Category: 2016 May Positions

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/11 18:06
LATITUDE: 10-42.18S
LONGITUDE: 129-13.80W
COURSE: 243T
SPEED: 7.9
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 22
WIND_DIR: E
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 3.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 10%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.3
AIR_TEMP: 31.1C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 15 – 190 nm (550 nm to go!)

***Housekeeping Note: Nikki\’s computer got the \”blue screen of death\” and as such her direct email is now out of commission.
You can write her at my email and she will return emails when we get internet ashore.***

Whew! Where do I begin. We were really busting the miles yesterday and got a bit fooled by our weather files. I know from experience that the GRIB Files (which are computer generated wind models of the oceans) UNDERestimate the wind speed by 3-5 knots. Two days ago however, they were exactly correct, so I got lulled into thinking maybe they\’d changed the model? NOPE! Last night, I would normally have believed we would have had 23-25 knots, but the weather said \”18-20\”. So, I kept too much sail up and we were saved by serendipity.

At 2 a.m. local time (always after mid-night!), Nikki got me up and said the wind was pumping up to 27 knots occasionally so we took in the reef. This however really wasn\’t enough and we should have taken our reacher down at sundown and gone to the smaller and far more manageable genoa. Hind sight is a wonderful thing isn\’t it?

At about 3 a.m., our hydraulic steering failed (read that as very bad!). The boat rounded up beam to the wind and sea -then the reacher sounded like it would tear itself to shreds. Temporarily, I thought I had the steering under control – NOT! Nikki and I tried to roll the reacher up, but the boat just went back to beam on instead of allowing our mainsail to blanket it. I got it half way rolled up and then the entire furler unit on the bottom became knotted up.

Nikki came forward and we began to lower the halyard (line that keeps the sail up in the air). When we got it half way down, the rest of the sail filled and it went overboard. So here\’s the picture. It\’s 3:15 a.m. no moon, pitch black, big seas, steering out and big sail in the water. Are we having fun yet?…

The good news was that the boat was extremely well behaved (Miss Piggy always saves us!). With the sail on the downwind side and blanketed, we were able to retrieve it because I had tied a \”Figure of Eight Knot\” in the halyard, which prevented the sail from going under water as the halyard didn\’t just run out of the mast. The sail, with halyard attached, was dragging along side us on the surface. We slowly got it back aboard and stuffed it down the starboard forward locker. Now we had a reefed main up and no steering. Essentially, we were \”hove too\” the wind and seas and fortunately in then pretty good shape.

Next I went to investigate the steering in the port engine room. For whatever reason, our steering ram in the big seas and waves essentially slipped. How this happened is a mystery. Hydraulics are very strong. I doubt we had air in the system as the fluid levels were normal. The steering rams are pretty new as well – replaced when we were in Florida. This caused the rudder to be hard over but have no effect on controlling the boat. We re-centered it and locked it back down, now we were back under control.

Everything behaved properly and we continued on with a single reef and no head (front) sail for the next 3 hours. At 6:30 a.m. (first light), I unrolled the genoa to windward on the pole and all has been well since. We\’ve had a few squalls and winds were up to 30 knots very briefly.

We are 550 miles from Fatu Hiva and heading somewhat south of the island. We will likely gybe (go the other direction with the sails) sometime today?

This morning, around 8 a.m. I saw a 40 foot whale 35 feet from the boat heading in the opposite direction. The Whale was going up wind, we were going downwind. I suspect it just came close to see what this big noisy thing was? I have a pamphlet that describes the whales tails and dorsal fins.
I\’m not sure of course, but it seemed it might have been a small Sperm Whale?

So, it\’s still blowy out here, we feel fortunate that no damage was done and that we got the steering fixed and the sail back aboard.

Welcome to Cruising!…
More tomorrow, Hoping for a \”Pretty Standard Day\”….:-)
Scott and Nikki

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/11 18:06
LATITUDE: 10-42.18S
LONGITUDE: 129-13.80W
COURSE: 243T
SPEED: 7.9
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 22
WIND_DIR: E
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 3.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 10%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.3
AIR_TEMP: 31.1C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 15 – 190 nm (550 nm to go!)

***Housekeeping Note: Nikki\’s computer got the \”blue screen of death\” and as such her direct email is now out of commission.
You can write her at my email and she will return emails when we get internet ashore.***

Whew! Where do I begin. We were really busting the miles yesterday and got a bit fooled by our weather files. I know from experience that the GRIB Files (which are computer generated wind models of the oceans) UNDERestimate the wind speed by 3-5 knots. Two days ago however, they were exactly correct, so I got lulled into thinking maybe they\’d changed the model? NOPE! Last night, I would normally have believed we would have had 23-25 knots, but the weather said \”18-20\”. So, I kept too much sail up and we were saved by serendipity.

At 2 a.m. local time (always after mid-night!), Nikki got me up and said the wind was pumping up to 27 knots occasionally so we took in the reef. This however really wasn\’t enough and we should have taken our reacher down at sundown and gone to the smaller and far more manageable genoa. Hind sight is a wonderful thing isn\’t it?

At about 3 a.m., our hydraulic steering failed (read that as very bad!). The boat rounded up beam to the wind and sea -then the reacher sounded like it would tear itself to shreds. Temporarily, I thought I had the steering under control – NOT! Nikki and I tried to roll the reacher up, but the boat just went back to beam on instead of allowing our mainsail to blanket it. I got it half way rolled up and then the entire furler unit on the bottom became knotted up.

Nikki came forward and we began to lower the halyard (line that keeps the sail up in the air). When we got it half way down, the rest of the sail filled and it went overboard. So here\’s the picture. It\’s 3:15 a.m. no moon, pitch black, big seas, steering out and big sail in the water. Are we having fun yet?…

The good news was that the boat was extremely well behaved (Miss Piggy always saves us!). With the sail on the downwind side and blanketed, we were able to retrieve it because I had tied a \”Figure of Eight Knot\” in the halyard, which prevented the sail from going under water as the halyard didn\’t just run out of the mast. The sail, with halyard attached, was dragging along side us on the surface. We slowly got it back aboard and stuffed it down the starboard forward locker. Now we had a reefed main up and no steering. Essentially, we were \”hove too\” the wind and seas and fortunately in then pretty good shape.

Next I went to investigate the steering in the port engine room. For whatever reason, our steering ram in the big seas and waves essentially slipped. How this happened is a mystery. Hydraulics are very strong. I doubt we had air in the system as the fluid levels were normal. The steering rams are pretty new as well – replaced when we were in Florida. This caused the rudder to be hard over but have no effect on controlling the boat. We re-centered it and locked it back down, now we were back under control.

Everything behaved properly and we continued on with a single reef and no head (front) sail for the next 3 hours. At 6:30 a.m. (first light), I unrolled the genoa to windward on the pole and all has been well since. We\’ve had a few squalls and winds were up to 30 knots very briefly.

We are 550 miles from Fatu Hiva and heading somewhat south of the island. We will likely gybe (go the other direction with the sails) sometime today?

This morning, around 8 a.m. I saw a 40 foot whale 35 feet from the boat heading in the opposite direction. The Whale was going up wind, we were going downwind. I suspect it just came close to see what this big noisy thing was? I have a pamphlet that describes the whales tails and dorsal fins.
I\’m not sure of course, but it seemed it might have been a small Sperm Whale?

So, it\’s still blowy out here, we feel fortunate that no damage was done and that we got the steering fixed and the sail back aboard.

Welcome to Cruising!…
More tomorrow, Hoping for a \”Pretty Standard Day\”….:-)
Scott and Nikki

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/10 18:00
LATITUDE: 09-49.81S
LONGITUDE: 126-07.61W
COURSE: 243T
SPEED: 8.1
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 20
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 20%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.7
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 14 – 170 nm

Many have asked how the data for the position reports is input. The program we send our email with (Airmail 2000), takes a 10 minute average of all the data it sees on our instruments. Lat/Long which is input instantaneously and everything below the Wind_Dir is manually entered.

We\’ve really had a fabulous trip so far. The sail plan we\’re using has just been so easy to deal with. Our big reacher on the pole to weather hasn\’t been touched in 4 days! If the wind comes up over 22 knots, we reef the main, if it drops to 20 for any period of time, we just raise it back to full.

Last night we expected much more wind by this morning than we have. The weather files predicted about 20-24 knots, but so far, it\’s been 17-22 and not much of the 22. We did see a 24 knot gust earlier, but it didn\’t last more than a minute or two. We did get a rain squall last night, so at 2:30 a.m. local time we put the reef in expecting the bigger wind. Nope, so far, pretty much a nice strong, but very manageable wind and sea.

On the morning radio net, many of the monohulls were telling us about the lack of rest and tough ride they\’re having. The nature of their boats is to roll much more than the multihulls and have a deeper and longer motion. They\’re are swells out here from multiple directions and as such, it can mimic a washing machine at some times. \”Beach House\” (aka: Miss Piggy) just hasn\’t had that experience this trip, our 12th of over 1500 miles. Frankly, it\’s been a breeze.

We seem to have a bit more wind than most of the other boats at the moment as we\’re somewhat south of the main group. We heard there are 34 boats in Hiva Oa! I have no idea how that many boats could possibly fit in that anchorage (I\’ve been there twice before with only 4 boats at most!).

We are likely to head directly toward Fatu Hiva (the island 45 miles south of Hiva Oa). This is the island made famous by the late anthropologist, Thor Heyerdahl who wrote a book of the same title about his experience there 60 years ago. The reasons we\’ll head there first are two fold. First, it\’s mostly because of the crowd in Hiva Oa (about 12 more boats will arrive there shortly!) and the fact that our suspect engines might make it difficult to motor back up wind to Fatu Hiva which can be a tough ride from Hiva Oa.

Mostly an un-eventful day, but believe me, we don\’t mind in the least.
We\’ve 725 miles to go. Per the instruments, just under 4 days.
That\’s it for now,
Please feel free to drop an email our way.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki,

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/10 18:00
LATITUDE: 09-49.81S
LONGITUDE: 126-07.61W
COURSE: 243T
SPEED: 8.1
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 20
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 20%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.7
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 14 – 170 nm

Many have asked how the data for the position reports is input. The program we send our email with (Airmail 2000), takes a 10 minute average of all the data it sees on our instruments. Lat/Long which is input instantaneously and everything below the Wind_Dir is manually entered.

We\’ve really had a fabulous trip so far. The sail plan we\’re using has just been so easy to deal with. Our big reacher on the pole to weather hasn\’t been touched in 4 days! If the wind comes up over 22 knots, we reef the main, if it drops to 20 for any period of time, we just raise it back to full.

Last night we expected much more wind by this morning than we have. The weather files predicted about 20-24 knots, but so far, it\’s been 17-22 and not much of the 22. We did see a 24 knot gust earlier, but it didn\’t last more than a minute or two. We did get a rain squall last night, so at 2:30 a.m. local time we put the reef in expecting the bigger wind. Nope, so far, pretty much a nice strong, but very manageable wind and sea.

On the morning radio net, many of the monohulls were telling us about the lack of rest and tough ride they\’re having. The nature of their boats is to roll much more than the multihulls and have a deeper and longer motion. They\’re are swells out here from multiple directions and as such, it can mimic a washing machine at some times. \”Beach House\” (aka: Miss Piggy) just hasn\’t had that experience this trip, our 12th of over 1500 miles. Frankly, it\’s been a breeze.

We seem to have a bit more wind than most of the other boats at the moment as we\’re somewhat south of the main group. We heard there are 34 boats in Hiva Oa! I have no idea how that many boats could possibly fit in that anchorage (I\’ve been there twice before with only 4 boats at most!).

We are likely to head directly toward Fatu Hiva (the island 45 miles south of Hiva Oa). This is the island made famous by the late anthropologist, Thor Heyerdahl who wrote a book of the same title about his experience there 60 years ago. The reasons we\’ll head there first are two fold. First, it\’s mostly because of the crowd in Hiva Oa (about 12 more boats will arrive there shortly!) and the fact that our suspect engines might make it difficult to motor back up wind to Fatu Hiva which can be a tough ride from Hiva Oa.

Mostly an un-eventful day, but believe me, we don\’t mind in the least.
We\’ve 725 miles to go. Per the instruments, just under 4 days.
That\’s it for now,
Please feel free to drop an email our way.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki,

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/09 17:58
LATITUDE: 09-13.10S
LONGITUDE: 123-22.22W
COURSE: 258T
SPEED: 8.1
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 20
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 25%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.4
AIR_TEMP: 31.1C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 13 – 176 nm

ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM! Yesterday, a very unusual occurrence happened right after our 1800 UTC report. We saw another boat about 5 miles to our south. It looked big! Ironically, it\’s the same place (more or less) I spotted s/v \”Ulliad\” on the last time I did this trip.

We hailed on VHF and Pascal Imbert of s/v \”Water Music\” came back in perfect English. He\’s a 52 foot, all carbon fiber catamaran. Think NASCAR! He has a carbon fiber mast and spectra line rigging, perhaps 50% more sail area than we do.

He goes so fast, the apparent wind never gets behind his beam (90 degrees). He goes so fast, he actually can\’t sail with the wind. He has to zig zag radically across the wind – yes even when going down wind. He passed astern of us going 14-16 knots! He says it\’s uncomfortable having to sail across the swells so much, but he loves the speed. He has a very experienced crew of only 3 and it\’s a \”hand on the main sheet at all times\” type of vessel. An awfully small crew for such a rocket for my liking, but he clearly doesn\’t want the weight!

The other day, I wrote how almost no boats ever do 200 miles/day out here even once. Pascal never does LESS than 200 miles/day. Averages 270! and has several days over 300 miles/day! Whew!

He left Costa Rica (which is 650 miles further from the Marquesas) the same day we left the Galapagos. He\’s probably sailed 1200 miles to catch up the 650 he has so far. We\’ve about 5 days to go. He\’ll be there in 3!

That was the excitement of yesterday.

The winds were soft last night, but have picked up quite a bit today – 20-24 knots. We expect that tomorrow afternoon it will really be blowing and as such at some point we\’ll likely reef the main again. We\’re not quite smelling the barn yet, but we\’re beginning the last turn for the home stretch.
895 miles to go!
KIT,
Scott and Nikki
www.svbeachhouse.com

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/09 17:58
LATITUDE: 09-13.10S
LONGITUDE: 123-22.22W
COURSE: 258T
SPEED: 8.1
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 20
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.5M
SWELL_PER: 8
CLOUDS: 25%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.4
AIR_TEMP: 31.1C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 13 – 176 nm

ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM! Yesterday, a very unusual occurrence happened right after our 1800 UTC report. We saw another boat about 5 miles to our south. It looked big! Ironically, it\’s the same place (more or less) I spotted s/v \”Ulliad\” on the last time I did this trip.

We hailed on VHF and Pascal Imbert of s/v \”Water Music\” came back in perfect English. He\’s a 52 foot, all carbon fiber catamaran. Think NASCAR! He has a carbon fiber mast and spectra line rigging, perhaps 50% more sail area than we do.

He goes so fast, the apparent wind never gets behind his beam (90 degrees). He goes so fast, he actually can\’t sail with the wind. He has to zig zag radically across the wind – yes even when going down wind. He passed astern of us going 14-16 knots! He says it\’s uncomfortable having to sail across the swells so much, but he loves the speed. He has a very experienced crew of only 3 and it\’s a \”hand on the main sheet at all times\” type of vessel. An awfully small crew for such a rocket for my liking, but he clearly doesn\’t want the weight!

The other day, I wrote how almost no boats ever do 200 miles/day out here even once. Pascal never does LESS than 200 miles/day. Averages 270! and has several days over 300 miles/day! Whew!

He left Costa Rica (which is 650 miles further from the Marquesas) the same day we left the Galapagos. He\’s probably sailed 1200 miles to catch up the 650 he has so far. We\’ve about 5 days to go. He\’ll be there in 3!

That was the excitement of yesterday.

The winds were soft last night, but have picked up quite a bit today – 20-24 knots. We expect that tomorrow afternoon it will really be blowing and as such at some point we\’ll likely reef the main again. We\’re not quite smelling the barn yet, but we\’re beginning the last turn for the home stretch.
895 miles to go!
KIT,
Scott and Nikki
www.svbeachhouse.com

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/08 18:10
LATITUDE: 08-31.80S
LONGITUDE: 120-33.61W
COURSE: 254T
SPEED: 7.6
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 14
WIND_DIR: 102T
WAVE_HT: 0.2M
WAVE_PER: 6
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.2M
SWELL_PER: 7
CLOUDS: 25%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1015.3
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 12 – 175 nm (7.3 knot average for the 24 hour run)

Yesterday the winds were 20 knots early in the day and with the reefed main and reacher out to windward on the pole, we were averaging almost 9.5 knots for the first 10 hours of our daily run. Then alas, the winds died off right around mid night and we slowed through the night.

This morning, we\’ve around 12-15 knots of wind and have hoisted the main back to full. Still not the blasting start we had yesterday, but the winds are supposed to pick up starting this early evening and staying strong to stronger over the next 30-40 hours. We may re-reef before dark, we\’ll check conditions then.

This hasn\’t been our fastest passage, but to date, in 12 ocean crossings of over 1500 miles, this has been by far the most comfortable.
For the most part, the swell is just at a slight angle to our stern and the winds on a broad reach (which means pretty far behind us).
The boat loves this condition and just keeps a keepin\’ on.

Nikki is enjoying the ride and with her finger still a bit out of commission doesn\’t want to do all that fussy sail work. I can\’t (and don\’t) blame her.
This is just too easy so far. (Can you hear me knocking on wood?)…

Scott and Nikki – 1065 miles to go!

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/08 18:10
LATITUDE: 08-31.80S
LONGITUDE: 120-33.61W
COURSE: 254T
SPEED: 7.6
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 14
WIND_DIR: 102T
WAVE_HT: 0.2M
WAVE_PER: 6
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.2M
SWELL_PER: 7
CLOUDS: 25%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1015.3
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 12 – 175 nm (7.3 knot average for the 24 hour run)

Yesterday the winds were 20 knots early in the day and with the reefed main and reacher out to windward on the pole, we were averaging almost 9.5 knots for the first 10 hours of our daily run. Then alas, the winds died off right around mid night and we slowed through the night.

This morning, we\’ve around 12-15 knots of wind and have hoisted the main back to full. Still not the blasting start we had yesterday, but the winds are supposed to pick up starting this early evening and staying strong to stronger over the next 30-40 hours. We may re-reef before dark, we\’ll check conditions then.

This hasn\’t been our fastest passage, but to date, in 12 ocean crossings of over 1500 miles, this has been by far the most comfortable.
For the most part, the swell is just at a slight angle to our stern and the winds on a broad reach (which means pretty far behind us).
The boat loves this condition and just keeps a keepin\’ on.

Nikki is enjoying the ride and with her finger still a bit out of commission doesn\’t want to do all that fussy sail work. I can\’t (and don\’t) blame her.
This is just too easy so far. (Can you hear me knocking on wood?)…

Scott and Nikki – 1065 miles to go!

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/07 18:02
LATITUDE: 08-00.99S
LONGITUDE: 117-40.07W
COURSE: 277T
SPEED: 8.0
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 19
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.7M
SWELL_PER: 2
CLOUDS: 20%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1015.1
AIR_TEMP: 30.6C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 11 – 167 nm (took the day off!…:-)

Yesterday we expected more wind than we got and as such, sort of took the day off. We would have easily gone over average, but we just decided
\”Today, we\’ll have an easy day\”. We kept in the mainsail reef and the genoa poled out to the windward side. The weather has turned fair again, puffy cumulus are back, the gray rainy skies gone and sunny sailboat ride is back – at least for now.

We\’ve left our reef in the main, but put the big reacher up on the pole to windward. It\’s about 50% bigger than our genoa. A bit tricky as it\’s 2/3rds the size of our spinnaker too, but has to be \”tacked\” at the deck. We\’re using our \”floating tack\” to accomplish this. I\’ll write it up in the big blog when we get to the internet. As such, we\’re going faster again, not as fast as the spinnaker, but this sail is very easy to put away in two minutes if we needed too.

We see more wind on the horizon for where we expect to be tomorrow and the squalls seem to have moved to the north. The new winds will last for about 3 days, but the end of the trip appears that we\’ll be back in quite light winds. Strategically, we\’re staying more north now so when the winds do quiet down, we can maintain boat speed by reaching across the lighter air which will be from the due East (we\’re heading due West) and keeping the \”apparent wind\” up.

For those of you who aren\’t sailors, the \”apparent wind\” is what we really sail, not the \”true wind\”. The True Wind is the direction and strength the wind actually is. The Apparent Wind is what we sense in our sails. My best example that you\’d be familiar with is a car. If you\’re going 50 miles/hour and the wind is from behind you at 50 miles/hour, the true wind is 50 miles an hour, but the apparent wind to your hand out the window would be ZERO. Your car and wind, traveling in the same direction at the same speed \”feel\” nothing. If you\’re heading INTO that wind, the car at 50 mph – your hand would \”feel\” 100 mph. The example is extreme of course, but on the boat, 2-4 knots of \”apparent wind\” make all the difference in our sailing speed.

We\’re now in the midst of the back of the group of boats that was in front of us, so we\’re hearing their radio reports clearly now.

So far, so good. It\’s been a great passage to date. Let\’s hope it stays that way!
KIT, More tomorrow.
Scott and Nikki – 1240 miles to go.

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/05/07 18:02
LATITUDE: 08-00.99S
LONGITUDE: 117-40.07W
COURSE: 277T
SPEED: 8.0
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 19
WIND_DIR: ESE
WAVE_HT: 0.3M
WAVE_PER: 5
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.7M
SWELL_PER: 2
CLOUDS: 20%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1015.1
AIR_TEMP: 30.6C
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Marquesas Islands – Day 11 – 167 nm (took the day off!…:-)

Yesterday we expected more wind than we got and as such, sort of took the day off. We would have easily gone over average, but we just decided
\”Today, we\’ll have an easy day\”. We kept in the mainsail reef and the genoa poled out to the windward side. The weather has turned fair again, puffy cumulus are back, the gray rainy skies gone and sunny sailboat ride is back – at least for now.

We\’ve left our reef in the main, but put the big reacher up on the pole to windward. It\’s about 50% bigger than our genoa. A bit tricky as it\’s 2/3rds the size of our spinnaker too, but has to be \”tacked\” at the deck. We\’re using our \”floating tack\” to accomplish this. I\’ll write it up in the big blog when we get to the internet. As such, we\’re going faster again, not as fast as the spinnaker, but this sail is very easy to put away in two minutes if we needed too.

We see more wind on the horizon for where we expect to be tomorrow and the squalls seem to have moved to the north. The new winds will last for about 3 days, but the end of the trip appears that we\’ll be back in quite light winds. Strategically, we\’re staying more north now so when the winds do quiet down, we can maintain boat speed by reaching across the lighter air which will be from the due East (we\’re heading due West) and keeping the \”apparent wind\” up.

For those of you who aren\’t sailors, the \”apparent wind\” is what we really sail, not the \”true wind\”. The True Wind is the direction and strength the wind actually is. The Apparent Wind is what we sense in our sails. My best example that you\’d be familiar with is a car. If you\’re going 50 miles/hour and the wind is from behind you at 50 miles/hour, the true wind is 50 miles an hour, but the apparent wind to your hand out the window would be ZERO. Your car and wind, traveling in the same direction at the same speed \”feel\” nothing. If you\’re heading INTO that wind, the car at 50 mph – your hand would \”feel\” 100 mph. The example is extreme of course, but on the boat, 2-4 knots of \”apparent wind\” make all the difference in our sailing speed.

We\’re now in the midst of the back of the group of boats that was in front of us, so we\’re hearing their radio reports clearly now.

So far, so good. It\’s been a great passage to date. Let\’s hope it stays that way!
KIT, More tomorrow.
Scott and Nikki – 1240 miles to go.