36 20.1N / 156 49.6W
Week 2 of our passage from Hawaii to Alaska was another disappointing mileage week. We only sailed 582 miles making just 408 good to our destination. This total even included a day of motoring when the wind went to zero. We had one good wind day. The rest of the time the wind averaged around five knots. We'd hoped to be 2/3 of the way by today, but, unfortunately we aren't even half-way yet, still 171 miles short. It always feels better once you're past that 1/2 way mark. As it is, unless we can make better time in the days ahead, this will end up a seriously long passage and cut into our cruising time in Alaska.
The "North Pacific High" is known to settle over this area as a huge, slow-moving high with calms and light winds, but, it's not here yet. It probably won't start to move in for another month. There are still lots of low pressure systems, with significant wind, all around us, somehow we've ended up sailing in a high pressure trough between them. Normally, that's a good thing, but, you still need wind to sail and more than five knots would be good!
As mentioned in last week's post we took a glancing blow from one low pressure system, it was only about twelve hours and easy to deal with, just a little uncomfortable. Unfortunately, there's another one heading our way which we'll be in the middle of come Saturday/Sunday. We'll probably be altering course a bit to try and avoid the worst of it, thus, delaying our progress even further. Oh well, we'll get there eventually, we have lots of food/water and fuel. We have about a 1,500 mile range with our fuel capacity of 1,200 litres. As we're only about 1,270 miles from our destination, we could theoretically motor the whole way if we had to, but, where's the fun in that.
The weather has started to get a little cooler now, around 16C and we're enjoying the change. Fleece tops and long pants have made an appearance. Our down duvets, freshly laundered in Hawaii after a long hiatus spent squashed into a cupboard, are on standby.
We've seen no wildlife whatsoever, no whales and only a couple of dolphins way off in the distance. We're seeing quite a bit of plastic pollution in the water, maybe 2-3 pieces a day, doesn't sound like much, but, we're used to not seeing any in other places/oceans. Surprisingly, given our remoteness, there are a lot of ships around. They seem to be on a route between the US west coast and China/Japan. One of them called us up around 4 a.m. (this is very unusual, first time ever actually) to ask us if we were ok as our erratic course and speed of 1.9 knots didn't seem right. Well, yes, we answered this is the best we can do with the light winds. They're usually steaming along at around 16 knots. Nice of them to inquire though! Also good to know they are picking up our AIS signal from a long distance away.
Speaking of remoteness, we have to be in one of the most isolated sea areas of the planet. We are 1270 miles to Alaska, 930 miles to Hawaii, 1618 miles to San Francisco and 3005 miles to Tokyo.
----------
Sent via SailMail, http://www.sailmail.com
Wow you both have such great acquired knowledge of seafaring. I assume gathered over your years. Safe travels guys XO ♥️
ReplyDelete