Still beating south

We’ve just started the seventh day of this passage, making it our longest passage to date at a hopeful 9 days. Distance wise our longest will still be Vancouver Island to San Francisco in 2006; 880 miles in 6 days because we had favorable winds the whole way.

Another uneventful day sailing south. On the early watch yesterday evening we ran into another squall. Since we’re out of the ITCZ now they are much less intense than before, but still something to watch out for. The one last night seemed to have a mind of it’s own. The rain showed up on radar as a band 6 miles long but only 1 mile wide. Since we were approaching the narrowest area I figured we’d sail right through in 20 minutes or so. An hour and a half later we were still in the middle of it. While it seemed to be moving with us against the wind I suspect the rain was merely spreading in our direction. Hard to tell at night, we can see rain but not clouds on the radar. Anyway, I managed to get us out of the rain before waking Teresa for her watch, lest anyone think she’s the only one driving the boat in the rain.

The rest of the night it was a bit windy and since we left the jib up all night we made better time than our normal night at the cost of sleep. It’s hard to sleep down below when the boat is pounding into the waves at 5-6 knots. After pushing hard all day yesterday and into the night we are past fuel worries, we have enough left to motor the rest of the way if necessary.

It’s been a beautiful day today, our first sun since last Wednesday. We’ve had 10-15 knots of wind out of the south and we’ve been sailing under reefed main and reefed jib most of the day. Wouldn’t mind seeing a 30 degree wind shift to the West, but we can live with what we have, especially since two of the three weather forecasts expected no wind today.

With 140 miles left and a planned arrival on Tuesday morning we should make it in easily for high tide.

Rob

PS: We currently have 99.9 miles to our crossing of the equator. Teresa

Yohelah is here