S/V Acacia

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

The low point is that still no wind, actually less wind, we are currently motoring. Our hope is that we will be able to get far enough north to get out of the Pacific High. It’s not like we don’t like the sunny weather….

The high point was that we saw a ship and a whale today. The ship was sort of bulk cargo vessel going south. It’s AIS report said it was going to Los Angeles. Someone else in this big ocean.

The whale was a pilot whale. It was going parallel to us in the opposite direction. It was largely on the surface and spouted many times. Maybe it was also going to LA.

We saw many any birds and lots of flying fish today.

We continue to eat well. I made wild blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Last nights MahiMahi was excellant.

Bob

We got our email system working again. The problem turned out to be in the Acacia’s built in computer. After checking everything else, I switched to the backup computer. An Acer EeePC. Email is working again. Many thanks to Joel for showing me these small inexpensive laptops. Email is an important tool for us as we use it to get weather information and routing, as well as being to send out status reports like these. It’s great that it’s working again.

We are making some progress, but at the moment the wind has died. We made reasonable progress most of today in a good direction. We crossed the 35th latitude, a milestone of sorts. We hope that in the next few days we should get more wind from the NW so we can make better progress to our destination. On the HAM network, there is another boat north of that appears to be getting better winds.

Chris caught our third MahiMahi today. Calls were herd, MahiMani again…. We were all hoping for a Tuna. Since the winds have dropped off we will fire up the grill. We have some seafood rub onboard that we plan to try out.

At 17:20 HST we are located at 35 18.5 N , 154 00.9 W.

Bob

Moving slowly to the East. We tacked this morning as the old tack was starting to take us to Russia. We are hoping that we will finally get out of the Pacific High pressure zone that keeps the winds low and in the wrong direction. Probably in a few days. Once we get north of this, we should see winds that will push us to the North West.

The MahiMahi last night was excellent. It was bigger that the first one Chris caught and we will have the rest tonight for dinner. Not quite as fresh as last night, but still good!

The first half of the evening watch was calm, we ended up taking down all the sails and waiting for wind. It was frustrating waiting for the wind to pick up and stop the rolling. It did around midnight and we started moving again.

Bob
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At 9/3/2009 (utc) our position was 32°45.33′N 154°26.68′W

Wow, it’s now September.

The biggest event of the day just happened. Chris just caught a fish. Another MahiMahi. I think we will have fresh fish for dinner. I guess this is about a fresh as it gets! The winds have gotten very light about 15 minutes ago, so we may be able to grill it.

Not a lot to report otherwise. It’s been a quiet day. Still hot in the late morning and afternoon watches. This will probably change as we get further north.

We hope that once we get north of 35 degrees, the winds will change and allow to go north west, towards our destination. We will be able to tack. So far we have been on the starboard tack for most of the trip, it will be nice to use the other side of the boat. Until then, we will keep going in the general north direction as the winds allow.

That’s it for now.

Bob

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At 9/2/2009 (utc) our position was 32°24.19′N 154°57.56′W

Our first week on the ocean. We have had had good wind all day and are making good speed in a good direction. We don’t know if it will last, but it is good now.

Yesterday evening we saw a some sort fishing boat. They didn’t respond to our VHF radio calls so we don’t know what they were up to. They did have a lot of lights turned on, we were able to see them for a long time. I guess we aren’t as alone on the ocean as we had thought.

Our big milestone for the day was crossing 30 degrees North latitude. Still a long way to go, but it’s nice to be in the thirties.

Bob
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At 9/1/2009 (utc) our position was 30°30.55′N 155°12.39′W
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Very similar to yesterday. We had wind last night through around noon. Then it dies in the afternoon. At the moment we are becalmed. Hopefully it will pickup in the early evening. We have decided to not motor and wait for the wind in order conserve fuel for charging batteries. No serious shortages, just being conservative.

I made the first contact with the Pacific Seafarers Ham network. We will try to do a daily check in. The net comes on in the late afternoon 6pm HST. It nice to have people to talk to and we may hear from other boats in this area of the Pacific. They can also do phone patches and it might be possible to do a phone call home via the radio.

We tried to use the Asymmetrical spinnaker to see if we could get a little more speed. It turned into a bit of a fire drill as we lost the halyard up the mast and the spinnaker got caught on the spreaders. Chris went up the mast and got the sail down and retrieved the spinnaker. We then tried again and got it up successfully. Then as on script the wind died. Maybe another day.

We also caught a small piece of old fishing net on the rudder. It was easy to get off with the boat hook. We will be bringing it home with us as it’s really to have this stuff floating around in the ocean catching fish forever.

In our current becalmed state, Chris and Steve went for a quick swim. They said it was very enjoyable and reported that the boat’s keel is still attached

Bob
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At 8/31/2009 (utc) our position was 28°18.39′N 155°43.71′W

Yesterday was mixed. We had wind in the morning, and had to run under engine in a calm afternoon. Chris caught a Mahimahi in the morning while sailing. We decided to give the engine a rest and grilled the Mahimahi in the calm. It was excellent! I don’t think we can use the grill underway, but it did make up for the calm seas.

As it got darker, the wind came up and we were able to sail all night. This morning it looks to be another calm hot day. We appear to be in the Pacific High, not where we want to be, but where we are. It’s hard to order up new weather.

The birds have left us. For a while we had three on the bow pulpit. They were all pointing into the wind. I suspect we have moved out of their normal area. But only they know….

All are well. Lots of food and water. Unless the weather changes, this is looking to be a long trip. Hopefully, things will pick up a time passes.

Bob
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At 8/29/2009 (utc) our position was 26°31.67′N 156°18.56′W