Passage to Hawaii: day 38

2016-06-04 10:00PM UTC, 06°28'S 144°00'W # noon
2016-06-05 10:00PM UTC, 04°18'S 144°36'W # noon
2016-06-06 10:00PM UTC, 02°33'S 145°39'W # noon
2016-06-07 10:00PM UTC, 01°05'S 144°53'W # noon
2016-06-08 10:00PM UTC, 00°28'N 144°15'W # noon
2016-06-09 2:00AM UTC, 00°44'N 144°19'W

Sea temperature: 82deg

My noon to noon runs for the previous five days, working backwards, have been: 101nm, 100nm, 123nm, 135nm and 114nm.

Shortly after my posting the last blog entry, another mild squall arrived and sent me heading almost due W. As the squall died off, rather than the wind falling off to calms, the wind gradually weakened and veered around, leaving me heading N in 12-16 kts of wind - sweet! Generally, I headed north in nice wind, until it backed around to the NE which sent me to the NW, then the wind veered back to the SE, sending me NE, at which point the wind became mainly easterly again, and weakened - which is where I am now, with a 7-9kt breeze, heading N or NNW.

I crossed the equator this morning, very early - yay! This happened as I was sleeping, again. Both times I've crossed the equator now I've slept through it.

At this point, I've traveled 4200nm with roughly 1400nm to go. The next challenge for me is to get into the tradewinds which are forecast to start at around 6 degrees N by the time I get to them. In order to get to the tradewinds, I need to cross the ITCZ, the CZ part of that name is the important part, signifying a convergence zone. At the moment the winds approaching the ITCZ from the south are pretty weak and the northern winds are forecast to increase - I think this may work in my favor, but the forecasts have been changing daily in this region.

The wind for the rest of today and early tomorrow looks decent, and then it gets a little patchy. I'll try to download a more detailed weather forecast to see if I can find a path through to the northern winds.

The winds above the ITCZ look nice - E or ENE of 15-20, and from my location that would mean I may have a broad reach into Hilo. The challenge is going to be sailing between where I am and the northern tradewinds. I could just motor through of course, so its not like I'm going to be stuck by any means, but it would be nice to sail through.

All well onboard.

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