Worrall Wind Update - Marquesas Bound

Day 17, Friday, April 23, 2010

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As I begin this update, it is 11:00 p.m. on April 22. The rain has let up. We've been thinking of Russ's Mom Lorraine this evening. She would have been 100 years old today. She knew we were planning this cruise and know she would have loved getting daily updates about our progress.

We have had a record breaking day regarding our distance traveled. In the last 24 hours, we have traveled 141 nautical miles. That's our best day so far. It looks like we are going to start the new day out quickly as well. We have changed tack a few times this evening, once before sunset, and again at 10:00 as the wind has been shifting around a bit, but it is now blowing once again from the northeast at about 25 knots and we sailing consistently between 7.5-8.5 knots. The swells are on our starboard stern quarter and giving us some good push I can hardly believe it. I don't know that we have ever sailed consistently over 7 knots in Worrall Wind. If the wind picks up anymore though, we will need to reduce sail.

When we change tack, our routine is that Garyn goes forward to release the preventer and clear lines. Russ and I go aft. I take the helm and hold the boat on course either coming about or gybing as necessary, and Russ works the sheets and the wind vane. That seems to work out well. My watch is almost over and we are flying through the night. It has been cloudy and rainy all day, but this evening the moon has been shining through the clouds to illuminate the horizon. The swells have lessened a bit, but not by much.

2:00 a.m.
When Garyn awoke for his watch, we went out again to adjust the sails. We pulled in a little jib, let her fly with less tension, lowered the traveler on the main, and fell off a little more. During the course of the night the wind had shifted and we were no longer on a broad but a beam reach. I had been correcting, but with the sails tight, Worrall Wind kept rounding. Once we made the adjustments, she continued on her way. Russ and I went to bed in the lower saloon area.

6:00 We have reached our half-way mark. We are equi-distance from Mexico and the Marquesas. Yippee!While we slept, Garyn kept the boat moving along and tracked a squall on our starboard side from 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. It was parallelling our course but moving faster so eventually passed us by. We had already broken yesterday's distance for the first 6 hours by 7 nautical miles. We have tacked once again and are heading southwest. The seas have calmed down to about 8 feet, but are expected from the gribs to pipe up to 10 feet and the wind to die down. So far the wind seems to be pretty close to grib modeling, but the waves have been greater, so not looking forward to slow movement and large rollers. We'll see.

The sun is out this morning and we have some air moving through the boat. Hopefully, we will get dried out a little bit and solar panels will charge us up. Last night, we were squeegying down our windows on the inside it was so humid. It's beginning to smell like a locker room.

We check into the Pacific Puddle Jump Net once and sometimes twice a day to give our coordinates. I don't know if it is our location or if we have something going on with our radio. We seem to be able to transmit well (others can hear us and our email goes out quickly), but our reception is really slow for both voice and data, even when tuned and in high power. Perhaps some of our sailing buddies can give us some advice. Usually it's the transmission that is poor.