S/V Acacia

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Day 5
Date: 19 Jul 2008 02:26:00 -0000

The weather has improved and is getting warmer.  We can now do our watches with out a full set of foul weather gear.  We even had a little sun today and may have a nice sunset tonight.

Becca caught her first fish just before dinner.  A small Tuna.  It was quite a process getting it into the boat and filleted.  It’s a good thing that we have an infinite supply of salt water to clean the boat with.

We are making excellent progress toward Hawaii.  We put the new 3/4 oz spinnaker up and are making 7 knots toward Oahu.  It nice that we can see our progress on the map.  We no longer seem to be next to the California coast.

Everyone on board (except for the tuna) is well an having a good trip.

Bob
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At 7/19/2008 (utc) our position was 33°21.65′N 132°25.61′W

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Day 3 – Blue Water
Date: 16 Jul 2008 20:41:00 -0000

This is our third day. The water is now dark blue. Hence the term “Blue Water Sailing” We even started seeing phosphoresce in our wake last night. Very cool all around.

The sailing has gotten noticeable better. We are making much better time than the first day and haven’t caught anything that will slow us down. We have about 15 knots of wind and how have one of our 3/4 our spinnakers up. Steve and I think this is about a day earlier than the 2004 PacCup. If we can keep up our current speed we will be in Hawaii in no time at all

Food continues to be excellent, we had Neil’s corn chowder last night. Bagels for breakfast.

This morning before our SSB radio check in we ran the new water maker. Good news is that it worked very well and is making about 15 gallons an hour. For Neil C. , who did the installation, thanks for doing the install and fixing the startup problem we had before we left. We might be able to take an occasional shower on this trip!

Everyone is well and Acacia is sound and doing what she was designed to do.

Bob
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At 20:38 7/16/2008 (utc) our position was 36°19.33′N 125°43.84′W

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Day 2
Date: 15 Jul 2008 19:59:00 -0000

It’s been about 15 hours of very light winds. We are attempting to tack west where we think it may be windier.

To make matters works, around 10;30 pm we managed to catch a crab trap float and line on our propeller shaft. We were able to free it, until we did we were effectively anchored. In order to free it we had to get the inflatable dingy out of the big cockpit locker, inflate it, and use it to see how were caught. Chris volunteered and went into the water and was able to free it! This was well beyond the call of duty. Many thanks to Chris.

We have a some wind now and are moving to where we want to go. It’s no fun to contemplate having to tack to Hawaii in light winds. We are optimistic the weather will improve. Maybe we will even get to use some of our spinnakers.

We had oatmeal for breakfast and humus tomato sandwiches for lunch. The food has been great.

Fair winds,

Bob
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At 7/15/2008 (utc) our position was 37°26.19′N 123°19.06′W

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: First Day
Date: 15 Jul 2008 02:43:00 -0000
From: S/V Acacia

Hello from Acacia!

It’s now a bit past 7pm PDT and we have been at sea since our start at 1:05pm.

Everything is going well. We just a great dinner of Becca’s home made Minestrone soup with fresh grated Parmesan cheese. It made for a great first dinner.

We had a windy start and beat under the Golden Gate bridge. It made for a good beginning. After we got out into the ocean the wind dropped a little and we added more sail. We were doing over 7 knots without much effort. The seas are relatively flat, it’s been like sailing in the bay.

Now the wind has dropped we have slowed down. I think it’s going to be a calm night…. The good news is that we are out of the shipping lanes. Hopefully the wind will pickup later tonight.

Everyone is well, no one has any seasickness, and we are all in good spirits.

We had a brief SSB exchange at 5pm and it was nice to verify that the SSB radio is really working. The 5pm radio time is called “children’s hour”. This one was very mild, as more boats are at sea it get’s more interesting.

I will send the next report tomorrow.

Bob
S/V Acacia
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At 7/15/2008 (utc) our position was 37°34.69′N 122°50.26′W