S/V Acacia

Be careful what you wish for. Today we have wind and are likely to get more. There is another low coming. We have just gotten a new set of weather routing information that we are digesting. This should help us avoid the worst of it. Hopefully this will be the last one.

We continue to make progress. Now 838 miles to go. Still a long way, but getting closer.

Chris’s bread baking was excellent. We had no idea he was such a good cook. We will problaby have the second loaf with dinner tonight.

Our current position is:

LATITUDE: 40-03.10N
LONGITUDE: 137-47.62W

Bob

Sill sailing east. Reasonable progress till the afternoon when the winds have gotten lighter. Still moving in any case.

We have reached an important milestone. On our intended course, it is now less than a thousand miles to our destination, 945 nautical miles at present. We have come almost two thousand miles so far. I am resisting making a prediction of how much longer it will take. Maybe when the number is smaller and we are through the next low that is coming our way.

Chris is making bread. It is currently rising in the oven with the pilot light on. Needless to say we are looking for fresh bread. It will be a treat.

Our current position is:

39 38.7 N
139 56.9 W

Bob

For those of you following the boat’s position via ShipTrak, you may
have noticed the last data point being quite a bit further south than
their previous position. I asked Bob about it and he said that there
were some glitches with ShipTrak so what was posted there is not
accurate. He assured me that they hadn’t suddenly been transported
south, but were continuing in an easterly direction. As soon as the
next gale passed in about 2 days, they will head north/northeast to
make San Juan de Fuca.

joel to sv-acacia

Bob was in touch today to tell me that Acacia is less than 1000 miles
from their destination at San Juan de Fuca. At an estimated 6 knots,
that puts them about 7 days away from port. Everyone is well and looking
forward to making landfall!

Maryann

We motored last night till around midnight when the wind came up. We have been sailing toward the east since then. The wind even came up in the morning.

Another low and cold front is forecast to come by from the north in a few days. Like before we are going east to avoid the worst of it. Our weather advice is coming from the “Weather Guy” a professional weather router based in Hawaii. His recommendations regarding these storms has been very good. We get them via email every 3-4 days. Hopefully once it passes we can proceed back on the rumb line toward Juan de Fucca (the entrance to Vancouver and Seattle).

Chris caught our forth MahiMahi this morning. The biggest yet. While we would have preferred a tuna, it nice to have some fresh food again. Hard to complain about very fresh MahiMahi. I think we will try to BBQ it if the boat isn’t moving too much. Chris says to tell Becca her lures are working very well! We will have to start using a smaller lure as the bigger onces are catching fish that are too big.

Bob

We had lots of wind last night. I think we saw a peak of 32 knots in the evening. We ended up under just the triple reefed mainsail. The actual front came through around 11pm and then the wind changed directions and the rain started. It rained the rest of the night and through the mid afternoon. Currently it has stopped raining, gotten colder, very little wind, and is gray. Once the weather systems stabilize, we hope for some more wind. Maybe even some sun!

We saw another ship last night. It was going to come closer than we would have liked so we changed direction for a while to avoid it. Hard to believe that with all of this ocean two vessels can come close together.

We are currently at 38 46.6 N by 145 03.3 W.

Bob

We are still going east full speed. We have the third reef in the main and only the stay sail up. It’s windy and the swells are getting bigger. The crew and boat are doing well. We think we will be through the worst of the low by mid-day tomorrow. It should make for an interesting night. If it gets to be too much wind we plan to hove to.

That’s it for now, I will try to send a longer report tomorrow.

We are currently at 38 25 N by 146 40 W.

Bob

The last 24 hours have been a mix. Last night we had lots of wind behind us and made very good progress. It was a little colder than we had previously. I started unpacking some of my warm clothes. No more shorts on watch. We made very good progress. We are now at the latitude of San Francisco.

Today by midday the winds had mostly disappeared and we ended up motoring slowly to make some headway. We now have some wind and are moving.

We are heading east to avoid a low that will coming across to the east from the north. Going east should allow us to miss the worst of it. Going east also moves us closer to the continent.

We saw a group of dolphins jumping ahead of us. It was very cool. We hoped that they had come closer. Hopefully they will pay us another visit.

Our current position is:

LATITUDE: 38-19.00N
LONGITUDE: 149-50.00W

Bob

Today we passed an important milestone. At: 16:51 HST the GPS showed we had traveled 1368 nautical miles and had 1368 nautical miles to go. Half way!! It took us 14 days to get here, we hope it will take less time for the second half of the trip.

Since last night the wind has been blowing from the South and we have going about 6 knots toward our destination. It appears that we have finally gotten out of the pacific high. The weather charts (grib files) show it should stay this way for a while. There will be a low coming across farther north that should also keep us going in the right direction.

Since morning have been “wing and wing”, that is the main sail on one side and the genoa polled out on the other side. Essentially going directly down wind. It’s a very nice change from having to beat to weather.

We are currently at:

LATITUDE: 37 19 N
LONGITUDE: 152 03 W

We are all fine. Our thoughts to everyone on land following us on our trip.

Bob

Some wind at last.

LATITUDE: 36-53.38N
LONGITUDE: 152-49.32W
COURSE: 046T
SPEED: 5.8
COMMENT: Wind from 200M, 12 knots

Longer report tonight.

Bob