Day 7: Sailing into the sunset

After all that joy with the spinnaker pole yesterday, I get an updated grib file this morning and realize I might never use my pole again. Well, at lest not on my passage. Of course, if the grib files can change once, they can change again.

I was able to successfully take the pole down at 3 am this morning without any hiccups and ever since I've been on a close reach. I've gotten some good speed and have continued towards Hawaii, but I'm now getting pushed up north, as the wind swings around. Tonight, Thursday and Friday will be challenging as I try to avoid the higher wind areas northeast of me, while I wait for the wind to clock all the way around. My next two tacks might be crucial to which path I will take for the rest of the trip. If this was a race, this would be exciting, but I haven't seen any boats out here for days.

Today was supposed to be a motoring day, but I was able to sail through. Call it 50-50 luck-skill. Still, my engine is running as I type this. My boat requires an awful lot of energy just to sail. Navigation, auto pilot and fridge and freezer don't run on wind. They do sometimes run on solar, but only during the day. When it's sunny. It better start being more sunny soon or I'll be running the engine for 5 hours a day, just to charge my batteries. I think it will be sunny tomorrow. It looked pretty clear in my direction right before sunset.

Now to endure a noisy night of pinching into the wind and bashing up waves. This might be the norm for the remainder of the passage, so might as well get used to it.

Captain Petter on S/V Bella Marina