Sunday, August 10, 2014

August 10 Position Report

8/10/14 Wandering Dolphin POS

0700 Seattle Time / 1300GMT
N 48 20.16  W 129 57.87
COG 094T
SOG 2.5 kts
DMG 105 nautical miles
DTG 322 nautical miles

Wind: S 5-6
Pressure: 29.95
Temp: 72F
Sky: overcast
Seas: calm
Sails: main and genoa set barely drawing

Good Morning,

The good news is that with no wind blowing it sure feels a lot warmer!  I am sitting here this morning in the dark with a hot cup of KONA coffee waiting for the sun to rise.  It is foggy, misty and drizzly and cool but not cold.  We have the cockpit cover up so it is dry and I have my polar fleece on and a blanket wrapped around me.  Everyone is sleeping but me so I am listening to my music quietly but I can still hear Hubert coming up for a breath occasionally off our port side so he's still here.

AIS shows eight to ten ships on courses to and from Cape Flattery at all times now.  It seems we are about ten miles south of the main shipping channel.  Thank goodness!  Right now we are just ghosting along on a glassy sea at a couple of knots.  According to our weather buddy this calm is supposed to turn into NW wind here in another degree of longitude which will take us on up to Vancouver Island where it will die again.  At that point we have enough fuel to motor all the way to Blaine if we choose.

We haven't decided if we will stop for fuel in Port Angeles or just keep on going.  In the tropics I preferred to sit for extended periods with an empty tank because a full tank of diesel became a bio growth experiment in the tank in tropical weather but I am not sure if it is better in cold climates to have a full tank or if an empty tank fills with condensation and you struggle with too much water in the tank when you do fill it later.  Does anyone have any information about this for us?

Yesterday was a great sailing day.  We were reefed and still averaged 6-7 knots through the daytime.  The wind started to die down around supper time and continued to die through the night.  It made for a nice quiet and peaceful night, great for sleeping but we sure didn't make a lot of miles last night.
We have developed a very small oil leak in the Borg Warner V-Drive.  The V-drives are known for these and it's a pain mostly because it taints the water in the bilge so you have to keep a fresh oil catcher in the bilge at all times.  It hasn't even leaked enough to show a drop in the level on the reservoir yet but just a little oil makes the water look like all oil.  It reminds me again of a notorious recent delivery.  The owner knew he had a bad leak and had like eight extra quarts of tranny ATF fluid stored on board but didn't think it was a bright idea to tell the crew about the leak before we took his boat out for a 2000 mile offshore delivery... Anyway... Gotta let that stuff go, not good for my blood pressure.

Anyway, Emily cleaned the bilge yesterday, not her favorite job but especially with an aluminum boat it's an important maintenance chore.  Today I will check all of our fluids and make sure the filters are ready on the engine for a 24 to 36 hour run on up to Blaine from the Cape.  I sure like our new Beta Marine engine.  I would definitely recommend Beta if you are doing an engine  replacement especially if you're switching out an old Perkins.  Painless switch, awesome engine.

So with the wind blowing 20+ and the sun out and it being Saturday the kids had no school and the boat was producing power to burn so they turned on the inverter and had Halo battles on the XBox throughout the midday hours while the boat bounced along at 7 knots in the 8-10 foot following sea.  The laughter and screeches from Emily as her brothers hunted her down was really sweet music in the cockpit and Beck and I just sat there grinning as we listened to them play.  Pretty cool offshore memory.  It made me wonder what Hubert was thinking.  We have surround sound so the noise through the hull, especially from the big base box, must have carried through the water pretty good....
Hubert to WD:
    " OhooooAaaaaoooooo.. Honey.... Bad gas?  Was it something you ate?  Sounds like a battle going on in your belly there baby... One time I ate this bad krill.....ooooooooAaaaaaaaaaaooooooooooooOOOOOOO...."

In the afternoon we heard a Canadian aircraft out here 350 miles offshore calling all of the ships one after another on the VHF and then taking all of their vital information and last port of call and next port.  They must have been using AIS to get the info for their calls and sure enough they called us.  I'm a Wyoming guy whose first response to any government questioning is, "What authority do you have to butt into my business?"  But before I could say anything like that my wife just gave me her cold pretty blue eyed stare that said, "Behave!" And I must say, it was pretty fun to answer last port of call as Honolulu, Hawaii 23 days ago and hear the fellas surprised, "Could you please repeat that Eh?"  Anyway, they took everyone's info then informed all of the ships that it was a no discharge area... Hmmmm 350 miles offshore.... International waters... Canadian plane... I'm not really sure what that was all about but it sure seems like a colossal waste of money and time to send a plane out that far to try to enforce something that is un enforceable in the first place.  What would Canadian enforcement look like anyway?  "Do what we say or we'll give you a very firm scolding!"  So I pissed off the bow and waved at them.  Kidding.  (Disclaimer by the way... I went to all of High School in Canada, I still say "Eh" and am mocked by my family for it and over half of my Facebook friends are Canadians so I mock in jest and I still love Canada.)

The spaghetti lasagna was great!  Benny wants to make it in the future and he calls it "spaglanya."

After dinner we watched "Spies Like Us" that old comedy with Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd.  I forgot that I had it and the kids had never seen it so it was fun to laugh with them at yet another movie I knew by heart.

Well here comes the sun.  Maybe it will burn off this fog and mist.  Hope your day on your spot on the globe is as great as ours is going to be!

"Three more Days!!"
Captain Tofer, Becca, Emily, Kanyon, Kaleb, and Benny

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