Day 2 - Victoria to San Francisco
14 August 2014 | 46 31.34'N:125 17.13'W, Approaching the Oregon Border
Mark
197 miles done, 545 more to go until San Francisco.
It's 8pm on Thursday evening and we have just finished our second dinner of the trip. We covered 140 miles in our first noon to noon period. Unfortunately, we were motoring then, and are still motoring now. We haven't seen more then 7 knots of wind so far, with very little promised for the next several days. From the forecast, it is quite possible that we could end up motoring most of the way! That would be quite unprecedented for what is normally a very windy coast! I can almost motor all the way to San Francisco, but if these unbelievably calm conditions continue, we will make a pit stop in somewhere like Fort Bragg to fuel up.
On the down side, it sure would be nice to have a great sail. I speak for the whole crew on that one. But, on the plus side, the ocean is calm, the sun is warm, and the few knots of wind are going the same direction as we are - meaning that it feels very warm on the boat. We've also been well entertained by dodging freighters and many, many tuna fishing boats. We even had a small brown land bird join us for a few hours today.
Yes, we would rather be sailing, but we're still making OK time, and the day just flew by. Even though it is light now, we are getting closer and closer to the Mendocino coast in North California. If we are going to get wind, that is definitely the place.
By the way, whenever we post one of these updates we also update our position. On our webpage, just click on the map and you will see where we are. You can even open it up in Google Earth for more detail.