Philip gently shakes me while saying "it's time". Dawn has come though it is just 0430 local time. The cabin is cool but because the wind is forward of Carina's beam, our dodger is deflecting it and the cabin temperature is moderate. Still, knowing I have to go out and face the wind, I begin to dress as I sip the warming tea that Philip has so kindly brewed. When I am done I am wearing: a polartec cap, long underwear, thick polartec pants and salopettes (rain bibs). Plus, an insulated top, a synthetic "Gap Kids" top, a "Jockey" light weight polartec jacket, a polartec vest and a magnificent long polartec-lined dive coat that extends below my knees. (Francesca, if you're reading this, your coat is amazing, thank you for letting me be its new owner!)
Finally, over all of this, I strap my Mustang Survival harness with its hydrostatically released floatation, clip onto a tether, and climb into the chilly cockpit. The sun is low and directly off our starboard bow. It sends warm rays through the dodger windows as it turns the beads of dew into sparkling gems. Directly in our wake, the bright waning moon is setting into powder grey cotton-candy clouds. A Laysan albatross, low to the water, glides towards us, then banks, exposing its creamy white underbody to the warm light of the rising sun.
Stepping back to admire the Monitor windvane perpetually on watch, the chill of the wind brushes my exposed cheeks. I quickly bring the vane towards the wind to adjust our course and duck back in the lee of the dodger.
At 6/11/2017 and 17:36 UTC (GMT) our position was: 40°47.66'N / 179°46.46'W.
We were traveling 050T degrees true at 4.4 knots.
short-footer
Sunday, 11 June 2017
Time Travel
We've crossed the dateline into yesterday, going east into the west, from GMT+12 to GMT -12. We get to live Sunday June 11 all over again.
Since Philip refuses to play this game, let me ask you, if you had yesterday to live again, what might you do differently? (Not literally yesterday, but figuratively.) Would you... Read more poetry? Let fewer things/people cause you stress? Plant a bigger garden? Marry a different guy? Have a different career? Cuss less often? Donate more of your time to helping others? Adopt more pets?
Or would you just appreciate the extra time doing exactly as you have always done..
At 6/11/2017 and 17:22 UTC (GMT) our position was: 40°47.06'N / 179°47.49'W.
We were traveling 054T degrees true at 3.9 knots.
short-footer
Since Philip refuses to play this game, let me ask you, if you had yesterday to live again, what might you do differently? (Not literally yesterday, but figuratively.) Would you... Read more poetry? Let fewer things/people cause you stress? Plant a bigger garden? Marry a different guy? Have a different career? Cuss less often? Donate more of your time to helping others? Adopt more pets?
Or would you just appreciate the extra time doing exactly as you have always done..
At 6/11/2017 and 17:22 UTC (GMT) our position was: 40°47.06'N / 179°47.49'W.
We were traveling 054T degrees true at 3.9 knots.
short-footer
Friday, 9 June 2017
By the Light of the Moon
June 9, 1127 UTC (2337 local). The barometer reads 1022 and the wind has dropped to about 5 knots; we've been engulfed by a promised high pressure system. The windvane silently pilots Carina oh-so-slowly ENE. Philip is cocooned in the warm bunk, only his sleeping face visible in the red glow from the navigation station. I bring my tea to the cockpit and sit to listen to the mesmerizing shooshing and gurgling of the hull as she gently pushes the sea, my mid-section swaying with the swell while my feet brace tightly against the roll. A cool breeze chills my face, the only part of me that's not covered in layers of fleece and foulies. The brilliance of the full moon makes the undulating swell shimmer as it rolls away to the south; silhouettes of small seabirds dart through the moonlight, their high pitched gossip complementing the soft squeaking of blocks. Saturn's glow penetrates the high thin cloud just below and left of the moon. To the right and down, Antares glows red, the only star of the constellation Scorpio visible tonight. Jupiter and Spica shine brightly above our wake. It's a rare peaceful watch and much too beautiful to be sitting in front of a computer screen...back top-sides for me with fresh warm tea to fight off grogginess...
At 6/9/2017 and 11:55 UTC (GMT) our position was: 38°52.94'N / 178°20.58'E.
We were traveling 063T degrees true at 2.6 knots.
short-footer
At 6/9/2017 and 11:55 UTC (GMT) our position was: 38°52.94'N / 178°20.58'E.
We were traveling 063T degrees true at 2.6 knots.
short-footer
Tuesday, 6 June 2017
Dolphin Play
Overnight our winds returned and we have 25 knots from the SSW which propels us along our rhumb line at 5 knots. The sky is completely obscured and visibility at sea level is less than one half mile in fog. Still the dolphins play and we can hear their strobe-like squeaking through the hull. It's a great day to be a dolphin.
Late yesterday we had a small whale (or three) surface a number of times at less than one boat length! I guess these guys don't see too many sailboats out this way and were curious about us.
A Liberian registered deep draft vessel just passed 15 nm to our north.
At 6/6/2017 and 18:05 UTC (GMT) our position was: 36°58.51'N / 174°07.68'E.
We were traveling 048T degrees true at 4.5 knots.
Late yesterday we had a small whale (or three) surface a number of times at less than one boat length! I guess these guys don't see too many sailboats out this way and were curious about us.
A Liberian registered deep draft vessel just passed 15 nm to our north.
At 6/6/2017 and 18:05 UTC (GMT) our position was: 36°58.51'N / 174°07.68'E.
We were traveling 048T degrees true at 4.5 knots.
Monday, 5 June 2017
//WL2K - Carina Underway - Update June 5
Dear Friends;
Day 19. Our GPS shows about 2,500 nm to go to get to Sitka; our trip log reads 2090 nautical miles, so we're not quite half way along the proposed route. At our current position of 36 degrees north and 171.5 east, days have been getting longer and decidedly cooler. Fog rolls by with the wind, misting the decks. And we still have to travel another 20 degrees north and about 62 degrees east so it's going to get a lot colder still. Our blood has gotten a lot thinner while we've been cruising in the tropics for 14 years, so we're bundled up even now as we approach the latitude of California's Big Sur.
We're long past the initial passage adjustment stage and have settled in to a routine that doesn't vary much from day to day. Our normal day starts when Philip wakes at ~0800 from his off watch. Meanwhile Leslie has been busy downloading emails and weather files using the radio and modem. No internet of course. This takes a bit of effort as she remains on watch so she's up and down the companionway managing the boat too. Once down, she must strip off her wet gloves and hover over the keyboard so as to not get it wet. The reason she's doing it at this time is this is the favorable time for radio propagation. Even with this, Sailmail connections have been difficult and some days we don't get Sailmail at all which means we also don't see what mail we have in the sv-carina.org inbox. For weather we're using the amateur radio network email called winlink; so far we've had reliable connections to winlink.
Philip, the foodie aboard, usually prepares meals: breakfast of some sort of creative egg concoction or what we euphemistically call "leaves and twigs": peanut butter toast or whole grain raw cereal (nuts, fruit) with homemade kefir. Lunch is pretty much catch-as-catch-can: snacking on sardines, almonds, dried fruit, cheese, etc. Dinner is an early (~1600) supper of a one-pot meal like beef stew, chicken soup, chili, pasta sauce and macaroni, Asian chicken in red curry paste.
We eat supper early in order to get a jump on our nighttime sleeping schedule: three hours on watch followed by three hours off. Our watch schedule does not depend on the clock, it depends on what's going on. Each off watch is however, 3 hours, from the time crew crawls in the bunk to the time he or she crawls out. Change of watch includes discussion of sailing and weather, position reporting, making a travel mug of tea and taking care of any chore requiring both of us, with a typical 25 minute turn-around time including the process of bundling up and unbundling foulies and bibs, warm pullovers, boots, harnesses,etc..
Before starting our schedule we get weather faxes and weather reports and download email again. Philip starts the first watch, usually at 1800. Leslie enjoys the last watch since she likes to see the sun come up in the morning (such as it is, it's been shrouded in clouds and fog for days now!). Throughout our routine, we try to find time to keep watch, read, answer emails, nap, bake bread, make repairs, adjust the sails and helm and monitor instruments.
At the risk of jinxing things, we've been pretty lucky so far; our "breakdowns" have been minimal: a leaking deck prism (temporarily repaired with duct tape during a rare calm spell), replacing a missing nut and lock washer and replacing a broken line on our Monitor windvane.
We have seen little wildlife though yesterday (and today again) we had dolphins buzz us whose chatter could be heard through the hull! Our earlier sighting of a tropic bird turns out to have been a Red-tailed Tropicbird. Black footed Albatross with their huge 7 foot wingspan and Sooty Shearwater are constantly about; earlier we saw one solitary Laysan Albatross!
On the first part of our trip, we spent most days beating to weather or close reaching. This point of sail is hard on both crew and boat; it puts a tremendous strain on the sails, standing and running rigging as well as our Monitor windvane steering device. For crew, the boat's motion can be quick and violent, requiring constant vigilance. Now, with wind more to the west or southwest, we are more or less running with the wind on either side of dead downwind which produces less pitching but significantly more rolling. The sea height has been between one and a half to three meters. Our daily average run is down to 109 nm in a 24 hour period due to some frustrating periods of calm.
Our weather resources have warned us on a few occasions of low pressure areas with concomitant gales and, so far, we've been able to alter course to try to mitigate the effort of these weather systems. We're also getting suggested routing in emails from a website called FastSeas.com . The direction of the wind, lots of sea room and lack of significant adverse current has helped, giving us options to sail either north, east or northeast and still maintain progress towards our goal. We've cleared the last geothermal hazard at the end of the chain emanating from Hawaii and now it's open water until we begin to close the coast of Alaska.
Your friends of the yacht Carina,
Philip, Leslie and the spirit of the fat cat, Jake
website: www.sv-carina.org
At 6/2/2017 and 21:17 UTC (GMT) our position was: 33°53.66'N / 168°40.43'E
p.s. PLEASE, if you wish to respond to our emails, DO NOT hit the "reply" button as it sends our original message back to us.
We usually have limited bandwidth that makes it difficult to receive lengthly messages.
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
Day 19. Our GPS shows about 2,500 nm to go to get to Sitka; our trip log reads 2090 nautical miles, so we're not quite half way along the proposed route. At our current position of 36 degrees north and 171.5 east, days have been getting longer and decidedly cooler. Fog rolls by with the wind, misting the decks. And we still have to travel another 20 degrees north and about 62 degrees east so it's going to get a lot colder still. Our blood has gotten a lot thinner while we've been cruising in the tropics for 14 years, so we're bundled up even now as we approach the latitude of California's Big Sur.
We're long past the initial passage adjustment stage and have settled in to a routine that doesn't vary much from day to day. Our normal day starts when Philip wakes at ~0800 from his off watch. Meanwhile Leslie has been busy downloading emails and weather files using the radio and modem. No internet of course. This takes a bit of effort as she remains on watch so she's up and down the companionway managing the boat too. Once down, she must strip off her wet gloves and hover over the keyboard so as to not get it wet. The reason she's doing it at this time is this is the favorable time for radio propagation. Even with this, Sailmail connections have been difficult and some days we don't get Sailmail at all which means we also don't see what mail we have in the sv-carina.org inbox. For weather we're using the amateur radio network email called winlink; so far we've had reliable connections to winlink.
Philip, the foodie aboard, usually prepares meals: breakfast of some sort of creative egg concoction or what we euphemistically call "leaves and twigs": peanut butter toast or whole grain raw cereal (nuts, fruit) with homemade kefir. Lunch is pretty much catch-as-catch-can: snacking on sardines, almonds, dried fruit, cheese, etc. Dinner is an early (~1600) supper of a one-pot meal like beef stew, chicken soup, chili, pasta sauce and macaroni, Asian chicken in red curry paste.
We eat supper early in order to get a jump on our nighttime sleeping schedule: three hours on watch followed by three hours off. Our watch schedule does not depend on the clock, it depends on what's going on. Each off watch is however, 3 hours, from the time crew crawls in the bunk to the time he or she crawls out. Change of watch includes discussion of sailing and weather, position reporting, making a travel mug of tea and taking care of any chore requiring both of us, with a typical 25 minute turn-around time including the process of bundling up and unbundling foulies and bibs, warm pullovers, boots, harnesses,etc..
Before starting our schedule we get weather faxes and weather reports and download email again. Philip starts the first watch, usually at 1800. Leslie enjoys the last watch since she likes to see the sun come up in the morning (such as it is, it's been shrouded in clouds and fog for days now!). Throughout our routine, we try to find time to keep watch, read, answer emails, nap, bake bread, make repairs, adjust the sails and helm and monitor instruments.
At the risk of jinxing things, we've been pretty lucky so far; our "breakdowns" have been minimal: a leaking deck prism (temporarily repaired with duct tape during a rare calm spell), replacing a missing nut and lock washer and replacing a broken line on our Monitor windvane.
We have seen little wildlife though yesterday (and today again) we had dolphins buzz us whose chatter could be heard through the hull! Our earlier sighting of a tropic bird turns out to have been a Red-tailed Tropicbird. Black footed Albatross with their huge 7 foot wingspan and Sooty Shearwater are constantly about; earlier we saw one solitary Laysan Albatross!
On the first part of our trip, we spent most days beating to weather or close reaching. This point of sail is hard on both crew and boat; it puts a tremendous strain on the sails, standing and running rigging as well as our Monitor windvane steering device. For crew, the boat's motion can be quick and violent, requiring constant vigilance. Now, with wind more to the west or southwest, we are more or less running with the wind on either side of dead downwind which produces less pitching but significantly more rolling. The sea height has been between one and a half to three meters. Our daily average run is down to 109 nm in a 24 hour period due to some frustrating periods of calm.
Our weather resources have warned us on a few occasions of low pressure areas with concomitant gales and, so far, we've been able to alter course to try to mitigate the effort of these weather systems. We're also getting suggested routing in emails from a website called FastSeas.com . The direction of the wind, lots of sea room and lack of significant adverse current has helped, giving us options to sail either north, east or northeast and still maintain progress towards our goal. We've cleared the last geothermal hazard at the end of the chain emanating from Hawaii and now it's open water until we begin to close the coast of Alaska.
Your friends of the yacht Carina,
Philip, Leslie and the spirit of the fat cat, Jake
website: www.sv-carina.org
At 6/2/2017 and 21:17 UTC (GMT) our position was: 33°53.66'N / 168°40.43'E
p.s. PLEASE, if you wish to respond to our emails, DO NOT hit the "reply" button as it sends our original message back to us.
We usually have limited bandwidth that makes it difficult to receive lengthly messages.
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
Friday, 2 June 2017
Morning
At 0430 local it is already dawn. When the sun rises behind the dark clouds, it sends radiating rays out onto the grey sea, changing its color from stainless steel grey to platinum grey. Looking behind Carina, the sea is a milky turquoise. Storm clouds behind descend and change the color to smoke grey and then to a deep battleship grey. Cherubic cumulus clouds to the east are powderpuff grey with a frosting of blue. An albatross glides by, dipping and banking and rising again.
Switching on the fishfinder, it reads a hull temperature of 62 F - about twenty degrees cooler than Pohnpei. We're bundled up now, looking a bit like a cross between ski bums and those poor guys in the world's most dangerous fishery. The off-watch bunk is a cozy refuge; difficult to quit after the requisite three hour snooze.
We've run out of store bought bread and tortillas so we made our first bread of the voyage yesterday. One of our Kindles went spastic presumably from exposure to sea spray but Philip heroically saved it with liberal doses of contact cleaner.
Philip also climbed out on the side deck and bandaged up a leaking deck prim that of course was completely dry during our long wet Pohnpei stay. Getting the deck clean and dry was a trick as Carina flew down the 2 meter swells. We're hoping soapy water, fresh water and acetone washings sufficiently rid the deck of salt for enough time to allow the super strength duct tape to adhere.
This morning we are ~350 nm to the theoretical half way point...trying to reach there on this tack before we have to jibe and move away from the next weather system. Later this morning we will enter into day 18; our average daily mileage over 17 days was 112 nm. We're running away from the wind, at least for now, squeezing out as broad a broad reach as we can towards the statistical NW corner of the north Pacific high.
At 6/2/2017 and 18:42 UTC (GMT) our position was: 33°53.66'N / 168°40.43'E.
We were traveling 021T degrees true at 4.5 knots.
short-footer
Switching on the fishfinder, it reads a hull temperature of 62 F - about twenty degrees cooler than Pohnpei. We're bundled up now, looking a bit like a cross between ski bums and those poor guys in the world's most dangerous fishery. The off-watch bunk is a cozy refuge; difficult to quit after the requisite three hour snooze.
We've run out of store bought bread and tortillas so we made our first bread of the voyage yesterday. One of our Kindles went spastic presumably from exposure to sea spray but Philip heroically saved it with liberal doses of contact cleaner.
Philip also climbed out on the side deck and bandaged up a leaking deck prim that of course was completely dry during our long wet Pohnpei stay. Getting the deck clean and dry was a trick as Carina flew down the 2 meter swells. We're hoping soapy water, fresh water and acetone washings sufficiently rid the deck of salt for enough time to allow the super strength duct tape to adhere.
This morning we are ~350 nm to the theoretical half way point...trying to reach there on this tack before we have to jibe and move away from the next weather system. Later this morning we will enter into day 18; our average daily mileage over 17 days was 112 nm. We're running away from the wind, at least for now, squeezing out as broad a broad reach as we can towards the statistical NW corner of the north Pacific high.
At 6/2/2017 and 18:42 UTC (GMT) our position was: 33°53.66'N / 168°40.43'E.
We were traveling 021T degrees true at 4.5 knots.
short-footer
Tuesday, 30 May 2017
Gurgle Gurgle
We're "moving" again under sail! The gurgling sound of the windvane paddle as it glides through water and the shooshing sound of the sea running past Carina's hull bring smiles to our faces. After a day and a half of light and variables, which incorporated a long night of listening to the drone of the diesel engine, and a full day of the hull galumping ungracefully with mixed seas rolling in from afar as we ghosted along just barely maintaining steerage, we have once again sailable wind. Not great but adequate to move us in the right direction. Wind at this latitude means weather systems are moving and we're watching closely a low pressure system that's passing north and west and pulling these winds with it. Each weather report shows something different which doesn't give us confidence in the accuracy of the predictions.
30 degrees north!
At 5/30/2017 and 13:12 UTC (GMT) our position was: 30°00.00'N / 163°13.48'E.
We were traveling 041T degrees true at 4.0 knots.
short-footer
30 degrees north!
At 5/30/2017 and 13:12 UTC (GMT) our position was: 30°00.00'N / 163°13.48'E.
We were traveling 041T degrees true at 4.0 knots.
short-footer
Monday, 29 May 2017
Horse Latitudes
We were trying to remember if these "variables" are what the clipper ship guys called the horse latitudes. Doesn't really matter, we have no horses to put to sea to lighten our load. Wind predictions change with every iteration of the GRIBS so it's hard to tell what we'll get but I suspect it'll be a challenge to keep moving until we reach reliable westerlies.
Midday yesterday the wind evaporated. We motored all night towards our intermediate waypoint. At dawn a Taiwanese long liner passed 3.5 nm to our NW, the first vessel we've seen since the intrepid fishermen in the surf near Sokeh's Pass in Pohnpei.
The boat is covered in sweet dew and we in warm clothing...
At 5/29/2017 and 19:23 UTC (GMT) our position was: 29°35.73'N / 162°48.44'E.
We were traveling 039T degrees true at 5.0 knots.
short-footer
Midday yesterday the wind evaporated. We motored all night towards our intermediate waypoint. At dawn a Taiwanese long liner passed 3.5 nm to our NW, the first vessel we've seen since the intrepid fishermen in the surf near Sokeh's Pass in Pohnpei.
The boat is covered in sweet dew and we in warm clothing...
At 5/29/2017 and 19:23 UTC (GMT) our position was: 29°35.73'N / 162°48.44'E.
We were traveling 039T degrees true at 5.0 knots.
short-footer
Sunday, 28 May 2017
Underwater What?
The big high to our NE has moved in and interrupted our tradewinds. By yesterday mid-day we were almost becalmed so we decided to run the engine for a couple of hours, heading NE in hopes of clearing the next blue smudge on the paper chart. As the sun began to side down (into a magnificent green flash for all you doubters!), sailable but light winds came up, but from the NE, which resulted in our hazard becoming a "lee shore". Our chart database (cm93) did have an object query which said: "underwater volcano, last eruption 1981" (!) It was pretty easy at that point to fall off NNW so as to sail, albeit slowly, to the west of the area. This morning finds us moving at a walking pace 7 nm to the west of the "position doubtful" mark.
The days are getting longer and the nights cooler. We've broken out gloves and socks and some of our cool weather clothing. Tonight we're adding a sleeping bag to the off-watch berth.
We're plowing through books and trying to keep up with emails (and naps). Sailmail connections have been difficult, so please bear with us. We've had no further maintenance items to deal with since our last report, though we're sure a few more tasks are planned by the gremlins to challenge us. The disgusting prehistoric creature is still MOB (missing on board).
At 5/28/2017 and 18:48 UTC (GMT) our position was: 28°07.89'N / 161°38.40'E.
We were traveling 354T degrees true at 2.1 knots.
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
The days are getting longer and the nights cooler. We've broken out gloves and socks and some of our cool weather clothing. Tonight we're adding a sleeping bag to the off-watch berth.
We're plowing through books and trying to keep up with emails (and naps). Sailmail connections have been difficult, so please bear with us. We've had no further maintenance items to deal with since our last report, though we're sure a few more tasks are planned by the gremlins to challenge us. The disgusting prehistoric creature is still MOB (missing on board).
At 5/28/2017 and 18:48 UTC (GMT) our position was: 28°07.89'N / 161°38.40'E.
We were traveling 354T degrees true at 2.1 knots.
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
Turning the Corner
Philip gently nudged me from a cozy sleep and began preparing tea in our shared travel mug. He'd recently made a course change as we'd passed safely beyond a shoaly smudge shown, without any depth data, on the large scale paper chart in the area labeled "mapmaker's seamounts". This shoal did not show up on our vector charts - even when zoomed in - but we did not trust that it wasn't there. Emerging, groggy, into the cockpit and peeking up over the dodger, I could see that Carina now drove towards dawn, a peach blush on the horizon. The air hitting my face was crisp and dry, and the sea, was a deep blueberry blue with a grey-blue surface shimmer. Brilliant Venus, lonely in the sky, ascended sparkling to starboard. Weather reports suggest we're sailing into a high; which way it wobbles will determine whether we keep these favorable winds or lose them completely. For now, we relish the new feeling of pointing and moving towards Sitka, about 3200 nm away via a great circle route.
Just after changing watch, Philip sprung from the bunk and began attacking a large (flying) tropical cockroach; a stowaway apparently. Injured now - these prehistoric creatures move fast! - the creepy thing has gone back into hiding.
Breakfast will be raw mixed whole grain cereal with dried fruit, pecans and almonds, and kefir. And more honeyed tea.
At 5/27/2017 and 18:22 UTC (GMT) our position was: 26°46.07'N / 161°33.55'E.
We were traveling 030T degrees true at 4.2 knots.
short-footer
Just after changing watch, Philip sprung from the bunk and began attacking a large (flying) tropical cockroach; a stowaway apparently. Injured now - these prehistoric creatures move fast! - the creepy thing has gone back into hiding.
Breakfast will be raw mixed whole grain cereal with dried fruit, pecans and almonds, and kefir. And more honeyed tea.
At 5/27/2017 and 18:22 UTC (GMT) our position was: 26°46.07'N / 161°33.55'E.
We were traveling 030T degrees true at 4.2 knots.
short-footer
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