Sean
05/28/2012, Past halfway between Hawaii and SF

Last night in a total act of selfishness I ate the last two cupcakes in front of my crew. This was done mainly as a display of total superiority. Sure they said that it didn't matter - they had their fancy Snickers bars - but I knew they were jealous.

Scott's been all full of himself since he fixed the engine. Every time you ask him to do something he replies, "Who fixed the engine? Who? Who?..." Its been really annoying. I checked the oil today to show him that he doesn't know everything. I made a big show of it. "It looks to be about half full!" I yelled in full confidence. Scott looked threatened.

Ron continues to rattle off various weather statistics that often sound quite sophisticated. Unfortunately, despite all the analysis, we still have no wind. Ron claims that if we were 200 miles north of our current location we'd have lots of wind. The curious part is that the wind is always 200 miles away.

We're still running under motor and have had many debates of trying to actually determine how much fuel we actually have. All the fuel tank sending units are bad so we're just guessing. Fortunately, I've watched every episode of Star Trek (TOS) and know that as captain all I need to do is say, "Scotty we need more power or we're all dead!"

We think we have about 50 gallons of water left but we've been drawing from our main tank for the last 3 days. This is somewhat miraculous since its gauge has read empty for the last 3 days. I checked it visually yesterday and it is indeed mostly empty, but it still gives us water.

Otherwise all is well. The crew listened to a podcast of This American Life yesterday on the subject of how to survive being a hostage.

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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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