Aug 25, 2011
Overnight the seas were rolly but OK. In the morning there was a stir in the cockpit...what was that you said?? Ryan and Ken responded ...there are dolphins playing in our bow wake! I was up there like a shot, it was an incredible sight, they were dancing and swimming at the bow....awesome sight! We were still sailing downwind, that afternoon we had taken the genoa in and put up the spinnaker and had 3 reefs in the main and were doing 7 knots...pretty respectable. The winds continued to get stronger so down came the spinnacker and off to sleep again as I had my watch at 1:30am to 4:30am. We ended up motoring all night..darn. The night was clear with lots of stars.
Aug 26, 2011
7am the next morning brought fog with 1 km visibility, typical Oregon weather was what went through my mind at the time. We were sailing wing on wing with 16 knots of wind and doing 7.2 knots. Whoohoo! As night time came the wind and seas picked up and I am thinking we are in for an uncomfortable night! The winds were predicted to be 20 knots gusting to 25, well.......we were in for a surprise! The winds got up to 35 knots with wave height being 10 – 12 feet and a handkerchief of a mainsail out. Uncomfortable was putting it mindly......we have great crew onboard and we all took shorter shifts to work our way through until morning. Ok...so the gribs,the weather router and the weather forecast were a little off for sure. Needless to say Ken and I learned a whole lot more about our boat that night, the seas were of our stern quarter. NautiMoments handled the weather and seas extremely well and so did the crew. She really performed!