It's Just Never Like This Here?

0600 PDT, 27-49 124-34 1851 557:14:29, TWD WNW, TWS 5 Bar 1016 Sky 100% Sea 1 ft, 24 hrs SOC 72, DTF 1851.

The Pacific High which I keep calling the Transpac Weather also influences our summer weather back home. The wind spins clockwise around the High, toed out a bit because of the Coriolis effect. And as we know the wind has been blowing between 15 and 25 knots from the northwest every day all day and night for weeks. It may be due to global warming that the Pacific High only generates wind on one side now. I wish we could tip it over so that they had some. I feel guilt wasting all the wind we have had here.

I caused a bit of a stir when I reported Transpac's anticipated July 25th finish date. They base that calculation on the last 24 hrs speed on course and because it has been a bit slow out there the output date was a bit late.. A more accurate estimate, made by your correspondent would be between 9 and 11 days if they break out of the light winds they have endured for the last 60 hours or so.

I note that the 50's that started on Thursday have rushed right up behind our fleet and not a surprise to the Plan B's have begun to slow down. At this point I would be happy if they went right by so long as they brought some wind up with them. Because of coarse the other alternative- the boats ahead sailing into better wind and the rich get richer scenario - is less appealing

Here are a couple of reports from onboard the boat:

Morning Grinder!
We had to take the knife away from Greg last night!
We had wind from noon til six at night and have been bobbing since. Chuggy woke up this morning like a ground hog and he saw his shadow in the pacific. This means we will be stuck here for another day :( Good news is this is extending our vacation by a few days AND Dougy has another unused airline ticket to put in his drawer.
Raytech software calculates 285d 13h to our destination. WOW! Our predictions are July 14th (we’re saying 15th so that it sounds better when we get there) Problem is we are due to run out of booze on the 9th. (Or sooner depending on how many more days with no wind)

The transpac race can be broken down into five parts, we think six, more on this later.
Part 1: The race to the synoptic winds
Part 2: Crossing the ridge
Part 3: Slot car racing on a chosen millibar line
Part 4: Nail the gybe
Part 5: The Molokai channel

In our race we’ve done well in the first part of the race, done the second part TWICE, waiting on 3,4,5 and jumping ahead to Part 6: the race to the bar!

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