SV Yohelah – Pacific Loop

Miles traveled days 15: 134
Miles traveled total : 1,908
Miles to Port Angeles: 2,947

Tomorrow we want to have a boring day. Read some books, play some cards, have a nap. That’s all. After the day we’ve had today I think we deserve a boring day.

As reported a few days ago, we seemed to be finally free of lows coming off Japan and China at us. The surface analysis and 24 hour forecast yesterday showed no weather west of us besides high pressure. But for some reason the 48 hour forecast showed a big low right north of us. How can that be? We’re guessing they must form out here, and don’t need to be generated by the mainland. That’s going to make our task of dodge the low much more challenging if they can just materialize at will anywhere. Tonight we’re sailing slowly in light wind, working our way slowly northeast.

Today I spent the day cleaning out the freezer. I had about 15 pounds of no longer frozen meats and pre-cooked meals that went over the side. The icky part was that they were all bagged in plastic, which had to be cleaned so it could be held and disposed of onshore. We’ve managed to never throw any plastic overboard and want to make it home with that record intact.

Rob had a more interesting day, with two simultaneous projects. One was to fix the bilge pump which was no longer drawing water, and the other was to find the leak that was filling our bilge to the top every day. Not really two projects you want at the same time. The good news is we have 3 bilge pumps and he found a mangled screen in the primary one that we have for daily use (the other two are a high capacity automatic and low capacity manual). The better news is the leak is just a rudder shaft needing repacked, and shouldn’t cause problems. We’ll continue to monitor it and make repairs if necessary.

Then there was the incident this afternoon with the psycho tanker. We saw the AIS signal of a ship approaching, which was going to pass 7 miles behind us. We were keeping an eye on it and noticed it was turning towards us. Pretty soon it was going to come within a half mile of us. This was very strange behavior and it definitely got our attention. Freighters mid ocean do not change course for no reason, and we’ve never heard of one doing a fly-by just for fun. We were out in the cockpit and could see it approaching, as it continued to turn towards us. Then they blew their horn, one single long blast. At that point Rob called on the VHF to ask them what their intentions were. They responded that they were just checking on us and wanted to know if everything was ok. They stopped turning toward us and passed a quarter mile off our stern, perpendicular to us. Then they turned away from us, which was good, but they continued to turn, until they were back facing us again, about a half mile behind us, and then slowed down. At this point we both became very concerned. This is not typically how a tanker maneuvers in mid ocean, and there was no reason for him to be turning back toward us.

As luck would have it we had the SSB on because it was just about time to check in to the PacSea net. Rob broke in with priority traffic and gave the details to the net controller in Hawaii. We had no idea what else to do at that point. They no longer answered our calls on the VHF. A couple minutes later they turned away, accelerated, and continued their original course west. We have no idea what the point of it all was, but we’re going to report it to the Coast Guard and the shipping company. They wasted an incredible amount of fuel for absolutely no purpose, and totally freaked us out. We were glad when their AIS signal finally got too far away and dropped off the radar. We gybed our jib over and changed course and headed northeast.

Teresa

After the storms of the first week, the second week was pretty boring. We continued to sail more easterly than we wanted in order to avoid low pressure systems. We thought we’d turn north once we crossed 160*E, but a big low kept us going east some more. The net effect of all this travel east is that we’ve added miles to the trip. The shortest distance between two points on a sphere is a great circle route. From Japan the great circle route would have taken us north of the Aleutians and then south again to Seattle. As we’ve traveled due east we have traveled greater distance to get home. Our total miles currently stand at 4700, up from 4300 when we left. Our shortest distance to Seattle right now is still to head north, but not nearly as far as the Gulf of Alaska. We should hit our halfway point in another 500 miles or so. This will also put us on the edge of the stationary North Pacific high. Once there we simply sail over the top of it and then home. Sounds simple. We’ll see.

The other big news actually belonged to our third week, but we’ll cover it here. Teresa reported the incident with the tanker in a previous blog. We have reported the incident to the US Coast Guard in Hawaii since the PacSea Net reported it to them already. We received a very nice email back from the US Coast Guard Joint Rescue Coordination Center stating that they were passing the report on to their Investigative Unit. We just want the incident on record in case this tanker is involved in similar incidents in the future. I can think of no innocent explanation for the convoluted course changes of this commercial ship. Actually, we’d really like to know what was happening on the tanker’s bridge, but I fear we’ll never find out. What were they doing with the first pass and whistle blast? Why did they turn back toward us? Were they monitoring the PacSea net and broke off after they were publicly identified? Even though Teresa posted about the ‘psycho tanker’, we continue to get email asking about the incident so I will post our report to the Coast Guard.

One last item. You may have noticed that our blog posts used to identify the author to the left of the posting. This is done by email address, Teresa’s come in via sailmail and mine come in via my HAM call sign on Winlink. The software identifies the poster by the email address. Unfortunately there are no HAM winlink stations within range of the North Pacific so all our postings come through sailmail. I’ll sign the bottom but until we have an internet connection to fix it, the blogging software will identify all posts as from Teresa.

Today on Yohelah we’re still nervous about psycho tankers…

Rob

Here is our email to the Coast Guard documenting our encounter with the tanker ‘Siteam Leader’. In the report below ‘CPA’ is ‘Closest point of approach’ and is constantly calculated electronically by our AIS unit and displayed on our chart plotter. AIS receives a VHF signal from all vessels over 300 tons, ours displays all contacts on our chart plotter/radar display. Generally we are not concerned about vessels passing with a CPA over a mile away. If the CPA is under a mile we usually contact them at 12 miles via VHF radio and ensure they are aware of our presence.

I have x’d out the name and call sign of our contact in Hawaii since this is being posted on the web. Since this is simply a report of the facts, the tanker’s information is intact. All is a matter of public record, anyway. – Rob

Begin Report—–

I received your email address from Xxxxx (HAM Call sign here) on the Pacific Seafarer’s Net. We would like to report a strange incident with the tanker ‘Siteam Leader’ on July 14, 2010. While no laws were broken in the incident we believe the ship caused an excessively dangerous situation for no reason.

Our vessel:
SV Yohelah
Seattle
Doc #667842

Other vessel:
Tanker ‘Siteam Leader’
MMSI: 565917000
IMO: 9343194
Call Sign: 9VNR2
596 feet, 40 foot draft
Markings: Fitzen Chemical

At 0200z on July 14, 2010 we first noted an AIS target on heading 274*T traveling at 14 knots at a distance of over 20 miles. The vessel MMSI 565917000 was to the south east of us. We were on course of 095*T at speed of 4.5 knots. AIS was calculating a 7 mile CPA based on the other vessels course and speed.

By 0300z the vessel had turned toward us and had decreased the CPA to three miles. In the intervening hour we had not received the supplemental AIS signal giving us the vessel type and name, along with other information. AIS continued to show the vessel turning slowly toward us.

Our position at 0300z was 38* 43′N, 168* 17′E, on a course of 082T at 5.0 knots. Turning more easterly had increased our boat speed and widened the gap between us and the vessel. However, it continued to turn toward us. At just under 5 miles we had a visual on the vessel and confirmed it was a tanker. Still no supplemental AIS information. At 2 miles the CPA was under 0.5 miles and the vessel continued to turn toward us. At this time we received the rest of the AIS signal and were able to identify the ship as indicated above, the tanker ‘Siteam Leader’.

At this point we were amazed a commercial ship would deviate this far from course for a fly-by of a sailboat. As the ‘Siteam Leader’ continued to close, so did the CPA. At 0.3 miles away the ship sounded one prolonged blast on the ship’s horn. Since this is meaningless to two ships in daylight hours within sight of each other, we interpreted it as an attention signal and gave them one long blast back. I then called Siteam leader on the VHF and asked, “What are your intentions?”. The person answering the radio stated they were just making sure everything was ‘OK’. The voice was of a non-native English speaker, although the words were very precise and clear.

I answered that everything was fine here and that no assistance was needed. At the time our boat was sailing along with properly trimmed sails and no sign of distress, as actually had been the case since we left Japan. We had not made any radio VHF transmissions for a week or so, so there was no reason for anyone to suspect problems. I also told ‘Siteam Leader’ there was another sailboat 50 miles NE of us – I fudged ‘Red Thread’s’ position a little since they were over a hundred miles away – it just made us sound less ‘alone’ at the time.

‘Siteam Leader’ acknowledged my transmission and passed 0.22 miles off our stern, we have pictures. Our position was 38* 43′N, 168* 20′E. At this point they were on a course of 336*T, 62 degrees off their original course. We continued to watch them as they turned to port, hopefully to resume their course of ~274*T. We watched in dismay over the next several minutes as they actually turned through almost 270* and pointed back in our direction. Their speed dropped to 10 knots. ‘Siteam Leader’ did not answer VHF calls after the first conversation.

As they were making this turn I looked at the time and realized the Pacific Seafarer’s HAM net was starting on 14300 USB. Since we check in daily with the net I picked up the microphone and called priority traffic. This was at 0328z. We contacted Xxxxx XxxXxxxxx, XXXXX, net relay station in Hawaii and gave him ‘Siteam Leaders’ details. We were due up on the roll call in 20 minutes so no other action was taken. Shortly after 0330 ‘Siteam Leader’ started turning to starboard and toward the south. We watched as the tanker continued to steam south and then west. It stayed on a course of 240*T for a half hour or so and was 15 miles away before it actually resumed it’s original course of 274*T.

While no laws were broken, we do not understand the maneuvers of ‘Siteam Leader’ and consider the situation to have been dangerous. At best they were trying to scare us, at worse they may have hit us – the problem is that by the time laws are broken we cease to exist in a contest between a 40′ fiberglass sailboat and a 600′ tanker. In over 27,000 ocean miles in the Pacific we have never seen a commercial ship waste this much fuel and time to maneuver close to a sailboat for no reason. I also find it curious that their AIS signal was inadequate and that they stopped acknowledging the VHF.

While it would be nice to have answers to our questions, we want to at least make a record of the incident in case this ship is ever involved in similar incidents. Perhaps it’s location should be ascertained in past cases of sailboats missing at sea.

Rob(AD7XA) and Teresa(KE7WWA) Sicade
SV Yohelah
enroute Japan to Seattle

Miles sailed days 16 to 18: 352
Miles sailed total : 2,260
Miles to Port Angeles: 2,649

A few days ago we noticed that the weatherfaxes showed a nice clear patch with no lows directly over us, but good wind from a low north of us. Time to make some tracks. So we’ve been screaming along pretty nicely for a couple of days now, mostly all miles in the direction we want to travel. Today’s surface analysis, which shows the current conditions, shows no lows west of us at all. Our friend Ichikawa told us in an email yesterday from Japan that the rainy season was done and the weather was beautiful and sunny. That must be good news for us, we thought.

The 72 hour forecast, however, paints a completely different picture. Sometime between now and then a big low is forming behind us and heading southeast. The last few have not been a problem, with pressure differential between them and the highs very small, meaning no big winds. This next one, though, is going to be trouble. It’s going south of us. That means (remember the earlier discussion – counterclockwise rotation northern hemisphere) we’ll end up with winds on our nose on the north side of it. But the choices are stay north and have gale force winds, or go south and have storm force winds. I don’t remember exactly what the definition of storm force is, either 40 or 50 knot sustained winds, but I do know we do not need that badge. We have the “2 gales in 2 days” merit badge from this trip already, that’s enough thank you very much.

What’s happening is that the low is farther south that the others, which so far have all been pushed north when they hit the northern edge of the high. This one is bumping square into the middle of the North Pacific high. When that happens, a squash zone will be created between the two different areas of pressure, until one finally gives. We have absolutely no idea what will happen with this one, and it’s too early for the forecasters to know either (and do they, really?). Will the low be pushed south of the high, and is that even possible this time of year (upon further though I realized this can’t happen – south of the NP high are the northeast tradewinds)? Will it be strong enough to split the high and drive a channel right through it? Will the high absorb it and force it to dissipate? Will it go north? We have no freaking idea.

What we’re hoping for, besides a basic miracle that makes it disappear, is to get inside the high far enough to not get completely flattened in the squash zone between them. Basically we’re looking for some protection from the high. But can we get there fast enough is the question right now. One option is to stop the boat right here and right now and let it blow over us. But that’s a difficult choice to make when we’re making such good time, and it’s far too soon to know what’s going to happen. It might be a decision we make in 2 or 3 days, but not today. Rob says, “right now we’re running from something that currently does not exist”.

Teresa

Miles sailed day 19: 124
Miles sailed total : 2,384
Miles to Port Angeles: 2,531

About 5:30 this morning the wind eased after a nice night of sailing due east. At 7:00 I furled the jib, turned on the motor and put the boat in gear for the first time since July 3rd. The forecast said the wind would die today, and it’s not unexpected. The low north of us is too far away now to give us wind, and the one screaming up behind us isn’t quite close enough yet (although I think it’s sucking the wind out of where we are right now). Given that we still need to get out of its way, though, we chose to burn some fuel in order to continue pushing east. We still have 115 gallons onboard, so that’s not a worry yet.

When I saw the 96 hour forecast this morning I learned the answer to yesterday’s burning question about what would happen between the low and the North Pacific high. At first glance it looked like the high was going to force the low back west, like pushing on a rubber ball until it’s too compressed and pushes back. But now I think what’s happening is that the high is moving west as wind gets sucked into the low and stopping the eastward progress of the low at 170E instead of letting it get as far east as they originally thought, which was to 180. Whatever the case is, it’s going to start moving north over the top of the high like the rest of them do soon enough.

Now that I’ve bored everyone to death with all we’ve learned about weather in the North Pacific (and who knows how much is even right anyway), our hope is that from here on in it’s just a test of patience and keeping from getting becalmed in the middle of the high. We need to start sailing north and get up over the top of the high to keep some wind. This is where I should find someone who’s a regular on the Victoria to Maui race circuit and see what the common strategy is for sailing this last leg.

Yesterday we cleaned out the last of the food in the fridge and freezer and inventoried all of our canned and dried goods. Turns out I’m quite a good little hoarder and we have plenty of food, even enough canned meats to have a little protein nearly every day. This helps my schedule now, changing from cooking duties to opening can duties, which will leave me more time to go scrape dead varnish off the teak outside. Wow, just can’t wait for this passage to get over. Oh, I forgot, cherish every moment.

And Maya is now, for the first time in her little life, learning what it’s like to be cold. Smart little gatita that she is, it only took about 2 minutes to learn the value of a down comforter. Unfortunately she’s decided that the best place on the boat now is between our legs in the sea berth while we’re sleeping. It gives her both warmth and bracing when the boat’s rolling. Personally I prefer she stays on top of the freezer while I’m trying to sleep, but you can’t blame her for not liking the cold so much. I thought she didn’t like to be touched because she was still young, but it turns out she just didn’t like the heat.

Teresa

Miles motored day 20: 120
Miles traveled total : 2,521
Miles to Port Angeles: 2,411

15 hours later and we’re still motoring, waiting for the wind to fill back in. The spot forecast I requested this morning at 6:00 said we’d have 27 knots of wind by now. Either the low has totally slowed down, or turned north sooner than we expect. We’re waiting for some weather faxes in another 2 hours to see what’s happening, and watching the anemometer hoping it starts going above 4 knots.

The great news is that we’re back in the western hemisphere. We crossed the date line around noon, giving us an extra day. Don’t know that either of us have ever had a 32 day month before, but now we will. It would be better if that happened while we are on anchor in some lovely spot, but that’s not how it works, is it? We’re still hoping for an end of the first week in August landfall. The best news is that we’re over half way. It’s always a bonus day when the miles to go clocks over to be less than the miles traveled. We’ve crossed off two milestones in the same day, with not much else going on.

Today on Yohelah we’re happy to be in our hometown hemisphere, trying to figure out how to get the new 32 day month of July into the rhyme: 30 Day has September……

Teresa

Compared to the storms of the first week and the psycho tanker at the end of the second, the third week has been pretty uneventful. We spend most of our time looking at weather faxes and deciding which way to go next. Mid-week the 3-4 day forecasts were predicting a storm and a gale preceding a low pressure system just short of the International Date Line. We were still 5 degrees short and the wind died, leaving us becalmed in a soon-to-be stormy place. We burned 25 gallons of diesel leaving Japan and getting 150 miles offshore so we could enjoy the first two storms without worrying about land, and we’ve also burned another 10-15 charging batteries – it’s been overcast and foggy most of the time and we don’t get much benefit from solar panels most days. So anyway, with the big winds headed our way we started a race toward the North Pacific High. We’ll know for sure by tomorrow, but it looks like trading a little diesel for calmer winds has worked.

We have a little over 2000 miles left. We have 74 out of 140 gallons of diesel left. We also have gas for the Honda generator and can run it in calm weather. We’ve made a little over 500 gallons of fresh water. Tannowa harbor was pretty dirty and we left with empty tanks, so 130 of this water filled our water tanks. The other 370 or so is what we’ve consumed in three weeks. Since we have a water maker we’ve never rationed water or used salt water for washing. Our usage on this passage is a little higher than normal mainly due to laundry. On shorter passages we hold it for landfall and usually don’t do it by hand onboard because doing laundry by hand uses a lot of water.

We’ve made repairs to a mainsail slide, a bilge pump, chafed a reefing line, and replaced a sea strainer. A few pins have worked their way loose, so far we’ve caught them before anything goes ‘boom’. The Monitor wind vane lines that attach to the wheel were starting to chafe by the water paddle, so we end-for-ended them. One of the water maker pumps stopped running the other day but then started again – worse case I’ll switch back over to the mag-drive pump instead of the 2 Shurflos, a little less water per hour but certainly more efficient. That’s about it for repairs so far – nothing major.

The boat has been sailing itself for most of the trip. We average a couple of adjustments per day on the wind steering and of course change sail configurations when needed. Rest of the time we watch the boat sail. Not that we’re not busy. Sleep schedule, cooking, dishes, repairs, and cleaning all take time. We are downloading 24 weather faxes per day right now, I have a schedule taped to the nav station so I don’t miss one. Together with spot forecasts from sailmail we know enough about the weather to a least see stuff coming. Unfortunately the weather systems move so much faster than we do we can only mitigate the affects.

Nothing else for now, today on Yohelah we’re all wishing we were closer to home…

Rob

Miles traveled days 21-23: 380
Miles traveled total : 2,907
Miles to Port Angeles: 2,048

Then: Dreaming of jumping overboard to cool off while on passage into the beautiful warm blue waters of the South Pacific.
Now: Terrified of falling into the 49 degree North Pacific and being completely hypothermic in 15 minutes.

Then: Maya the “don’t touch me” cat sleeping on the freezer during the day.
Now: Maya snuggled under the covers sucking all the possible body heat she can out of us.

Then: Shorts and tank tops.
Now: 4 layers on top – including a thermal, 2 layers on bottom – including foulies, 2 pairs of socks, shoes and a hat.

Then: Turning the tap in the shower to cold hoping for some reason you’ll get cold water.
Now: Running the engine for half hour to charge batteries and heat water before you even consider a shower.

Then: Hating both the engine running and cooking for the extra heat it causes in the cabin.
Now: Loving both the engine running and cooking for the extra heat it causes in the cabin.

Then: Changing shirts sometimes 2 or 3 times a day because they’re soaked with sweat.
Now: Changing shirts sometimes every 2 or 3 days because you don’t have enough long sleeves for the entire passage.

Then: 10 minutes after a shower you can’t tell you even took one.
Now: When was our last shower?

Then: All meals and 90% of our time spent in the cockpit.
Now: Go outside – are you crazy? Only when absolutely necessary to run the boat.

Then: Sailing on starry moonlit nights.
Now: Fog, fog, fog, and more fog.

Teresa

Miles traveled day 24: 132
Miles traveled total : 3,025
Miles to Port Angeles: 1,945

The wind did finally fill in behind us once again and we had a few nice hours of sailing in a light breeze, setting the jib out on the spinnaker pole and running downwind wing and wing. Midday it slowly began to clock back around to the northwest, ending its rotation directly in front of us. Turns out that just when you think you’re safe from the lows, securely surrounded by high pressure, you learn that the huge North Pacific high isn’t so tough afterall. A low pressure system formed right in the middle of the high, exactly over the top of us, splitting the high into two separate systems. Who knew that could happen? And the low has been right exactly over the top of us ever since. Seems we now have our own little personal low, just like the character in the Peanuts cartoon with his small cloud of dust traveling with him wherever he goes.

With reefed main and staysail only, we spent all last night bashing into 23 knot headwinds, frequently taking water completely over the cabin top as we would crash into wave after wave. Every forecast said the winds would ease within the next three hours, then with each new surface analysis we received on the weatherfax we saw that it was growing and surrounding us more and more. Late this morning the wind finally slowed to the high teens, but the low continues to loom over the top of us as we sail slowly east-northeast. Thankfully with the lessening of the wind, the seas have flattened and we’re not pounding any longer.

Early this morning when I downloaded the latest set of forecasts that go out up to 4 days, there was another low pressure system forming south of us, that was going to run right over the top of us when the current one finally moved north. Now that the high has split it appears we’ve just opened a door for new lows to fill the gap. We were in for at least another 96 hours of bashing, or at least it seemed so this morning. This afternoon the forecasters have changed their minds and the new low is now just projected to remain a small trof that should stay ahead of us, and the winds should back behind us again hopefully by tomorrow mid day. We keep telling ourselves that even though it’s fundamentally uncomfortable and not very much fun, at least we’re not becalmed and still slowly making miles towards home.

Yesterday afternoon we had a nice treat when Randy, one of the net control stations in Hawaii for the Pacific Seafarer’s net, stayed on after the net and set up a phone patch for us. Rob got a chance to say hi to his dad, and after 24 long days at sea it was so nice hearing that voice from home fill the cabin. Conditions were perfect for it yesterday, and we’re glad we took advantage of the opportunity, because today the propagation was so poor we were lucky anyone could hear us at all when we checked in with our location report.

With less than 2,000 miles to go, we are finally beginning to believe this passage will have an end. And with the north wind we seem to have lost the persistent fog bank we were sailing in, at least for now. The sun peeked through the clouds for about 10 minutes today, giving us hope that tomorrow we may have warm weather and opportunity to clean up after our own little personal low finally moves north without us.

Teresa

Miles traveled days 25-28: 445
Miles traveled total : 3,470
Miles to Port Angeles: 1,584

While 445 miles doesn’t look too bad for 4 days in our slow boat, it’s really two pretty good days and two slow stinkers. And tonight we’re in for another slow one. We’ve got 7 knots of wind from the east, which of course is just the direction we want to go. We’re basically nearly adrift in a north setting current, making about 2.5 knots over ground. The forecast says by daybreak we should be getting wind from the south, so hopefully that’s true and we can point the boat towards home and make some more miles to the good. We’re just about as far north as we want to go, but seem to have little choice at the moment about that.

We’ve learned that the forecasts any further out than 48 hours are barely worth even looking at. The forecasters seem to give the absolute worst case – everything that could go wrong – type of scenario again and again. Maybe they got sued like the Canadian forecasters, who are well known in the Northwest for predicting a gale 7 days out of 7 when the summer light air breezes are barely noticeable. Nearly every 96 hour forecast we’ve seen has shown huge lows, gales and even storms. The 72 hour forecast always shows a much more settled picture, and by the time we see a surface analysis showing current conditions, the area where they predicted 30 knot winds 4 days ago has 6.

Tonight we seem to be drifting across the east/west traffic lanes for freighter traffic between Los Angeles and Asia. It may seem strange, but being in the traffic is actually quite comforting. With so many ships in the same area they’re more likely to keep a good lookout. We’re never sure this far out how good the watchkeeping is on those freighters in the middle of the night, and the last two I hailed earlier this week did not answered me on the VHF. Before I took my first nap tonight there was a ship that was going to pass about 1.5 miles in front of us. When he was 6 miles away he suddenly turned up 5 degrees, giving us a 2 mile gap. I called him on the VHF to say thanks, and this time he did answer, saying he saw us on radar and was giving us some space. Nice to hear, that’s for sure.

Not much else going on. Today we actually saw real sun for the first time in forever. Funny thing was, there was a hole in the clouds directly above us allowing the sun to peek through, and we were totally surrounded by fog. Tonight we have the same conditions – a nearly full moon above and fog all around. This is the first we’ve seen of the moon this entire cycle. Maybe we’ll get lucky and have one last starry night before we finally get to put this passage in the record books.

Teresa