Yesterday turned into a bit of a contrast compared to the more peaceful days that preceeded it. It clouded up pretty completely, and the wind was coming and going with a series of squall lines passing overhead. A lot of reefing. There was also a big north swell from the low lurking up there. One of the difficulties of using grib files instead of the old-time surface charts is that they don't indicate the position of fronts. You can sometimes infer them from kinks in the isobars, but not always. Yesterday's weather had the hallmarks of a warm front: slow-moving and wide, with scattered showers all around. It is also noticeably cooler today. Late in the night, we got clear of it and the wind lightened up and became more consistent, and the stars came back out. But the wind is not ideal - it veered into the northeast where it remains. We have kind of a bad choice, to give up a bit of our eastings to get up to the north (which we still need to do), or to get eastings while we can, at the risk of getting boxed in against the inevitable northerlies along the California coast. We chose the latter, but might live to regret it. We still have a long way to go, though, and there are many chances to get more north under our belt. The most likely being by diesel when the high re-forms on top of us.

We seem to have changed critter zones a bit, as indicated by the appearance of one of the signature birds of the North Pacific: the black-footed albatross. Not nearly as big and cool-looking as the Southern Ocean ones, but an old friend. It's also a sign we're on our way home. But we haven't entirely left the warm-water birds either, as we still have the elegant tropicbirds around as well.