Day Two

Position, wind and speed? See First Roll Call above from the Transpac Website (click on it so it opens in a bigger window and then you can even read this).

This is a full time job responding to e-mails and updating the blog!

Here are a couple of e-mails received from the boat so far:

Received 1645 PDT, 2009-06-29

We have just passed Catalina west end. Mostly good with a few short tacks up the shore. The boat seems to travel faster a bit off of close hauled and so that is what we have been doing. Chuggy got a good start but because of the absence of pointing we ended up getting rolled by teh one design 35 and J world. These two boats are just in front of us as well as two 50 footers from the Aloha division so we think that we are about where we should be. Ross and Chuggy are on shift until 6:00 and then Web and I will take our turn.
When we send this we should get our updated Grib file and of course everyone is curious to see what the weather looks like.
Dougie

Received 2217 PDT, 2009-06-29

I am afraid that we don’t have any wind information for you Bill. We are not receiving wind information from the masthead right now. I can tell you that after a couple of hours reaching on a course of 220 degrees at about 8.5 or 9 knots the wind has started to go a bit light as predicted. I have just downloaded a new grib in the hope that it might give some better news, but I can see that there is really no way to get to Hawaii this year... We will continue on our course until the the winds begin to shift around behind us and then begin the southward run to see if we can get around the high.
Thanks for all the news from shore, and thanks for all the help.
I am going to see if I can get a couple of hours of sleep before going back on deck at 2.
Bye for now,

Doug

Received 1045 PDT, 2009-06-30

Thanks for the notes this morning Bill. All is good on the boat. We successfully our first roll call which was a minor success for us because the first time we actually heard a voice on the radio was Alaska Eagle at 0800. In the face of a 30 minute penalty each day for failing to make a roll call we think that this was a big success. The radio seems to work load and clear, but then again you knew that it would.
Chuggy and Ross are on deck right now sailing in about 10 knots of mostly west wind. We have the full main and jibtop which is a sail combination we like. We are sailing about 70 degrees off the wind and moving crisply. We would like to get more westing but it just ain’t there for us.
Web says yeh for the sailing anarchy photo—and that this is Chuggy best start ever (his only one). I am going to get more grib info and have a look at what we are going to be doing tomorrow. The natives are restless for a littlel spinnaker work, but unless we want to head back to Mexico I jus tdon’t think its going to be there for us.
Don’t worry about e-mail bandwidth. The reception is good and e-mail comes through fairly quickly. We also have the Iridium which I can use if we take too much time. And in any case I view the 10 minute restriction is more of a guideline that anything else.
More to come,

Doug

I left all the grammatical errors intact because my jealousy of them makes me spiteful.

Today's GRIB, or weather forecast, is much improved.

Yesterday, and you can hear it plainly in Doug's e-mails, was a bit discouraging with a weird little high spinning up along the coast to throw the normal "windy reach to the ridge" part of the race into disarray. It looked like you could do well along the rhumb line for a few days but later in the week the pattern was supposed to normalize, and a more southern route was definitely indicated, but with no way to get there from that along the rhumb line bit!

But today the best possible resolution of that dilemma appears to be developing.

The weird little high is now forecast to weaken and move offshore and north a little. Later estimates have it merging with the a strengthening (1032mb) Pacific High in a more normal position.

This is good news because a way south (that doesn't lead to the coast of Mexican coast around Ensenada!) is now opening for our team. And even better, as they go, it looks like they will be able to make a fairly normal turn towards the islands. Of course I will defer to Dr. McMeel of McMeel Marine Weather Routing Solutions - who I hope is following these reports and the progress of our intrepid crew - for a more detailed assessment.