Passage to Neah Bay: day 5

Date: July 17, 2012
Previous 24 hour run: 160.0
Water Temp: 78

Date: July 18, 2012, Time: noon PST
31° 17' N 163° 36' W
Wind speed: 15 / wind dir: 080 (E), Heading: 355, Speed: 6.5
Barometer: 1027, Water Temp: 76
Log: 6215.0
Previous 24 hour run: 154.0

The sailing is still wonderful. Yesterday I had the wind on my beam all day with nice wind for a good run. The wind has fallen off a little overnight and today I've put more north in my heading and still have a comfortable ride.

In the last blog update I believe I said that I passed by a squall, 'my first ever.' After thinking about that some more, I don't think that's true - but if I lined all the squalls up that I have come across, the one two days ago was the best looking squall I've seen. There have been a few more since then, but that one I mentioned was still the best looking and best behaved squall I've come across.

Part of my routine is to send this update out, and at the same time request weather information from SailDocs, so any comment I make on weather forecasts now will be out of date in a half hour or so. When I left Hanalei there was a large high forming NE of Hawaii with a forecast of being strong, around 1036mb or so. So far that has proven to be true. I can only see four days out in the weather forecasts however, and now that I'm on day 5 I'm seeing weather that I couldn't have forecast before leaving. It appears the high is moving west slowly and weakening, and the four day forecast I saw yesterday had it weakening and forming a ridge to a second on third high pressure system far to the west. My original intent was to sail west of the high and benefit from the wind veering around as we circled the system leaving me with good beam or downwind sailing. It looks now like I'll have to sail across the high in three or four days - which will probably mean slow sailing in light and variable wind - if I'm lucky! It could also mean that I'll have a little while of bobbing around waiting for more wind to arrive. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out. So far this has been a fast and relatively comfortable passage.

The water temperature has finally started to fall, although the days are still warm with shorts and a t-shirt being fine all day. At night I put on my foul weather pants and that leaves me plenty warm. I suspect these conditions won't last that much longer...

I had a couple of flying fish on desk this morning but other than the flying fish and a few sea birds, there hasn't been much to see out here. A freighter crossed 20nm behind me yesterday heading west. I saw it on my AIS display but not visually as at 20 miles it was over the horizon.

I'll try to send an update out in a few more days.

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