UTC/Local Time: Saturday, September 4, 0430/ Friday, September 3, 2030
Latitude: 13 13.901 S
Longitude: 163.28.918 W
Course Over Ground: 250 @ 6 knots
Wind Direction: ESE 20-25 knots, gusts to 35
Sea Swell: 2.5 -3 meters S and ESE
Sky: 60%
Barometric Pressure: 1014
Update: Day 1, American Samoa Bound
After consulting our grib files one more time, we decided to leave Suwarrow today as planned. It is 445 miles to American Samoa and we hope to arrive there sometime on Tuesday. The seas are a little bigger than we like, but the gribs show that they are going to get bigger by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week and the wind is going to become quite light at the same time so we would be bobbing around like a cork if left later.
We arose early and got the boat prepared for sailing, re-installing the hydrovane, lashing everything down, hoisting the dinghy, and closing the ports. I made a big pot of stew and put containers of it in the refrigerator, along with some beef and rice curry, pasta salad, and a half dozen hard boiled eggs. I should be able to just heat things up.
We had a bit of a challenge raising the anchor this morning. We were good and hooked on a piece of coral, but the anchor finally pulled loose and we were on our way by 11:15 or so. We cleared the pass through the barrier reef. The seas were large or larger than we expected. They were right on our bow as we pulled up the sail and triple reefed it. The bow would rise straight up and then plunge into a trough then up again. We were glad to turn WW around and run with the wind and the waves coming from the stern quarter. Every once in a while (every 5-7 minutes), we get some southern rollers that pass under our beam. They are moving quite fast and and do a good job rolling us to starboard.
The sun just set. We expect it will be a very dark night with some squalls. We've already had a few today with winds up to 35 knots. I have first watch until 1:00 a.m. We are thinking of all of you snug in your land beds tonight. Once again, we are checking in nightly with the Pacific Seafarers Net 14300 at 0300 Zulu. If you need or want to get in touch with us and know a ham operator, we check in with this net when we are on a passage. Our call sign is KI6YHE.
All is well on Worrall Wind.
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