Miles traveled, day 3: 124
Miles traveled total: 415
Miles to Port Angeles: 4,100
Did I actually say yesterday that I was going to cherish EVERY moment? Hahaha. More foolish words have rarely been typed, even by me. I forgot the magic word: Lightning. And we had a night of it last night, that’s for sure. The storms were huge and the lightning was terrifying. There was so much lightning that it was impossible to keep track of which thunder went with which flash. The noise was absolutely pounding all night, as we motor-sailed in a circuitous route trying to avoid the worst of the storms as they passed by, managing once again to avoid a strike. We’re 140 miles offshore this afternoon, hoping to be far enough away from land to lose the convection, but we have no idea really how far out this weather travels. The winds are big today so that ought to keep the lightning quiet tonight.
Before we left Osaka our friend Yoshida-san showed us a plot of two other vessels that are currently sailing from Japan to the US who are reporting in daily on the Okira Net. One is headed for Alaska and the other for San Francisco. We were surprised to see that they were both nearly 2,000 miles out and still dead due east of Japan. We didn’t know at the time why the boat heading for Alaska was traveling so far east before turning northeast. After watching the weather charts the last few days, now we think we do understand. When we were researching weather for this passage, we focused more on the middle of the route, and less on the edges. The historical data from Buoyweather and the pilot charts showed that in July the passage would be relatively calm out in the middle, compared to even a month earlier.
What we didn’t dial in on at the time was the fact that the low pressure systems continue to push off the Chinese mainland. We don’t notice them at home in the summer because they get pushed north by the North Pacific high. What we think we’ve learned in the last few days is that if we turn north now we’ll just be traveling along with system after system. We hate the thought of giving up the free 1-2 knots from the Kuro Shio, but we’ve decided now to follow the path of the other two boats. The best course seems to be to travel eastbound until we get to the edge of the North Pacific high, then turn northeast. What we think we want to do is to ride a path between the lows and the high.
Tonight the third system of this passage heads offshore towards us, and this one is a doozy. It’s a 998 millibar low and should pass north of us over the next 36 hours. We’ll hoist our storm staysail this afternoon and tuck in the second reef in the main. Unlike last time when we were headed into Japan, though, we’re on the south side of this low so the winds will continue to be from the southwest and stay behind us. They’ll be strong, but with shortened sail we should be able to push on through. I’m listening to the Pacific Seafarer’s net on the SSB right now and there’s a boat sailing directly from the Marshall Islands to Seattle who is becalmed and drifting in the middle of the North Pacific high, so things could be worse.
Teresa
