Hula
There’s a bird spending the night on the ship’s bell. He’s a very good listener.
Green Buffalo
16:30
Busy last 24 hours.
gribs made it clear I needed to head north a bit to clear the low – while most of the fleet was heading south. Roll the dice.
Dropped the #1 (a beast to flake… will need to reflake at some point) and hoisted the code zero… at sunset the wind went aft… before midnight a jibe and building wind. Finally heading south in the “real” ocean winds… out of the coastal low,
Went to sleep…
Only to wake up with a bit of thrashing as the wind had increased quite a bit a blew up the code zero (I bought it used and it was a bit worn out so not much of a loss).
Had hanked on the Jib Top early in the evening knowing the wind might increase. Dousing the tattered code zero and raising the jib top was strenuous but straight forward.
Noticed a ring ding on the deck when “cleaning up”… and saw it had fallen off the main tack pin… and the main tack pin was half way out (this happened two weeks before resulting in the main slugs pulling out of the track)… couldn’t get the pin fully back in so jammed in a screwdriver and some sail tape to get me till morning (too damn dark to sort out… sorted out at daylight).
Flew Jib Top all night… set up preventer as the boom was banging a bit.
Now when do I raise the kite? Now? Later today? Tomorrow morning?
About to get fresh gribs to help me decide (kits up after just two days is “pretty early”… but there is a high building on the track we need to head south to get under).
No more bonine… feeling good… went to bathroom a few times… everything “working”.
Maybe some real food tonight?
Still overcast. Warming up a bit… though I did run the diesel space heater this morning to take the edge off the chill.
With the solar panel, turns out I just need to run the engine twice a day for just an hour each to keep the batteries up.
Cheers,
Jim
Green Buffalo
17:24
Another busy last 24 hours.
After reaching all night under the big (155%) jib top… come morning the wind went aft… “aha now the wind swings toward Hawaii” – but I was wrong.
Flew the kite 8 hours only to be steadily headed. Strange… looked at gribs a second time… aha, the wind turning east around the bottom of the low.
Time to drop the kite and back to the jib top. I am getting too old for this… back and forth several times between cockpit, mast and bow… dragging sails, dragging lines, getting everything ready for the kite hoist and jib top douse. Oh and don’t forget untangling and hoisting the spinnaker net… and then reversing all this late in the day.
Good thing I went back to the jib top… over night the wind varied from 14k to 24k from 80 to 110 degrees apparent. Perfect for jib top… ugly for a kite.
So reaching along under jib top for 20 hours making great time straight to my “waypoint”.
Am I going to far south or not south enough? Time will tell. Getting a grib as I sent this email that will tell me more…
Food… grapes, raisins, about to cook another 2 cups of rice plus a ramen cup of soup. “Real food” will need to wait till we get off tis “bumpy” reach.
Tomorrow? Maybe Tortellini?
Cheese and crackers?
Still overcast.
Cheers,
Jim
Green Buffalo
Shark On Bluegrass
Tue 22 , all well on the shark. Found wind. Hat fun with the spin last night, shredded it , that why uyou use old sails …
Northern Star
Northern Star 22 Jun Daily Check in and position report. All is well aboard Northern Star. Jamie is alive and healthy.
Hope all is well with Race Cmte
Wx: Cloudy, 67 degrees, 71% humidity, winds 340 17-18, seas 6-8’ waves from stbd qtr
Position: 35 03.051N. 129 09.341W
Mountain
Everything is groovy
From Will Lee s/v Sea Wisdom @ 1654 on 06.22.21
Hi Jackie, good afternoon. This is Will from Sea Wisdom. My email system is acting up and takes me hours to send and receive email msgs. So I’m switch to texting as my primary way of communicating with other people. I informed Brian about this already. Just in case if you don’t know it yet. Thanks for your email. Because you don’t have Facebook, I can text you my daily blog entry.
Day 3, June 21, “It’s getting hot here in the doldrum.”
Day 3 began with light wind, and the sun came out for the first time since last Saturday. The wind was so light, there were actually more work on the boat. I had to make every slight adjustments to the sails in order to take advantage the occasionally rare but short lived breeze. For example, spending 30 minutes to set up the whisker pole to only use it for a few hours before taking it down.
I made some fresh water today using the water maker, and was able to make sparkling water from the ocean with my Sodastream! I don’t need to carry any plastic water bottles. I even added some EmergenC to the homemade sparkling water, then I get to drink soda that is healthy.
I started the morning with a nori ginger soup to warm up my body. The ginger helps me getting my sea legs. To celebrate the change to warmer weather today, I modified the Beef Stroganoff to have Cajun spices. At noon, the color of the ocean is deep and dense blue, amazing to watch each of the 10 foot swell goes underneath the boat ever so quietly. I went from wearing 5 layers of fleece and foul weather gear to just wearing a think base layer.
Around noon time was when I receive the position report from the race committee on where all the racers are. Oh boy, was I wrong about picking the southern route. Here I was getting stuck and trying to figure out a way out of the doldrum. I am in one of the last places in the race.
The NW wind finally came in the late afternoon. I could not be happier. There are still 1900 miles to go, so anything could happen. My number 1 priority is to get to Kauai safely.
I have more gear issues to deal with. The Iridium Go system is not able to send and receive email reliably. I spent hours trying and I got lucky a few times. But texting works. Also, the Gsrmin inReach is my spare satellite communicator and tracker. It decided not to work anymore. At least I still have 2 independent satellite devices that work, Iridium text and a handheld Inmarsat.
The block holding the starboard jib sheet is showing some metal fatigue because when there was no wind, things get banged around. If that block fails, I have a few other blocks that can do the work. Having redundancy and spare parts are so important when I need to be self sufficient.