Miles traveled days 11 & 12: 247
Miles traveled total : 1,774
Miles to Port Angeles: 3,051
The mileage reading above was taken at 9:00 this morning, and now it’s midnight and we have less than 3,000 miles to go! We’re sailing downwind tonight with the jib on the spin pole in front of the mainsail on the port side, with about 17 knots of wind coming across our starboard quarter. It’s a pretty nice ride, but we get some whopping rollers every once in a while and get thrown around pretty good. We’re making 6 knots to the northeast, which are all miles to the good. In another 4 or 5 days we will be half way there!
The latest weatherfax surface forecast for 72 hours from now shows absolutely no lows to the west of us, so now we’ve got to start watching the highs fill in and make sure we don’t get caught in the middle of one with no wind. We need to head northeast a bit and come up over the top of the stationary North Pacific high which is parked very firmly in front of the Washington coastline. Hopefully we won’t have to go too far north to keep wind. The 96 hour wind/wave forecast predicts right now that if we travel northeast up to about 48 degrees we could turn due east at about 155 degrees west and go right into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. But it’s way too far in advance to start working it out at that level of detail, since we’re still at 170 degrees east and that’s over 1,500 miles away.
Tonight I think we finally have to give in to the gremlins in our freezer compressor. We’ve been fighting problems with it since we left Majuro, and it’s been giving us fits for most of this passage. What Rob thinks is wrong is that when it was charged up in La Paz, Mexico after the last rebuild of the freezer box, it was overcharged. And perhaps now the excess coolant has finally made its way into the compressor. He has instructions from the manufacturer and has been bleeding off coolant, but it just won’t freeze anymore. We’re about to lose all the meat in the freezer, which is going to make for some very boring meals between here and home. I couldn’t find canned chicken at Costco in Japan, so we’ve basically got canned tuna for meat. Guess it’s time to get serious with the fishing lures since fresh tuna is far better and more interesting and versatile than canned. That first meal after we make landfall in Port Angeles is going to be pretty tasty. In the meantime I think we’ll be eating a lot of chicken breasts in the next two days.
Teresa
