This boat is so good. We left Port Townsend this morning about 6 to catch a nice outgoing current, and have not stopped motoring yet. There was a one-hour period where we motorsailed, but outside of that there hasn’t been enough wind to do enough good if we were to put the sails up. We’ve been making 7 knots all the way, the current sometimes pushing that to 8.5 and sometimes down to 6, so current has definitely helped more than it has hurt.
It’s 6am on Friday, Oct 12 and I just started my second 4-hour watch shift about an hour ago. Somehow that sleep from 1am to 5am felt like 20 minutes, but I’m refreshed enough. Because of the storm lurking in the mid-Pacific right now, we’ll need to make as much Southing as we can while the weather is in our favor, so getting into a good pattern of watches where both Capt Rich and I stay well-rested will be key for us if we’re going to get to Eureka before Tuesday afternoon (when the bad stuff should hit). We won’t push it – worst case (according to current predictions) would be to go into Newport or Bookings and not be able to get into California until the storm blows through and its residual swells dissipate. I’m really hoping for Eureka, but to do that – with conservative time estimates and fuel-capacity estimates – we’ll need some nice following winds to help. We’ve got headwinds at the moment, but pretty light (wind gauge reads 15 knots, but that’s apparent, so subtract the boat speed and it’s probably an 8-knot headwind). Seas have been pretty calm most of the time offshore, maybe 5-foot swells and some 2-foot wind chop. However, as the sun comes up I can barely make out the swells as they approach from the West, and they’re 6-8 feet, seem to loom and then roll harmlessly under the boat, looking even more impressive from behind as they roll of into the sunrise, off to break on the shore.
Night watch consists mainly of staying awake, watching for other boats, and making slight course corrections to the auto-pilot, which means occasionally pushing the +1 or -1 degree buttons to follow the course we’ve laid out on the computer chart. We’re staying pretty close in, so there’s been no ship traffic and only a few fishing boats. I’ve only seen one other recreational boat. Speaking of staying awake – dang, I let my green tea get cold.I don’t know when I’ll be able to post this, but we’re passing Gray’s Harbor soon so I may get a little Verizon signal. I’m very impressed with Verizon, btw. I still had one bar of signal for 10 minutes after rounding Cape Flattery. The sun’s just starting to come up. I already have some good pics of big ships passing and of rounding Cape Flattery. If I can, I’ll post some pictures here later today (signal-dependent, of course): http://picasaweb.google.com/iamthepantsTT
