Miles traveled day 24: 132
Miles traveled total : 3,025
Miles to Port Angeles: 1,945
The wind did finally fill in behind us once again and we had a few nice hours of sailing in a light breeze, setting the jib out on the spinnaker pole and running downwind wing and wing. Midday it slowly began to clock back around to the northwest, ending its rotation directly in front of us. Turns out that just when you think you’re safe from the lows, securely surrounded by high pressure, you learn that the huge North Pacific high isn’t so tough afterall. A low pressure system formed right in the middle of the high, exactly over the top of us, splitting the high into two separate systems. Who knew that could happen? And the low has been right exactly over the top of us ever since. Seems we now have our own little personal low, just like the character in the Peanuts cartoon with his small cloud of dust traveling with him wherever he goes.
With reefed main and staysail only, we spent all last night bashing into 23 knot headwinds, frequently taking water completely over the cabin top as we would crash into wave after wave. Every forecast said the winds would ease within the next three hours, then with each new surface analysis we received on the weatherfax we saw that it was growing and surrounding us more and more. Late this morning the wind finally slowed to the high teens, but the low continues to loom over the top of us as we sail slowly east-northeast. Thankfully with the lessening of the wind, the seas have flattened and we’re not pounding any longer.
Early this morning when I downloaded the latest set of forecasts that go out up to 4 days, there was another low pressure system forming south of us, that was going to run right over the top of us when the current one finally moved north. Now that the high has split it appears we’ve just opened a door for new lows to fill the gap. We were in for at least another 96 hours of bashing, or at least it seemed so this morning. This afternoon the forecasters have changed their minds and the new low is now just projected to remain a small trof that should stay ahead of us, and the winds should back behind us again hopefully by tomorrow mid day. We keep telling ourselves that even though it’s fundamentally uncomfortable and not very much fun, at least we’re not becalmed and still slowly making miles towards home.
Yesterday afternoon we had a nice treat when Randy, one of the net control stations in Hawaii for the Pacific Seafarer’s net, stayed on after the net and set up a phone patch for us. Rob got a chance to say hi to his dad, and after 24 long days at sea it was so nice hearing that voice from home fill the cabin. Conditions were perfect for it yesterday, and we’re glad we took advantage of the opportunity, because today the propagation was so poor we were lucky anyone could hear us at all when we checked in with our location report.
With less than 2,000 miles to go, we are finally beginning to believe this passage will have an end. And with the north wind we seem to have lost the persistent fog bank we were sailing in, at least for now. The sun peeked through the clouds for about 10 minutes today, giving us hope that tomorrow we may have warm weather and opportunity to clean up after our own little personal low finally moves north without us.
Teresa
