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.

All boats have checked in and are doing well.

Latest reports.

Mountain, is loving life.

Northern Star, All good aboard, Jame alive and in good health. Morale high.

Aloha, As you all may have noticed last night was a pretty big turning point in the race for most if not all of us out here.  I began the evening firmly on port tack with the code zero up. through the night several times the southerly wind attempted to die and give way to the synoptic northerly, for me this happened at i believe around 1 am PST when I slowly headed more and more south before committing a gybe to starboard tack that was taking me north at a heading of around 300. Not much later the wind went forward and i was able to continue on a course of about 250 as the wind slowly began to build. During the night after the transition, I was very happy to have popped my head out and noticed some stars attempting to poke through the wet marine layer which had soaked the boat with a light drizzle for a few hours before the sun came up. At day break, the clouds persisted but were beginning to show signs far off on the horizon. Not long after, i made the decision to change headsails to the A5 spinnaker which is the smallest I have onboard. Though winds were not too high at the time, they were forecasted to increase as the day went on and this spinnaker would provide me the best opportunity to make good progress in the direction I want to sail without getting pushed too low. With morning winds in the low to mid teens and the sun making an appearance in a blue sky, I was able to put together a few good hours of boat speed with the waves lining up well with my course and surfing waves from a steady 8 knots u to about 12.5. Noon time brought some lightening winds which although frustrating at times certainly could have been worse and as we ease into the third evening underway the winds from this morning seem to have returned. Not present however is the agreeable sea state that had allowed for surfing before, but now I am seeing a bit of a swell well forward of the beam making for a somewhat bumpy ocean.  Once again, the sun is unfortunately long gone, but the temperature seems to have gotten maybe a little warmer since yesterday and the night before so that a small gain. Tomorrow will likely see the beginnings of the freeze dried selections as I intend to finish up the last slice of pizza for dinner this evening. For those curious, I haven’t seen any whales since the first afternoon which has been somewhat pleasant as they gave me quite a few scares early on. I have seen a few jelly fish and a sun fish today along with a couple balls of discarded mooring or fishing lines.