for out on the ocean is to charge the laptop batteries. The only thing we need the computer for it the get updated weather charts. If I am stingy, I’ll have enough charge to do that every other day all the way to Hawaii. And there are always the good old fashioned radio weather forecasts!

The wind continues to blow at the upper end of what is “comfortable”, 20 to 25 knots. The longer the wind blows, the bigger the waves get, and they have got big! Nothing scary, more impressive. I’d guess they are running 12 to 15 feet. The view from the top of the largest waves is quite amazing . They do throw the boat around a fair bit, and moving around the cabin requires care and a good handhold.

The weather models keep saying the wind should be calming a bit. If they keep saying it, it might eventually be right!

The excitement for the day was a burnt out motor on a bilge pump. Not a critical piece of equipment, I have spares, but… If you want to get a sailor’s attention in a hurry have the smell of something burning pervade the cabin while out in the middle of the ocean! It only took a minute to find the source of the smell and get things safely shutdown, but it certainly wasn’t a fun minute!

We sailed through a cold front this afternoon that saw winds gusting over 40 knots. Since then we have been skirting the southern edge of a zone of strong winds that occasionally reach down and smack us.

At night we sail with a sail set suited for the strongest winds we expect. Tonight that would be 35 knots, and from time to time it does get that strong. The rest of the time we are a little under canvased and moving slower that we might otherwise.

Your perspective shifts. Winds of 40 knots become “strong” and winds of 20 knots seem positively balmy…

The forecast is for lighter winds over the next couple of days. Maybe we get caught up on our sleep!

I started the day with a minor sinus headache. Not a huge deal, I get them from time to time. What I haven’t had is a sinus headache while sailing in boisterous tradewind seas. By the end of the day not only was my headache still there, I had layered on top of it a good case a seasickness too. Yuck! Karen stepped up and did a double watch, and I’m feeling a bit better now.

The first part of the night was characterized by squally winds and rough seas. The wind vane is back in charge of steering, complete with her battle scars from our last trip. It’s doing a bang up job.

As we approach morning, the wind has settled to a steady 20 knots. A double reefed main and a reefed jib are driving us at 6 to 7 knots on a good course. Venus and Jupiter highlight the morning sky while I wait for sunrise.