This and the next few posts are being added significantly delayed because Paul forgot the email address he set up to post to this blog by email.
May 16th 2016
We are now three days into our first true blue water passage. We departed Port San Luis on Friday the 13th (a date selected to ensure the best possible luck on the journey), after refueling subsequent to a two day motor down the coast. As luck would have it we have stumbled into a marvelous 7 day forecast of fair winds and a stable high pressure pattern to the Northwest, in a season when that high pressure system is notoriously unreliable and had previously failed to develop. The result has been three days of excellent sailing, despite a bit of unsettling swell. The beginning of our passage hasn’t been without its share of mishaps, including: running over a 4 foot log that made quite the unsettling “BOOM”, and an incident with the water maker, wherein a valve left in the wrong position by yours truly resulted in the entire contents of our primary water tank getting pumped overboard. Luckily there was no damage from the log, and an extra 8 hours running the water maker replenished the water supply. Happily we’ve been getting excellent mileage out of several of our recent installations and upgrades, including our new autopilot that steers a course relative to the wind, our wind generator that helps us keep up with the power requirements of said autopilot, and our water maker that has kept our water supply at maximum despite the occasional operator error.
As we pass the 20% mark in our voyage to Hawaii, one thing in most striking: the incredible vastness of the Pacific. We’re just a fraction of our way across this expanse of blue, and yet the remarkable emptiness is palpable.
