Monday, August 11, 2014

August 11 Position Report

8/11/14 Wandering Dolphin POS

0600 Seattle Time / 1200 GMT
N 48 24.68  W 127 48.51
COG 094T
SOG 7 kt
DMG 98 nautical miles
DTG 238 nautical miles

Wind NW 20-22
Pressure: 29.75
Temp: 69F
Sky: overcast or foggy, can't tell yet
Seas: 6-8 ft
Sails: double reefed main, reefed jib

Good Morning,
Wow!  It's pretty cool to look at the chart plotter and see how close we are to our final destination.  This wind should hold out until Cape Flattery where it will all but die completely being blocked by Vancouver Island.  We should arrive at the Cape this evening about dark.  We will motor through the night and should be right off Victoria in the morning.  Our fuel situation should be fine to just continue on motoring through the day right on up to Blaine.  Our hope is to be on the dock in the evening and in showers within ten minutes of docking!  Beck's family lives in Bellingham so we have considered anchoring out in Bellingham for the night and going on up to Blaine later but the desire to stop at an actual dock so we can clean the boat and ourselves is too much temptation for us.

This trip will have been a 28-day trip.  I had hoped for 18-22 days when we left Honolulu but once again the wide areas of calm slowed us a lot.  These two super long passages have further confirmed my  belief that a performance boat, kept light is the way to go.  I really wish we had had a new main it would have taken days off the overall voyage.  A cruising chute would have been great too.  The Tri radial spinnaker is not as quick and easy to use so we tended to just be content to go a little slower rather than mess with it.  When a I was running Sweetest Thing on offshore trips we would use the chute all the time because it was so easy to handle.  (Usually ;).

When we get to the dock I am going to post a longer report that lets you know what really worked well and what didn't for this whole 9500 mile voyage.  One thing I will say is that I am very seriously considering selling the boat and purchasing an even faster one.  ;)

Yesterday was a full day of drift sailing at about 2 knots in 5 knots of wind.  There were these huge swells coming from the west but they had a very long (30 second) interval so they were not uncomfortable just cool.  The ocean had no wind waves on it so it was calm but with the huge swells it was like rolling hills.  The sky was a perfect blue and the ocean was tropical blue.  We had really missed the blue water.  It seems like it's mostly grey in these higher latitudes.  The other cool thing about yesterday was our reaction to the sun.  We have spent so many years in the tropics that the sun has become something we actually hide from.  We constantly put up shade and try to get out of the sun.  Yesterday the sun was shining but we were still a little chilly so we took the cockpit shade down and reveled in the warmth of the sun on our skin!  We sat in the cockpit, drifting slowly along in the sun, talking and looking at the birds fly around and the little funny floating things in the water that you normally cannot see because of the waves.

Beck had the great idea to go on Facebook with the Delorme and ask for a no bake cookie recipe!  Thanks Jim V.  The blondie cookies were amazing and hit the spot!  We liked them so much we're going to make them again today.

We ended up losing track of time because the sun stays up so long this far north and we found ourselves having supper at 8:30 and by the time we were ready for bed it was midnight!  Pretty crazy thing for us.

What a different place it is this morning!  Yesterday, calm, sunny, blue.... This morning, grey, rough waves, windy...  That's the ocean for you!

Almost There!
Captain Tofer, Becky, EmilyAnne, Kanyon, Kaleb, and Benny

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