Ron
05/27/2012, Past halfway between Hawaii and SF

We shut down the motor around 4am this morning (at the start of my shift) and have been sailing all day. We are still heading into the wind. The forecast says it is supposed to change and be behind us tomorrow, but they've been wrong a lot. We spent some time coming up with what GRIBs stand for (these are the weather reports we get). Sean came up with "Generally Really Inaccurate BS".

It's cloudier, a bit colder, and there is a nice gentle breeze. Those of you praying for wind please stop immediately, we have enough now :-)

We are now on a course directly toward the Golden Gate (great circle still, so we will go a little further north).

Other than an overload on the genoa furler, things are working pretty well. Sean climbed up on the foredeck and cleared that this morning We had to head downwind during the repair process, but that didn't affect our position too much. We are in good shape on water, food, and fuel. Other than being a little tired, everyone is in good shape.

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Ron
05/26/2012, Halfway between Hawaii and SF

We're just about halfway home. Our trusty motor has been very helpful. We still don't believe the propeller is pitched right, but at least we're plugging away at 4+ knots through the water. We are very close to our originally planned courseline. The high seems to be moving south; we seem to be crossing the high now. That means really calm seas (no wind waves, just perhaps 2 feet of swell) and this looks very odd for the middle of the ocean. We are seeing quite a few floating trap balls of various colors: some white, some black, some orange. Probably these are from crab or lobster traps that broke off and are now just spinning around the gyre. Sean tried to pick one up but it was too heavy. He kept saying something or other about a treasure, but I couldn't understand him.

Any moment we are waiting for the wind to pick up. We aren't watching the weather very closely any more because we aren't likely to change course based on the weather. Sean says the only rule on the boat is to not wish for more wind. So Scott and I are hoping for more wind. Yes, it's a technicality, but we're engineers!

Some of you have asked why we are heading so far north. There are two reasons: First, the "great circle" route, the shortest distance between two points, is, in the Northern Hemisphere, going to take you a bit north. Second, the "pacific high", a summertime stationary high pressure system, rotates clockwise. We want to get over that to give us winds that are favorable. We have a lot of fuel, but not enough to motor the whole way, so we rely on average winds this month. Usually, where we are right now, there are winds from the east. We'll be heading northeast for another few days before we make our final turn toward SF.

Movie night is still our most talked about subject. The good news is that we are all getting along really well. The weather is just starting to turn cooler. Sean has the whole cockpit enclosed with canvas and screen. The air is about 60 degrees but it's a toasty 72 or so in the cockpit, and with the engine running it's still in the upper 70s down below.

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Ron
05/24/2012, Middle of the Pacific Ocean

The engine problems got worse last night, and we weren't able to motor much last night. We needed to as well, as we are crossing a wind transition zone where the winds should be pushing us the right direction soon. So, we made some progress yesterday and last night, but not much. We have turned east for the most part!

We were too tired last night for a blog. We're all pretty tired right now too. Our night shifts are much more work when there is little wind and a quirky engine.

AND NOW FOR THE GOOD NEWS!!

This morning, Scott did a "process of elimination" testing of the engine and we have identified the source of the problem as the electric priming pump! We are currently bypassing this priming pump (we can bleed the system by hand) and the engine is now working! We are almost to the point where we should start seeing enough wind where we won't need the engine, but the high is still pretty far north for this time of year. If it moves south, we will make some good progress.

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