High Quandary

June 30, 2018

Day 183/12

Noon Position: 44 22N 144 48W

Course/Speed: ExN5

Wind: SSW4

Bar: 1030, still rising slowly

Sea: SW1

Sky: Heavy fog in the moring give way to overcast

Cabin Temperature: 68

Water Temperature: 56

Sail: Motoring

Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 114

Miles this leg: 1688

Avg. Miles this leg: 141

NOTE: I’ve shut down the high tech Fleet Broadband 250 satellite unit and am switching to the Iridium GO! for the, hopefully short, duration of this cruise. The bandwidth of the GO only allows for low resolution photos and only one or two.

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By 5am the headsails, both on poles, were waving about like so much laundry on the line, and I’d about had it with the racket this creates below. Blocks slapping, sheets whipping against the rigging, the sails popping like the tip of a whip on each roll. We were motoring before 6am. Motoring again. Mo not alive on the water like a great bird, but chugging along, plodding. All the sex appeal of a choochoo train.

This did, however, give me the chance to do serious debris hunting. But up at this latitude, all I found all day was one plastic bottle (lid on, floating high–date stamp, April, 2017) and an ancient fish float, so thoroughly encrusted with barnacles that the float itself appeared but the bald pate of a monk bobbing at water top. I tried to fish him out, this waterlogged monk, but when I dug the gaff into the side of his head, all he gave back were gooseneck barnacles of every size imaginable. Two passes and I gave up. Science will have to wait a boat with a better hook or a larger net.

Wind built in the afternoon from an average hovering near zero to a respectable nine knots … until I raised the spinnaker, and then it immediately went to four. The spinnaker is an ingenious body, but even he needs more than a whisper to be invigorated.

The question is … now what? Wind by morning says the forecast. Then in three days a quick, hard blow. Then, and just as we close the coast, wind evaporates. We’re looking at 500 miles of blue (windless) blob. Save the fuel for that last push or push on tonight under power?